Microsoft Proclaims Support for a More Open Gaming Future (axios.com) 41
Microsoft executives are warming up regulators to their proposed acquisition of gaming giant Activision Blizzard in Washington by pledging a future that includes an open, "universal" app store. From a report: On Wednesday, Microsoft announced a set of "Open App Store Principles" the company says will apply to the Microsoft Store on Windows and the next generation of its marketplaces for games. [...] Seven of those principles center around security, privacy, quality, safety, accountability, fairness and transparency, and the company says it is committing to those principles starting today. The four remaining principles would change how developers use app stores by not requiring developers to use Microsoft's payment system, not giving its app store more favorable terms, not disadvantaging developers who use a different payment system and not preventing developers from communicating directly with customers.
need something like steam workshop + non locked to (Score:2)
need something like steam workshop + non locked to the store.
Yes you can use steam workshop mods in games that you got from an other store.
Now for windows store games can we have file system like steam games and it's easy to move them disk to disk and it's easy to get the game files and edit config files / add maps / mods / etc.
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need something like steam workshop + non locked to the store.
I hate app stores in general. We arrived at this point because the average unwashed masses are too computer illiterate to understand how to download and run setup.exe themselves.
Re:need something like steam workshop + non locked (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree.
Popular package repositories or... "app stores" are a good thing for a lot of reasons.
The key to these is that the package publishers should be able to choose where they publish, and the package consumers should be able to choose what repos they'll get packages from.
I hated having to visit the developers website to download game updates back in the day. And every title having its own auto-updater/patching system is nearly equally irritating.
A package management system that handles updates centrally, as well as stands as a "trust" or "curation" point between users and 'wider world' are both desirable features.
Stuff I get from GoG or Steam or whatever is generally going to be consistently safe, vs some randomly repackaged thing from somewhere else. Even today there are places that repackage perfectly good freeware in their own bloatware/malware installers and peddle them at the unsuspecting.
Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
...security, privacy, quality, safety, accountability, fairness and transparency, and the company says it is committing to those principles starting today.
Well, Microsoft, how about first applying all of those principles to the collection of spyware, rentware, adware, bloatware, and shovelware you laughingly call an operating system?
Crickets? That's what I thought...
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...the announcement is literally that they are first applying it to their operating system.
TFA says "On Wednesday, Microsoft announced a set of 'Open App Store Principles' the company says will apply to the Microsoft Store on Windows and the next generation of its game marketplaces." There is literally NOTHING about changing the Windows operating system itself, neither in the quote I just provided nor in the rest of the article. Even the Microsoft blog entry on this, (https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/02/09/open-app-store-principles-activision-blizzard/), talks only about the app sto
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Get all the trademark infringement outta there (Score:2)
I've heard that the Microsoft Store is full of scams and trademark infringement. All that crap will need to be taken out of there before it can be taken seriously.
Talk is talk (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Talk is talk (Score:5, Interesting)
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And we are worse off now because of it.
Sure, you can trade physical games, but how many people buy physical games these days?
Xbox One would've allowed trading digital games. if the publisher didn't allow it, well, it's the same as now - you "own" the game and can't do a thing with it like sell it or give it to someone else.
But if the publisher enab
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Xbox One would've allowed trading digital games. if the publisher didn't allow it, well, it's the same as now - you "own" the game and can't do a thing with it like sell it or give it to someone else.
For very small values of "allowed". At the time, many games were distributed on discs as digital distribution was not yet as ubiquitous as today.
But if the publisher enables it, suddenly you have an option where you could sell your "used" games. Sure you give up 20% to the publisher, but if you really didn't like the game, you'd get rid of it and someone else can have a cheap copy of it.
You seem to forget that with physical games in 2013 you didn't need the publisher to "enable" your right to sell it nor give up 20% to the publisher.
Instead of looking to the future and realizing that physical games are basically dead (discs today are effectively just a license file and you download the game anyhow - so if you bought the disc hoping to avoid that 100GB download...), gamers locked onto the past and now we're stuck with the past.
My point which you are ignoring is that in 2013 when games were still available in physical form, MS tried to limit used games EVEN though the game was still in physical form.
The number of games getting a real physical release is dwindling - it's just a mere formality. Halo Infinite just shipped a license file on disc - there's no content otherwise and it kicks off the massive 60+GB download of the game. Sure the disc has value in that it has the license file and can be re-sold, but I doubt physical copies of Halo Infinite made up more than a tiny fraction of sales - and digital copies were the norm.
That is now. That was not the case in 2013.
Let me translate (Score:1, Troll)
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"Pretty please don't enforce anti-trust laws and break us up like any sane society would, please?".
Breaking up companies has never really worked long-term. We only have 3 major choices of wireless providers, how'd that breaking up AT&T work out for ya?
What you'd really need is some what of disincentivizing companies from gobbling up their competitors in the first place, without it throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of capitalism. Most of the ideas proposed tend to revolve around either punishing companies for getting too big, or not allowing one company to purchase another - all of which reeks
ELL OH ELL! (Score:2, Insightful)
Seven of those principles center around security, privacy, quality, safety, accountability, fairness and transparency, and the company says it is committing to those principles starting today.
I'm surprised the computer didn't explode as those words were typed from the hypocrisy. In Microsoft's history, it's not like hypocrisy is abnormal, but that statement there takes it to a whole new level. Literally taking their entire corporate philosophy and flipped it on its head in that statement. I can't wrap my head around how even a soulless marketing drone could type that garbage without choking on it.
