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Microsoft Not Doing Enough for PC Gaming, Says Blizzard Executive
by Aaron Linde, Jun 30, 2008 5:37pm PDTBlizzard Entertainment COO Paul Sams criticized hardware manufacturer Microsoft's stewardship of the PC gaming market, suggesting that the company could do more to advance the platform.
"Well, their gaming focus is very much on the [Xbox] 360," Sams told Gamasutra. "And that makes sense, cause they're a hardware manufacturer as well as a software developer. And so they've got a lot of money and investment tied up in that system."
Sams referred to remarks made by Blizzard design VP Rob Pardo, who said at last week's Paris GDC that Microsoft's involvement in PC gaming amounts to "lip service", and that the company is more closely focused on supporting the Xbox 360.
"And I kind of look at it and say to myself, and I think similarly to Rob, is that it would be great if they put more emphasis on the Windows operating system... and they would say that they are, but I think that there's more that can be done."
"It makes sense to me, what they're doing, they're putting their energy and focus against the 360. That's where their huge R&D dollars are that they have to earn out on and that's where I think their gaming bread and butter is right now," Sams concluded.
Comments
Console Upgrades: 5 - 8 Years
Example of High Cost: Graphics Card: nVidia 8800 GT
January 2008: $450
July 2008: $210
Both Microsoft and PC game makers know the challenge in economics and support of PC Gaming.
Not only has development time for titles increased but so has the disparity of in range of PC performance. What will be the median range PC in two or three years?
Keep in mind by 2010 there will be THREE versions of Windows to test on. Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Which game developers or publishers are eager to take on that kind of support?
Even though MS has spent billions on the XBox360. The division is eeking a profit (so they say). The long term money is in branding dedicated hardware. There is close to little or no benefit pouring PR money into Windows gaming.
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... this doesn't really seem to be happening this time. We got Crysis, an outstanding achievement in graphics technology... and then the developer jumped ship. DX10 comes out, but no-one uses it because people just aren't moving over to Vista. Pretty much every PC game of note that hasn't been an MMORPG or easy cash-cow like the Sims or Spore has had the PC as a secondary target.
We don't even have the 'Oh yeah? Well we have online play!' trump card anymore. I think the PC is just going to end up as a hobbyist games platform in the end. And I say this from a PC-loving perspective. :(
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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=160866&page=1
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"We said we were going to invest a couple years ago," said Unangst. "We spent double-digit million dollars in US retail. Sure we saw that single digit percentage decline, but we spent a lot of money at US retail. I'm optimistic that we contributed to holding that decline to where it was in some way.
"But who else was going to do that? Microsoft spent that money. We wrote those checks to work with the retailers, to create branded and dedicated areas to bring PCs back, to put 2000 playable PCs in GameStop stores--nobody else was going to do that. We're the platform owner, those are the things we do. We're on our third round of advertising, print and online in the US and Europe, to promote titles that we don't directly make revenue from."
I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but IMO it's closer to the arguments of Pardo and Sams, judging from the steady rise in XBox 360 marketing and decline in PC game sales and prominence. Locally, I haven't seen retail stores even holding the same shelf real estate for PC games year over year, let alone expanding it. Not for the past four years. Microsoft keeps pushing harder and harder with marketing the XBox brand.
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Microsoft are partly to blame for this supposed decline of PC gaming since their operating system Windows is where the majority of gaming is done on Personal computers and DX10 like features appearing first on 360 before windows and DX10 only being available on Vista when Microsoft could have DX10 for Windows XP if they so chose to
There's a DX10 hack for XP out there made by an amateur group, imagine if MIcrosoft wanted to put the resources into getting DX10 into XP I'm pretty sure it could be done but they chose not to so that splits off what can be done graphically on the PC for vast majority of players sticking with XP
If OpenGL was the standard everyone used over DirectX this would probably not be an issue
The rest of the blame is on hardware manufacturers which seem to be taking hint now lowering their prices for graphics cards but still need work to make their confusing naming of each card
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