Puppyroach on 09 March 2016
| Zanten said: I might be wrong about this, but I read it mentioned somewhere that converting a game to function as a Universal Windows Program can be a bit of a process in and of itself; it's not just a matter of taking whatever files you'd have given to GoG or Steam and adding some Microsoft storefront files here or there, in other words, it functions as a separate format when compared to conventional programs, so the UWP version of Rise of the Tomb Raider would be structured quite differently to the Steam version. So even if implementing UWP allows for super easy PC-to-console-and-vice-versa porting, it sounds like that might only be the case because the bulk of the porting work is getting it in the UWP format in the first place, if you originally put together your game using the far more widely used Win32 format. o.o Which means its success in bringing in extra content to the Xbox crowd from PC is going to hinge on developers wanting to go to that hassle in the first place, or alternatively developers deciding to ditch any storefronts that DON'T sell UWP programs. Which itself is probably going to hinge on how much marketshare- and income for developers- the platforms they do sell on can get them. Which ITSELF will hinge on how sodding quickly Windows fixes the issues the Microsoft Store and the UWP format itself has! >.< Sooo yeah. In terms of major benefits to Xbox, I think any such benefits are going to be largely tied to how successful UWP gets on the PC market, and how many developers end up programming their games in that format. (Either as a 'port' from Win32, or designed ONLY for UWP.) In the case of developers who aren't interested in consoles anyway, the Windows Store itself doesn't currently (imo) offer enough marketshare pull to really sway PC developers into going to the hassle of reformatting their title for it. |
My hope is that MS will release a low-price, XBox streaming-only device in a couple of years so that developers can focus on PC development and then streaming its content to the XBox. Otherwise there will most likely always be a hurdle for developers to develop games for both platforms, escpeially if one of them starts to lag in performance to the other.
