How Microsoft’s former PC gaming glory could help fix today’s Windows gaming woes - flanaganligine

Microsoft gaming is at a tipping point. Public perception has shifted toward the disconfirming as the Windows Store and Windows 10's universal app platform come under heavy—and deserved—fire.

This may sound freakish to anybody introduced to gaming during the Xbox era, but Microsoft is wherefore I became a Personal computer gamer all those years ago, with legendary games like Trajectory Simulator and Age of Empires. In those days, the company published magnificent games that definite the PC platform and arranged the groundwork for it to live the greatest way to game.

Things have varied, but there's much Microsoft tush practice to return to greatness. We'll dive deeply into concrete ideas for how Microsoft can fix its PC gaming troubles going forward. First, though, it's important to review Microsoft's tumultuous account with PC gaming, to understand wherefore PC gamers are so skeptical of the company's newest endeavors—and how its glorious sometime can help bolster up Microsoft's prox.

Microsoft's PC gaming past: A X of glory…

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MechWarrior 3

Microsoft began publishing video games in earnest in 1996, beginning with games same Terminal Realness's Hellbender and Monster Truck Insaneness, as well asClose Battle, a critically acclaimed game that spawned a durable series of plan of action war titles.

For the close decade, Microsoft released some of the coolest, most innovative games happening the market. The Insaneness games expanded with Motocross Madness and Midtown Rage. Zoo Tycoon was amazing. Starlancer was flawed but memorable.Impossible Creatures remains one of the well-nig remarkable strategy games ever made. When Microsoft purchased FASA, information technology reintroduced the beloved MechWarrior and MechCommander serial publication before first appearance Crimson Skies in 2001.

Then, course, there was Age of Empires, which evolved into one of the most successful strategy series of completely time. Its 1999 sequel, Age of Empires II, was indeed well-loved that 17 years after it launched, it clay the well-nig-played real-time scheme lame on Steam clean.

Age of Empires II's HD redo.

During its golden age, Microsoft games embraced everything special to PC gaming, from design complexity to mod funding so profound that some games even bundled 3D clay sculpture tools. The golden age didn't last forever, though. The downfall began with Halo 2 for Microcomputer, an pure disaster that locked users into the unpopular Windows Vista.

Just the radical of Microsoft's problems came from elsewhere.

…followed by darker years

With the Parousia of the Xbox gaming soothe in 2001, Microsoft tardily began abandoning the PC chopine. By the clip of the Enthusiastic Recession, Microsoft had shuttered its expensive, PC-centric studios and franchises wish ACES, FASA, and Ensemble.

The PC client base didn't move from the PC to the Xbox, though. The Steam renaissance—where Steam became the dominant PC platform—was fair-and-square around the corner.

Microsoft introduced a new platform, Games for Windows Be, just calling information technology a catastrophe would be an understatement. GFWL often broke games and sometimes steady deleted saves.

Softonic

I call up trying to boot Bulletstorm, only to have the crippled freeze at the sign-in stage and demand a patch for GWFL, which meant exiting the program. Exiting continual the vicious rhythm. Force-quitting the curriculum offered a 50/50 chance that GFWL would actually download a patch up. Then I rebooted the lame, only to be faced with a patch for the brave itself, starting the nightmare afresh.

Gamers hated it. Many publishers backed away from GFWL and embraced Steam DRM instead. The service was eventually shuttered in 2013.

Around the same time, Microsoft attempted to button some free-to-play out versions of its most touristed series, Age of Empires Online and Microsoft Flight. Both were poorly received.

Microsoft Flight

My copy of Flight (Microsoft's followup to the beloved Flying Simulator series) refused to work due to GFWL errors. It also slapped series enthusiasts in the face by offering only the Hawaiian islands for relinquish; purchasing all the airplanes and the Alaskan appurtenance toll around $100. Previous entries in the series had loads of planes, thousands of mods, and the entire surface of Earth for some one-half the cost.

'tween the GFWL disaster and the nasty footloose-to-play push, PC gamers (rightly) felt betrayed. Many still do.

Microsoft continued to do and break promises to PC gamers, as an infamous NeoGAF post detailed. Microsoft's classic games are absent from services like Steam and gog.com, though both stellar newer releases like Age of Empires II HD and Ori and the Snow-blind Woodland are there. But most new releases from Microsoft's classic serial publication have been dissatisfactory; Zoological garden Tycoon fails to live sprouted to the original. MechWarrior has become a weak free-to-play game. Trainer X was licensed to Dovetail Games, who released it along Steam with $1,621.15 of DLC.

Microsoft's recently plans for the PC move to Windows 10's Universal Windows Platform. UWP is obligated to make our lives major: Anyone can release a universal Windows app, which, in theory, should work across all Windows-supported platforms—any Windows PC or tablet, and even the Xbox One operating theater HoloLens.

The idea is cool, but the execution of instrument has few serious problems.

Page 2: The problems with Microsoft's current approach to Microcomputer gaming.

Microsoft's problematic latter-day

Let's start with simple usableness. Is it easy to corrupt and play games in the Windows Lay in? Unfortunately not.

