The sorry state of PC gaming

[AaHaa]

Allright, I'll be honest, the title is just to lure people in, but I think there's something very wrong with gaming on Windows machines. Let me explain:
I recently picked up GTA IV from Steam (I'm about 6 years behind when it comes to gaming) and I love the fact that I'm earning achievements and it's tracking my progress via Games for Windows LIVE. I can view my achievements on my phone in the same place where I can see the achievements from games I play on my phone. I want to try to get all achievements and I started getting excited for GTA V, only to realize: it (almost certainly) won't have Games for Windows LIVE support. It will be available on Steam and I'll have to do with Steam achievements. My awesome GTA IV achievements will be on my Xbox account and my awesome GTA V achievements will be on my Steam account. This frustrates me greatly. Gaming on Windows devices (desktop, tablet and phone) should not be segmented by different services. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that if I play a game on Windows, it will use the same service to track my progress as when I play a game on Windows Phone. How and why did Microsoft lose the chance to be the main player in the PC gaming market? Almost every PC gamer runs Windows!

TL;DR: I think it's only logical that gaming on Windows desktop, Windows tablets, Windows Phone and Xbox should be run by the same service. Now it's segmented because Microsoft allowed Valve to take over PC gaming with Steam. They should fix this.

Just to be clear: I don't hate Steam, I love it, but I think it's a shame Microsoft let GFWL die and allowed the PC gaming market to be taken over by Valve. Agree? Disagree? What should they do about it? Can they ever take the PC back from Steam?

 

[Connor Price]

I agree to a certain extent. GFWL was a great idea, and I liked it a lot. Especially in GTA 4. But the problem was that GFWL was plagued with problems and being put on to badly optimized games. Thus, giving GFWL a bad reputation. I don't think it was ever popular enough for Microsoft to continue. They would just loose money on it. I have no problem with the PC gaming market being taken over by Valve. Valve is considered more of an Xbox Live of the PC world than GFWL was :winktongue: Oh, and by the way, you might want to change the title.. You know how irrational some people can be :winktongue:

 

[AaHaa]

Haha I don't think I can change the title ;-) Let's hope nobody gets too mad.
A hypothetical "solution" to this problem I can come up with is expand the Windows app "Games". This currently serves as the main gaming-achievements-Xbox Live-hub on Windows 8, maybe with Treshold (and the ability to run apps on the desktop) they could make this app a kickass Steam-like client that sells and plays full-scale triple-A titles?

 

[Connor Price]

That's a good idea. I like that. You could then have it universally across all Windows Platforms. Except on Windows Phone, it just shares the achievements and stuff. But it would be cool to have the same app on Xbox and PC.

 

[QwarkDreams]

Games for Windows Live was just awful. I'm actually glad it doesn't exist anymore, although the way MS killed it (leaving some games unsupported) matches the previous experience with it. I didn't buy many games because people complained about not being able to install them properly.

 

[gedzum]

Haha I don't think I can change the title ;-)

I think you can change the title by editing the original post.

I think if Microsoft were serious about the XBOX brand as their PC solution as well they should have brought them together sooner and I feel like it would have reached out to a bigger audience. As it stands, Steam is pretty much the standard for the PC platform.

 

[a5cent]

Agree with everything in here so far. Steam is diversifying and becoming more inclusive for Mac and Linux gaming. It's their defence strategy, because just the existence of a Windows app store is a huge threat to their business model. For these reasons, it seems to me that Steam and MS are headed towards being more competitors than partners, and based on Steam's current standing, I think that could be extremely dangerous for MS.

Not sure what the best approach is, but as usual for everything MS related, it sounds like a lot of risk is involved.

 

[AaHaa]

Maybe, just maybe, there will be some space for Microsoft when Valve progresses their Linux-approach with the Steam boxes and promoting Linux and all? Focus on the PC gamers that say "but I don't want to install Linux!"

 

[Keith Wallace]

The only way Microsoft could make real progress on a PC gaming store would be to bring their consoles franchises (Halo, Gears, Forza, Fable) to an Xbox PC Store exclusively. The problem there is that Microsoft has used recent history to show us that they care more for short-term financial gains than establishing an ecosystem, like how they took many of their things to iOS and Android. In that manner, I'd expect them to make a PC games store, but still offer stuff on Steam, thus giving no one a reason to switch.

