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Does Microsoft really care about PC gamers?

ThreeDeeVision
Superstar
I am a PC gamer at heart, and have been since about 1992 when I got to try my wealthy friend's Commodore 64. I have owned quite a few consoles as well, but if I could get the game on PC, I played it on PC. Over the years, Microsoft has published many of my favorite PC games (Motocross Madness 1&2, Monster Truck Madness 1&2, Midtown Madness 1&2, Microsoft Flight Sim series, Halo 1&2, Gears of War, Train Simulator, Fable, ect...). For all the awesome titles they put out, there has been a noticeable downward trend for quite some time. Looking at the Microsoft Games Wiki, 2004 was the start of this downward trend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_published_by_Microsoft_Studios

Being that the Xbox came out a couple years prior to this downward trend, this tells me they viewed PC gaming as direct competition to their console market and decided to pull back on making PC games for the most part. The amount of titles directly reflects this decision.

With the recent revival of VR, Microsoft is thrusting themselves into the PC gaming picture again. But are their actions actually matching their statements? They keep repeating "we care about PC gaming", yet the only thing I have seen thus far is the ability to stream a Xbox One to my Windows 10 PC (totally pointless waste of resources) and a Xbox One controller with the consumer Rift :roll:. These are not the actions of a company that wants to push PC gaming, these are the actions of a company trying to push a console.

And lets take a look at the latest console. The Xbox One itself is a hodgepodge all-in-one multimedia unit that is good at doing many things but not that great at doing the most important thing it should be doing, and that is playing games. The PS4 beats the Xbox one in every important gaming area from specs to FPS (not to mention all the awesome exclusive titles). The PS4 will have an actual VR interface next year that will provide real VR experiences, and a Virtual cinema can't hold a candle to that. I still love my Xbox 360 dearly and play it daily, but it isn't trying to be an all-in-one media unit. It does exactly what it needs to do, and does it well.

Next year will finally be the year of consumer VR, and Microsoft is showing up late to yet another ballgame. They lost out on MP3 players (Zune fail), Smart Phones (Nokia fail), and are again behind the ball on the next big technological breakthrough (Virtual Cinema fail). People are looking for the next great gaming experience, and the Star Citizen crowd funding campaign is directly a result of that. They are nearing 100 million dollars of pledge money and the game isn't even done yet! You can't tell me there isn't a PC gaming market, we have put our money where our mouths are!

Instead of providing VR Cinema Xbox streaming that totally defeats the purpose of PC VR and teasing things like "Halo 5 might come out on PC someday", they need to step up and actually do something for the PC gaming community. If you build it, they will come!
i7 5960X @ 3.8 GHz | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4 PC2800 | GTX Titan X Pascal | Win 10 64 bit | Asus ROG PG348Q | EVGA X99 Classified
91 REPLIES 91

OcuKarl
Honored Guest
"ThreeDeeVision" wrote:
I am a PC gamer at heart, and have been since about 1992 when I got to try my wealthy friend's Commodore 64. I have owned quite a few consoles as well, but if I could get the game on PC, I played it on PC. Over the years, Microsoft has published many of my favorite PC games (Motocross Madness 1&2, Monster Truck Madness 1&2, Midtown Madness 1&2, Microsoft Flight Sim series, Halo 1&2, Gears of War, Train Simulator, Fable, ect...). For all the awesome titles they put out, there has been a noticeable downward trend for quite some time. Looking at the Microsoft Games Wiki, 2004 was the start of this downward trend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_published_by_Microsoft_Studios


The down-spiral is a shame! And even though they have Xbox, they should definitely care about the PC gamers too. Why? Because PC gaming is one of the most important edges that Windows have over Mac. A lot of people do not get Macs simply because they want to play games (seriously or just casually).
I work as a graphic designer. In my spare time I do VR experiments, PC gaming and write for http://www.headphonesunboxed.com about Bluetooth and gaming headphones.

ThreeDeeVision
Superstar
"OcuKarl" wrote:
"ThreeDeeVision" wrote:
I am a PC gamer at heart, and have been since about 1992 when I got to try my wealthy friend's Commodore 64. I have owned quite a few consoles as well, but if I could get the game on PC, I played it on PC. Over the years, Microsoft has published many of my favorite PC games (Motocross Madness 1&2, Monster Truck Madness 1&2, Midtown Madness 1&2, Microsoft Flight Sim series, Halo 1&2, Gears of War, Train Simulator, Fable, ect...). For all the awesome titles they put out, there has been a noticeable downward trend for quite some time. Looking at the Microsoft Games Wiki, 2004 was the start of this downward trend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_published_by_Microsoft_Studios


The down-spiral is a shame! And even though they have Xbox, they should definitely care about the PC gamers too. Why? Because PC gaming is one of the most important edges that Windows have over Mac. A lot of people do not get Macs simply because they want to play games (seriously or just casually).


Completely agreed, and thanks for the input! I hear the new Fable game will finally allow a PC to play with a XBOne, and that is great news, but it is something that should have been done with the first Xbox. The PC should have never been viewed as direct competition, but rather another source of revenue.