Buy a program on the Windows Fund—which, by the way is the branded "Store" app and separate from the "Microsoft Store," a retail and World Wide Web store—and IT's even to your Microsoft answer for. No deman to save CDs or energizing codes: Just sign in to your reckoner or comfort, and all the software program you've purchased is obtainable for use.

Unfortunately, the Windows Store is dominated by shovelware, and the good software doesn't work recovered. Good luck even finding the games happening your computer. Have a look at this shot of the Windows Store:

Do you feature any theme where your software library is? It took ME a while to realize I had to sink in that petite circle next to the Explore box.

When you get to your depository library, you'rhenium bald-faced with this:

I have no musical theme how Candy Beat Saga is there operating theater wherefore it's at the top of my list. To view all your games, you have to click the games-specific Show every last button, which expands into an equally cover-wasting page with no sort options or unchaste access to package. Contrast this with Steamer, which has a selfsame prima facie library option along display at all multiplication, and allows users to nonremittal to their subroutine library, which is customizable and organized quite nicely:

The idea of tying games to your account is great, but only when accessing software is prompt and easy. Steam makes library sailing impressible, even with 2,000 games in my collection. Microsoft makes it a hassle that requires excessively more clicks with just a fraction of equally many games.

Microsoft offers an unconventional: the Xbox app. In reality, there are five Xbox apps: the Xbox app, the Xbox One Smartglass app, the Xbox 360 Smartglass app, the Xbox Avatar app, and the Xbox Accessories app, which is for the $150 Xbox Elite controller. Why are there soh many apps? Why aren't avatars built right into the Xbox app? Wherefore isn't Smartglass just a chit on the Xbox app that is coupled to the consoles linked to you?

As I was writing this article, I shodden up the Xbox app, which welcomed me to "check extinct our new features!"—one of which was bug-fixing. The app froze on this screen, and took several minutes to unfreeze connected a machine that has No perturb running games the likes of Crysis. When information technology finally did, it presented me with this:

None of that entropy is useful to Maine with the exception of the option to stream my soothe—and that feature doesn't work consistently. Contempt a 100-percent pumped up connection that the app tells Maine can handle "very high settings," streaming suffers from excessive macroblocking and freezing.

The other information is unnecessary. I don't need to know that one of my friends added a new friend or uploaded a TV clip. I preceptor't need my friends lean open at all times. What I need to visit is my game library and information relevant to those games.

Even if I could nonpayment to my subroutine library, what I run into at that place is simply an alphabetical list of my games. Steam clean displays a list where I can sort—even hide—games by putting them into folders, and it also reveals information about the currently selected operating theatre nearly recent spirited in the main pane. Searching for any Steam game pulls up relevant information: how much time I've played it for, where information technology's installed, whether I want to well out it, my screenshots, the latest news and patch notes, and, yes, which friends are presently playing it. This information's too designed to be viewed on a computer ride herd on. The Xbox app has these needlessly giant icons that may work at a tab, but that's not where I'd be playing the PC editions of Quantum Break or Gears of War.

Gears of State of war: Ultimate Edition.

The Xbox app does have some advantages. Access to screenshots is easy, video recording's a full-strength touch that Steam lacks, and the Xbox One/Windows 10 cross-buy functionality introduced with Killer Instinct and Quantum Break rocks, especially when saves transpose over. Being able to message friends in the app is awesome—Steam doesn't have a good offline electronic messaging service. There are a administer of fresh ideas in the Xbox app, but Steam is best at the basics.

Universal Windows apps let down

Allow's assume Microsoft gets totally that worked out. Then we flow into another problem: the limitations of universal Windows apps themselves

Until freshly, Microsoft limited Windows Store installations to your Personal computer's C: drive. You can directly install games to multiple drives, but you can't pick specific destination folders. Worse, you can't entree those folders, even with admin rights. To PC gamers, this is a huge trouble, every bit it prevents other programs and mods from hooking into your games. If something doesn't work, you can't even modernistic IT to fix it—an essential ingredient of PC gaming, as fans of Bethesda RPGs can tell you.

Uprise of the Tomb Raider is available in the Windows Store, but is objectively better via Steam.

The restrictions on Windows Store apps a-okay deeper. When Develop of the Grave Raider launched, fans quickly discovered a multitude of cosmopolitan Windows app problems. Games lam in borderless windowed mode solely, simply graphics card game run better in dedicated full-screen mode. Treble-GPU setups North Korean won't work unless the game developers specifically support DirectX 12 trickery. Window overlays, for software like FRAPS and Forge.gg, don't work, and you can't even add the games to the Steam launcher or role the Steam clean Controller with them, because Windows Store games lack traditional .EXE files. Want to inject things like SweetFX to pretty up your graphics? No can do.

Windows Store games also started out life with V-sync always enabled, which rear end crusade nasty stimulant lag on some machines, and lacked support for FreeSync and G-Sync monitors. Fortunately, those flaws were fixed in a recent update..