 

[QwarkDreams]

The only way Microsoft could make real progress on a PC gaming store would be to bring their consoles franchises (Halo, Gears, Forza, Fable) to an Xbox PC Store exclusively. The problem there is that Microsoft has used recent history to show us that they care more for short-term financial gains than establishing an ecosystem, like how they took many of their things to iOS and Android. In that manner, I'd expect them to make a PC games store, but still offer stuff on Steam, thus giving no one a reason to switch.

Switch to what? If MSs games (Halo, Forza,...) are Windows exclusive it doesn't matter if they offer it in a special MS Windows Store or on Steam (assuming they won't run on Mac and Linux).

With rumors about MS selling the XBox division, who knows if MS even wants to be a involved in gaming at all.

 

[AaHaa]

Switch to what? If MSs games (Halo, Forza,...) are Windows exclusive it doesn't matter if they offer it in a special MS Windows Store or on Steam (assuming they won't run on Mac and Linux).

Why won't that matter? I'd love to play Halo on my PC and Xbox with synchronised saves, achievements and stats. That won't be able if the Xbox version uses Xbox integration and the PC version uses Steam integration.

 

[QwarkDreams]

Why won't that matter? I'd love to play Halo on my PC and Xbox with synchronised saves, achievements and stats. That won't be able if the Xbox version uses Xbox integration and the PC version uses Steam integration.

Seems a bit unfair to me if you'd be able to get achievements for Steam AND XBox Live at the same time. Cross saves don't make much sense to me because I doubt that MS would offer double-packs that include both the PC and XBox version (especially for a reasonable price; such as Sony did on their own platforms). IF they even consider releasing games like Halo and Forza on PC (again).

 

[Keith Wallace]

Switch to what? If MSs games (Halo, Forza,...) are Windows exclusive it doesn't matter if they offer it in a special MS Windows Store or on Steam (assuming they won't run on Mac and Linux).

With rumors about MS selling the XBox division, who knows if MS even wants to be a involved in gaming at all.

You'd have a situation similar to that of EA. The publisher won't want to pay Valve money for selling the games on Steam, so they'll need an incentive to make people move to a Microsoft-run distribution program. If Microsoft wants to improve PC gaming, they'll want to make it as profitable as possible, which means not losing money to Valve to get games on Steam.

 

[AaHaa]

Big difference with EA/Origin though is that they could include this client in Windows automatically. Make it feel like its a part of Windows (which is done pretty well with the current Xbox Games app by the way), so people won't complain about having to install two clients. Then, offer some kick *** exclusives like Halo, Forza, Gears of War... hell, bring back Banjo & Kazooie, Age of Empires and Conker and watch your user base grow!

 

[QwarkDreams]

You'd have a situation similar to that of EA. The publisher won't want to pay Valve money for selling the games on Steam, so they'll need an incentive to make people move to a Microsoft-run distribution program. If Microsoft wants to improve PC gaming, they'll want to make it as profitable as possible, which means not losing money to Valve to get games on Steam.

It always depends on what your attitude about platforms like Steam is. Some people even dislike Steam and won't buy any game you need to register via Steam.
Having a seperate platform like Origin, uPlay,... and forcing people to use it when they buy your games can be bad too.

Big difference with EA/Origin though is that they could include this client in Windows automatically. Make it feel like its a part of Windows (which is done pretty well with the current Xbox Games app by the way), so people won't complain about having to install two clients. Then, offer some kick *** exclusives like Halo, Forza, Gears of War... hell, bring back Banjo & Kazooie, Age of Empires and Conker and watch your user base grow!

And in regards of my reply to Keith: I would hate it if MS implemented their own service and fragment the places where to buy games even more. Of course it's annoying for publishers to pay Valve so they can offer their games via Steam but I'd rather have one account and platform where I can the majority of games and not having to create several accounts, sharing my bank account info with them and having my games scattered across several platforms.

One thing that bugs me personally about Steam is the missing option to pay games via direct debit. I don't own a credit card and don't want to create a PayPal account (which would be the easiest option but I don't do online banking, so I would've to transfer some money via going to the bank everytime I want to buy something from Steam).

But what my main reason is for not wanting so many different platforms to buy games is that I like to keep it simple and so far Steam kept it that way.

