slowmo said:
At least they still support the platform, thats more than many developers do. How many of Sony's developers work on PC? You keep telling me how Microsoft don't support PC anymore. It's a simple fact PC gamings been suffering for years, mainly due to the cross over with consoles. Consoles these days provide an experience very close to that capable on a PC, 15 years ago the PC was quite ahead of consoles in the experiences available. Microsoft still release games, they just don't target it as a main platform, thats hardly destroying the platform like the first claim I responded to says. Well Sony came out and took a nice feature from their system we had since launch but 99% of Sony fans on this site said that was fine. We were told we didn't have any right to be annoyed over that issue so apparently we dont have the right to be pissed.
@Scoobes The reason they chose to keep the Xbox division is the project was never about just money initially, now things are starting to change as we've seen by the fact they're allowed Sony to take back market share in the last year in order to make some profit back. I'm a PC gamer and I did not resent GFWL in anyway, I refused to pay for the service and buy those games but that wasn't destroying PC gaming imo. Your grasping at straws. Blame developers for not pushing Directx10 effects more and sticking to Directx9 for most of the work. There were very few Directx 10 focused titles made. The same is happening with Directx11 at the moment in that developers aren't solely focusing on it and giving everyone a reason to upgrade. Restricting PC owners from games encourages growth in their Xbox division, thats fairly obviously a huge technical reason right there. |
I have to ask, what games has Microsoft released on PC recently? The last full game releases I can think of were in 2007 with Gears, Halo 2, Shadowrun an AOE expansion and the last ever Flight Sim. Three yrs and nothing? At E3 their only showing on PC was Fable 3.
In contrast, the last game Sony released/developed for PC was last year with Free realms and have 3 potential 2010 titles (from wiki: DC Universe online, SW: Clone Wars adventures and Magic: The gathering - Tactics). It also continues to support Everquest II with a host of expansions.
As for the comment about X-box, I know this, but it doesn't change the logic about closing Ensemble and all other PC centic studios. They closed down these studios because they moved into a market all to combat a perceived threat from Sony, and then they lost money when they did. They cut these PC studios to save that money, hindering PC development.
As for GFWL, you might be indifferent to the service, and whilst it may not damage PC gaming directly, it does stink of a lack of effort on MS' part. A 360 gamer looks at Live on 360, then sees the PC equivalent, what's he/she going to think?
MS have far more power than most developers to influence PC gaming. Devs may share some of the blame, but it's only understandable because of the incredibly low market share DX10 and 11 still have to DX9. Many PC gamers are still using XP and DX9. Had DX10 & 11 been supported in XP then we probably would see more games use these features. As they're locked to the OS, developers aren't going to push those features until the market for those games increases and no matter how popular, that takes time. MS who are meant to be pushing the OS' haven't done enough to convince the majority of PC gamers to upgrade (although Win 7 uptake is slowly increasing).
@ underlined
This right here is the problem. MS say they'll support PC, yet their interests lie elsewhere. Why say you're going to support PC when their emphasis is very much in a competing market?