The Windows 10 gaming marketplace is a joke as of right now. Full of mobile games that don't remotely use the power of the gaming PC. Luckily not every game developer has hung the PC gamer out to dry. I am really thankful for developers like the ones at Cloud Imperium that are trying to push the limits of PC hardware and not structuring their game to the limitations of a console.
i7 5960X @ 3.8 GHz | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4 PC2800 | GTX Titan X Pascal | Win 10 64 bit | Asus ROG PG348Q | EVGA X99 Classified

OcuKarl
Honored Guest
"ThreeDeeVision" wrote:
"OcuKarl" wrote:
"ThreeDeeVision" wrote:
I am a PC gamer at heart, and have been since about 1992 when I got to try my wealthy friend's Commodore 64. I have owned quite a few consoles as well, but if I could get the game on PC, I played it on PC. Over the years, Microsoft has published many of my favorite PC games (Motocross Madness 1&2, Monster Truck Madness 1&2, Midtown Madness 1&2, Microsoft Flight Sim series, Halo 1&2, Gears of War, Train Simulator, Fable, ect...). For all the awesome titles they put out, there has been a noticeable downward trend for quite some time. Looking at the Microsoft Games Wiki, 2004 was the start of this downward trend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_published_by_Microsoft_Studios


The down-spiral is a shame! And even though they have Xbox, they should definitely care about the PC gamers too. Why? Because PC gaming is one of the most important edges that Windows have over Mac. A lot of people do not get Macs simply because they want to play games (seriously or just casually).


Completely agreed, and thanks for the input! I hear the new Fable game will finally allow a PC to play with a XBOne, and that is great news, but it is something that should have been done with the first Xbox. The PC should have never been viewed as direct competition, but rather another source of revenue.

The Windows 10 gaming marketplace is a joke as of right now. Full of mobile games that don't remotely use the power of the gaming PC. Luckily not every game developer has hung the PC gamer out to dry. I am really thankful for developers like the ones at Cloud Imperium that are trying to push the limits of PC hardware and not structuring their game to the limitations of a console.

Yeah I agree. PC is the only thing that currently can be used for people who take their gaming really seriously, but it's sad when Windows does not take it seriously.
I work as a graphic designer. In my spare time I do VR experiments, PC gaming and write for http://www.headphonesunboxed.com about Bluetooth and gaming headphones.

obzen
Expert Protege
Looking at how successful Steam is as a publication platform, and how the PC gaming hardware is doing, I wouldn't worry. I don't see anything replacing PCs at the cutting edge of game development and gaming.

Microsoft focuses it's efforts on the XBox One, sure (no more Microsoft hardware or games), but I don't see that as a hindrance. DirectX is still going strong, and they have the best development tools, while remaining an open platform.
DK1 FREAK...

zork2001
Heroic Explorer
First off I want to give a shout out to Midtown Madness! Wut wut. It was the first and still probably is the only racing game I have ever had fun with and I never hear anyone ever bring it up.


Second off Microsoft is a software/tec company that has their hands in everything, if they don’t have their filthily little paws in it they have board meetings about how they can put their hands in it. Does Microsoft as a company care about gaming? Is that a joke were you not listening to what they were trying to do with the xbox1? Keep it online and controlled not let you share games, some of the most fascist stuff you ever heard. No the company does not care about games; games is just another part of tec business to them. Even the OG xbox and I believe the 360 they were losing money on every console, they were just after the market share.

ThreeDeeVision
Superstar
@zork2001 - Yeah, Midtown Madness was definitely awesome. I will never forget the guilty pleasures of smashing through the spectators for more points in cars fashioned with large blades. Motocross Madness 2 made me build my first gaming PC. I still play MS Flight Sim X weekly. Microsoft Studios makes some great games.

And I completely agree with your POV on game sharing. There should be no limitations placed on the physical discs. If I purchase a game and want to lend it to a friend, I should be able to do so. The fact that Microsoft would try to limit this shows just how out of touch they are. Backwards compatibility should have always been a given, not a limited 'bonus' later on. The Wii-U did this better than any of the new consoles.

@obzen - I am not worried about there being a lack of PC games, especially with the likes of Steam and Origin around. I was just venting my frustrations with Microsoft and how they are pretending to care about PC VR gaming and PC gaming in general, but their actions always speak louder than their words. When the Microsoft rep came out and introduced a gamepad and Virtual Cinema Xbox One streaming at the Oculus Touch reveal presentation I laughed along with everyone else, because it was seriously a joke. They are blatantly pushing a console on PC gamers and using the Oculus platform to do it. I am pretty surprised more people weren't as offended by this as I was.

Just last week, one of the Halo 5 developers teased that they might release the game on PC. I am so sick of crap like this. Either do or don't release it, but stop teasing.
i7 5960X @ 3.8 GHz | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4 PC2800 | GTX Titan X Pascal | Win 10 64 bit | Asus ROG PG348Q | EVGA X99 Classified

kojack
MVP
MVP
"ThreeDeeVision" wrote:
@zork2001 - Yeah, Midtown Madness was definitely awesome. I will never forget the guilty pleasures of smashing through the spectators for more points in cars fashioned with large blades.

Sounds like you are thinking of Carmageddon. Midtown Madness was the completely non violent game with normal cars and every pedestrian always leaped out of the way before you could hit them.
Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
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ThreeDeeVision
Superstar
"kojack" wrote:
"ThreeDeeVision" wrote:
@zork2001 - Yeah, Midtown Madness was definitely awesome. I will never forget the guilty pleasures of smashing through the spectators for more points in cars fashioned with large blades.

Sounds like you are thinking of Carmageddon. Midtown Madness was the completely non violent game with normal cars and every pedestrian always leaped out of the way before you could hit them.


Oh yeah! Wups my bad.
i7 5960X @ 3.8 GHz | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4 PC2800 | GTX Titan X Pascal | Win 10 64 bit | Asus ROG PG348Q | EVGA X99 Classified

kojack
MVP
MVP
Both very fun games. 🙂
Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2