Banjo Kazooie and Conker on PC? I have my doubts about it. It even suprised me that the Oddworld games have been released for PC.

 

[Keith Wallace]

Fragmentation might suck, but so does a monopoly. People complain (partially for the sake of complaining, I'm sure) that Steam's sales haven't been as good now as in the past, and part of that is likely due to the fact that they don't face much competition in the PC gaming market. If you want a PC game outside of EA or Ubisoft, you almost always HAVE to go through Steam. I'm totally against inconveniences like needing an Origin account to play a game on my Xbox One, even though the account offers nothing for the game, but I also don't want to see prices increase because there is no alternative or the royalties for publishers increase and they raise prices to make up for lost profits.

 

[IEhrgeizI]

So this is to do with GFWL not the state of pc gaming? Change the title or delete it.

 

[QwarkDreams]

Fragmentation might suck, but so does a monopoly. People complain (partially for the sake of complaining, I'm sure) that Steam's sales haven't been as good now as in the past, and part of that is likely due to the fact that they don't face much competition in the PC gaming market. If you want a PC game outside of EA or Ubisoft, you almost always HAVE to go through Steam. I'm totally against inconveniences like needing an Origin account to play a game on my Xbox One, even though the account offers nothing for the game, but I also don't want to see prices increase because there is no alternative or the royalties for publishers increase and they raise prices to make up for lost profits.

The problem with Steam and those "alternatives" like Origin or uPlay is that Steam only has this monopoly status because the alternatives suck and only exist because of publisher-exclusive games. And to be honest, I think those platforms only exist for the purpose of collecting data (especially on consoles).
The only reason why I created an account for Origin was because I got some in-game weapons and armor for free in Kingdoms of Amalur for playing the demo of it and the Mass Effect 3 demo.

The big advantage of Steam is that you can get games for Mac and Linux as well (not that I have any use for this) and it's a big opportunity for Indie game developers.

Console gamers don't have that much of a problem with it, but platform-exclusive games are kind of the same (if you want certain titles you have to buy a certain console; like with the Uncharted series). This problem ain't true only for console gamers, PC gamers as well are left out on some games. Biggest restriction must be with Nintendo games. I've never seen a port for other consoles with their games except Conker's Bad Fur Day on the XBox.

So this is to do with GFWL not the state of pc gaming? Change the title or delete it.

Well, I wouldn't say GFWL has nothing to do with the current situation of PC gaming. It's a part of it and caused quite a bit of frustration among PC gamers (especially with games that weren't available over Steam and that required GFWL which sometimes didn't work as well (failed installations and stuff).

 

[Keith Wallace]

That's kind of my point--Microsoft needs to bring a compelling services to break the Steam monopoly. You say it exists because the alternatives suck. Well, it's not like I'm suggesting that Microsoft release another crappy alternative.

 

[Jas00555]

@QwarkDreams what would ever cause you to believe that Microsoft isn't serious about gaming? Both Phil Spencer AND Satya Nadella have committed to gaming and talked about it constantly even when the layoffs were announced. Hell, they even sold off XES because they specifically said that they wanted to focus on gaming (or so they claim, but that's what they said).

@Keith I think making their own Steam is kind of what they're doing right now. It's called the Windows Store. I think the problem is that since only ~25% (I think) of PC gamers are on Windows 8.X, they can't just go full in on it yet. Actually your "they seem to focus on short term profit" actually doesn't hold true for things like Halo:SA. It was originally only going to be sold via the Windows/WP store but Windows 7 users demanded the game, so after a few months they ported it. I'm sure there are things that you know of that I don't, but that's what I've observed.

I have no proof of this, but I'll bet money that if Microsoft can get enough people on Threshold, then they'll start using the Windows Store to sell their exclusive games (which I 100% agree with you in that they need to break the Steam monopoly). Look at it from Microsoft's perspective. Do they really need to build a PC gaming alternative to Steam when they've already got the groundwork for one? The Windows Store already has (albeit poor) Xbox support. Now that they're breaking down the barriers between their various divisions, Phil Spencer and Terry Myerson's Xbox group can now start working together in ways that they couldn't in the old silo'd ways of the old Microsoft and get proper Xbox support in the Windows Store.