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Because the soulless marketing drone has been replaced by a soulless marketing AI...
and it's been trained to lie.
Fine. Prove it. (Score:2, Funny)
All they have to do is divest themselves of any and all game studios that they've purchased or otherwise have any involvement in, void any and all contractural PC or xBox exclusivity, and commit to forever keeping their noses out of any and all aspects of game studios' business (No more shenanigans like their interference with the Mac and Linux versions of Quake 3 and the Mac version of Half Life, for example.).
Somehow, I doubt they'll do any of that.
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Why would all of those things be needed to advance the direction they're claiming? That's quite the barrier to entry you've built. Completely fictional and unreasonable... but impressive.
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Well, the new 'principles' of microsoft's store are also completely fictional and unreasonable. Seems like a good match.
Microsoft and principles, LOL.
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I doubt Microsoft has the power to 'void any and all contractual PC or Xbox exclusivity', especially for indie games. Some games went exclusive when SIE (PlayStation) and Nintendo made it hard for smaller studios to qualify for their developer programs and when Android phone makers abandoned slide-out physical keyboards.
One sentence summary (Score:2)
if MS were a person (Score:1, Flamebait)
imagine that for your whole life you were a lying, stealing pos and people knew you as that type of person
but now, you've seen the error of your ways and want to start afresh; if an honest change of heart, then you'd quickly realize that in order to change others' well-founded low opinion of you, then you'd have to make demonstrations, show contrition, etc. far beyond what would have to be done if you weren't known as a pos
but even with that, there's likely still be a pos stain on you forever.... like IBM
Lies... (Score:2)
... from the industry that invented drm and started stealing PC games by ripping out their networking code and rebranding them mmos to deny game ownership. Basic features like multiplayer and level editors were taken away from us in the AAA space from the 90's onwards because the internet allowed them to back end the fuckand steal files and game code to trap parts of the game on racks of computers in their office so they can kill its functionality.
It's all bullshit, microsoft is still the evil empire.
A Message to Valve & the Year of the Linux Des (Score:2, Redundant)
This is a probably a message sent near directly to Valve, makers of the Steam gaming platform and soon to be released flavor of linux SteamOS 3.0 which aims to provide a dedicated gaming operating system in the event Microsoft decides to start closing off their store and application access a la Apple.
A gaming flavor of Linux supporting the entire Steam catalogue backed by a major company with real funding and a desire for a clean polished interface is everything I really need to replace Windows at home. Thi
These principles and MS do not go together (Score:2)
"security, privacy, quality, safety, accountability, fairness and transparency" and Microsoft have exactly one connection: Microsoft is opposed to all of these and tries its best to undermine, sabotage and prevent them from being a reality for any of its products.
Diablo? (Score:2)
My Tandy 3100 lived 3 years on Win 3.11 for workgroups doing everything ELSE fine . .
Who knew whack-a-mole on a PC would be so addictive?
DirectX (Score:2, Troll)
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I'm not sure why you're modded troll. Microsoft has been tugging those strings since the inception of the xbox.
Commit to building games for Playstation/others (Score:1)
That is the definition of open.
sideloading (Score:3)
Interesting twist on MSFT's old tactics (Score:3)
The bottom line on all of this is the same as it always has been. Microsoft very much wants to be the gatekeeper that controls access to video gaming. The reason they want to be that gatekeeper is to keep users locked-in to their ecosystem. They have used many technologies and tactics to accomplish that end goal over the years. A few examples are DirectX, XBox, Games for Windows, and WinRT. The newest iteration of this decades old strategy is Xbox Game Pass.
MSFT's old playbook centered on the fact that they had the army of programmers needed to create big APIs like DirectX that no-one else had the engineering team to implement. WinRT shows us that is still largely true. However, the difference this time around is middleware like Unity has gotten so good that one uses MSFT's APIs directly anymore. Combine that with how good compatibility technologies like Wine/Proton have gotten and the Oracle v. Google outcome means that today APIs are no longer a viable method of achieving lock-in.
So instead of going after APIs, now MSFT is going after DRM to achieve lock-in. The Steam DRM is very cross-platform friendly, which combined with Proton makes all those Windows games available outside the MSFT ecosystem. In order to keep gaming contained to MSFT's ecosystem, they now realize that they need to be the DRM platform for video games. That is what XBox Game Pass is all about. You can download and play games using that service just fine on Windows... but not on SteamOS even though SteamOS has a good implementation of Win32 and DirectX. It also aligns with their larger corporate strategy of creating perpetual subscription revenue streams.
The acquisition of Activision creates a lot of leverage. For example, what if 5 years from now all Activision games are only available to Xbox Game Pass Subscribers? Sure you can play them on your Playstation, but you have to link your XBox account with your Playstation account, and you need to be a $15/month Game Pass subscriber, and you have to pair an XBox controller with your PS5.
open for whom?? (Score:2)
For now (Score:2)
You telling me at some point someone with an MBA will not grab ahold of this and figure they can make some quick cash by changing this? The MO of Microsoft is to seemingly allow others on the platform but slowly over time make them more inconvenient. For example in the 1980s WordPerfect was the best word processor, until Microsoft released a word processor of their own. Then mysteriously the operating system was unstable and buggier when you ran WordPerfect 5.1. The same thing happened with the Netscape web
Hey baby, (Score:2)