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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

Zoomie
Expert Trustee
@danknugs said MS is adding KBM support because they're feeling backed into a corner.  He said he's excited about Forza in VR. 
He did not say MS was moving into VR because Sony backed them into a corner.

There, misunderstanding cleared up. 
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C Clarke

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

Zoomie said:

@danknugs said MS is adding KBM support because they're feeling backed into a corner.  He said he's excited about Forza in VR. 
He did not say MS was moving into VR because Sony backed them into a corner.

There, misunderstanding cleared up. 


Lets make out?

ThreeDeeVision
Superstar

Zenbane said:

Hasn't it been that way from the beginning? The PlayStation has always been a superior console. Microsoft simply dipped their feet in the console waters; to claim that they are moving to VR Support because they are "backed in a corner" despite their overwhelmingly superior worth is fairly unreasonable. Microsoft may be successful by their own Standards; they don't have to beat Sony in order to say they achieved their goals.


Great point.  And 'backed into a corner' might be a strong way to put it, but it is in the right direction.  They are definitely feeling the sting of the PS4 outperforming and outselling the XBox one, so they are obviously adjusting as any company would.  That is one of the reasons a little competition is great, as long as it is driving innovation.  That Project Scorpio has raised my eyebrows no doubt about it.  Depending on the price I may have to pick one up, and I have a long time to save for it.
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

Fredd32
Adventurer
I bought my first gaming computer only because of cv1 and I couldn't be happier. I am also excited about this move by Microsoft, it will be great to let my kids use Rift on "their" system. Might also open the door to getting my son a Rift so we could play together without buying a whole second computer, desk, monitor etc. Here's hoping it will support Rift.

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
I think you need to give Microsoft a bit of credit for their revolutionary Play Anywhere. Buy one copy of a game and it works across muliple devices. People can hate all they like on Windows store but as an Xbox and PC gamer this is pretty sweet. 

Other publishers are still going for greed in this regard. So I doubt we will see an industry wide adoption.

Microsoft also said Play Anywhere won't kill off console or pc exclusives either like some people are suggesting.

Just to add, I just swapped over my Killer Instinct Xbox One save file to the PC and now can play the game in glorious 4K (which looks fantastic btw).  A seamless transition and one I'm really appreciative of.  Forza 6 Apex also looks incredible on PC in 4K and with racing games there's tons of time investment so being able to cross play, cross save will be welcome from a gamer perspective. I don't think you can do that just yet with Forza though.

One announcement from Microsoft that's not been talked about much is the Minecraft cross play. My son loves the game and if it means I can now play with him when he's on Xbox 360 using my PC or Xbox One or even Android version then this is pretty amazing. What's also cool is having one profile across the multiple platforms so when he does move across devices, his saves carry over too. It's a incredibly promising ecosystem Microsoft are setting up here.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

bigmike20vt
Visionary

Zenbane said:

Hasn't it been that way from the beginning? The PlayStation has always been a superior console. Microsoft simply dipped their feet in the console waters;

Hi

Are you talking PS4 here or the brand in general?  the current generation I totally agree, MS dropped the ball big time by going "total entertainment system" and by cutting way to many corners in the hardware imo.  Truth be told I think the PS4 hardware is weaksauce too, which makes the XB1 a total joke.  The only think the xbox had going for it over the PS4 was kinect and they killed that off pretty damn quick.

but past generations I beg to differ.  The Xbox was far more powerful than the ps2 (as it should be it was newer), and MS really took console online to the next level with the xbox.... Then came the PS3/xbox 360 generation and they kicked up xbox live another notch, far better than PSN and a cash cow to boot.  On top of this, whilst, sure, maybe 5 years after the xbox 360 launched when devs finally figured out how to get around the awful PS3 hardware implementation and take advantage of the cell processor, a handful of games were arguably better on the PS3, for the vast majority of that 1st 5 years the were at best on parity, but often the Xbox 360 ports were simply better due to better gpu and better memory management in the system.

The Xbox 1I put down to the 3rd console curse. (which in actual fact is 3rd console complacency imo) however this generation is thankfully being cut a little short - thank god we are not having another 8 year cycle!!! - and hopefully it will be game on again for the PS4 "neo" and xbox "scorpio"

All that being said, As a PC gamer I feel I can largely ignore the xbox console now, as it seems the xbox is actually becoming a brand now rather than a console, so I will get the best xbox games for my PC, which means IF I get a console next year (I skipped this generation entirely) it will be a neo, for the bagful of quality sony produced titles.

Cross platform play is interesting, and hell i would have loved it back in the xob360 days where I was forced to buy inferior games on the xbox simply to play with friends (like Borderlands, dead island and left4dead) however I will be interesting to see how they handle it esp in competative games where pc has a potentially huge advantage with a hat full of control options, better framerates etc etc etc. On the flip side, most PC games are rampant with cheaters, with aimbots, wall hacks and all sorts and I will be interested to see how the counteract that.

edit PS god knows what is wrong with the quoting on this board, i cant write outside of the zenbane quote 😞
Fiat Coupe, gone. 350Z gone. Dirty nappies, no sleep & practical transport incoming. Thank goodness for VR 🙂

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
Hey Bigmike20vt  not every game on the Xbox platform will be Play Anywhere, I believe these will primarily be first party developed titles which in the long run will bridge the PC and Console communities.  This sounds like a great advancement for multiplayer gaming (not including FPS games where the KB Mouse advantage exists - unless MS do offer KB Mouse for Xbox).  It's a shame Fable Legends got canned btw. There's no doubt going to be a ton of other exclusives for Xbox vying for your attention and when Scorpio releases next year at least there will be less of a visual downgrade if you're a PC gamer also gaming on Xbox.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

ThreeDeeVision
Superstar

To be fair @Shadowmask72 my original post and gripes came well before any of the cross-play news came out.  The lack of cross-play was a major gripe of mine for many years (since the first Xbox came out).  The XBox was supposed to be the same as a basic gaming PC running direct x, so cross-play seemed to be a given.  Chat worked great from PC to Xbox, and you could even send game invites, but of course that would give your friends on Xbox the "please insert windows disk" error when they tried to join.

It is starting to look up a bit as we have some better games coming to the Windows Live Marketplace, but it is still pretty dismal for the PC gamer crowd.  What, are they up to 3 AAA titles on there now?  (Gears of War 1 remake, Killer Instinct, Forza).

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

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
Yep October 2015 to be precise. But your recent comment digs at MS E3 approach and perhaps rightly so when compared to Sony's (that live orchestra was a nice touch though).  I think Microsoft need to learn to cut the crap at these events and they have gotten better over the years but still linger too much on fluff that's somewhat irrelevant for the big stage - as you suggest coloured controllers who cares.

I disagree about the Scorpio announcement though because if I was just a console gamer (which is all I was up until a few years ago) then I would have creamed my pants over their announcement (a new Xbox so soon). It's a shame they couldn't spend the time showing mock, or as they say in the business target render footage of what it would look like. I do a lot of comparison videos on my Youtube channel and something similar might have wowed gamers a little more because talking about 6 terraflops is pretty alien to most gamers.

I think they needed a sneak peek at Halo 6 much like they did with Halo 5's reveal and some other popular game. However, can you now imagine the drama when they announce Halo 6 looking mighty fine for Scorpio at next year's E3. Yikes!


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

ThreeDeeVision
Superstar

Yeah, the Scorpio was not the only positive I got out of E3.  Don't forget the new Gears game being cross-compatible with XBOne and Win 10.  But the timing of the Scorpio release makes this reveal a bit lack luster.  It could have easily been a E3 2017 announcement.  I will probably pick one up depending on the price.

My main point with my latest Microsoft gripe was that they were really strong on pushing hardware instead of letting new awesome software push the hardware sales.  In my opinion that is a bad move for E3.  You want to sell dreams at E3, not push hardware that is a given (slim XBOne, who didn't see that coming?), or colored controllers.

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