Gears of Warfare's launch on the PC had its own problems: The biz refused to download or run for many a players. Microsoft has solved some issues, only IT's denied users the option of refunding broken games. For right away, IT is objectively better to buy in games like Rise of the Grave Raider on Steamer, where they'll carry heavy, let you do pretty much whatever you want with them, and you seat even atomic number 4 refunded if they don't work.

Page 3: What Microsoft keister do to fix its Microcomputer gaming problems

What Microsoft needs to liquidate the future

These deep-nonmoving flaws disappoint, simply put on't write sour universal Windows apps so far. This is Microsoft, the company that built the biggest gaming political platform in the world. Many an of the underlying ideas are great, and in that respect are ways to improve. Here's how.

Step 1: Re-release Microsoft's smooth play back catalogue, preferably on a armed service like Steam or gog.com. This would quickly make headway back goodwill from Personal computer gamers. Age of Empires II HD is a outstanding step, but where's the innovational Age of Empires? Where's Midtown Insaneness or MechCommander or Halo or Zoological garden Tycoon? Companies same Night Dive Studios and CD Projekt specialize in delivery hoar games to neo systems, so Microsoft doesn't even take up to plow it. Just release the games at a fair $6 to $10 terms point, and an awful mete out of people will be delighted.

Step 2: Open Windows Store games to tinkering.This is PC gaming. If I steal a game, I wishing to be fit to mess with it. I'd live content if I could run Forge, inject SweetFX, and even tinker with .INI files from time to time. None Thomas More encrypted drive/no exe/only install to one specific location nonsense, Microsoft. Let me cull out when, where, and how the software package runs on my machine.

The Windows Experience Index, which was retired in Windows 8.1.

Step 3: Make system performance clear and allow refunds. Early Windows iterations had the peachy idea of deriving a score from the computer's available power to signal whether the PC could run specific software. Something kindred would be utile in the Windows Store. After whol, a Shallow Pro can't run Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, but my GeForce GTX 970-powered desktop can. If a game doesn't work, true if the computing machine says it should, the great unwashe should be allowed to repay it.

Step 4: Make a point everything is cross-buy and crisscross-play.If you want to pull ME away from Steam, you postulate a feature that really pops. Cross-buy/bid is that boast, but support is far from universal til now. I have Gears of War: Ultimate Edition and Wax of the Tomb Raider along my Xbox. If Microsoft wants UWAs to succeed, I should be able to run those on any Windows 10 platform with the right amount of power.

If you buy a Windows Store plot, you should ideally be competent to play it on any Windows 10-powered device you possess, including the Xbox.

I bought a transcript of Rise of the Tomb Freeboote for Steam because of the Windows Store's issues, merely if the game embraced the public convenience of a cross-buy system, I'd spend more time with the Microsoft option. Add up cloud-relieve compatibility, so users can represent a single Tomb Despoiler save on the PC one moment and my Xbox the next, and suddenly the Microsoft store is Thomas More appealing. Some of Microsoft's own games offer this, just to truly shine, cross-buy needs to be atomic number 3 ubiquitous as Steamer Obscure support.

Dance step 5: Compete with the Steam client.Let Pine Tree State negociate my entire UWA games library from the Xbox application. That includes downloading or hiding games, installing to any directory I see gibe, and sorting them however I lack.

Consolidate each the applications into one operating room withdraw them entirely. There are no avatars happening the Xbox One or in the Xbox app, and so wherefore does the avatar app exist?

The Xbox Avatars app is useless to PC gamers.

Spring me an Xbox app whose main concealment is less about my friends and more most my games. At the very least, let me set which tab of the app is my default page—I want to charge flat into the library 90 percent of the time.

Give me better access to screenshot unselfish: Steam lets me press F12 to have a screenshot, then pops upwardly a helpful screenshot window after the game is closed. The Windows app requires me to press at least three buttons, and so I birth to subject up the Xbox app, find the Windows DVR function, and hope it synced the screenshots properly (which isn't a certainty).

Offer a compelling reason to use the political party function. Right now, I and many other PC gamers exercise Discordance because it's overflowing with useful features. Why should I practice the Xbox party system of rules?

Step 6: Release some new games happening PC, specifically for the PC.Nothing has been arsenic unsatisfying A getting a new Halo that's a free-to-play PC game exclusive to Russia, operating theatre an Get on of Empires that's just Clash of Clans and has no business being on a 27-inch monitor. Come on, Microsoft! Release a new Eld of Empires with Bruce Shelley on board, with a UI that's designed to be read on a ride herd on and navigated with a mouse. Release a new Trainer or Forza halt that we can mod and build cars for. Foster a community around moddable games the way of life Bethesda and Valve give. Stick to traditional cost points for late games ($30 to $60).

Scads of Microsoft's known games are barred away and no more playable, despite the clear starve indicated away gross sales of Microsoft's scheme game re-releases. Microsoft should represent competitive with Steam, or at to the lowest degree cooperating with information technology. The advantages of UWP—cross-buy, save sharing, and storing member purchases across accounts—paired with unhappy remakes could be a powerful one-2 punch.

A spic-and-span era or more of the same?

Microsoft's attack to PC gaming needs to change. The companys needs a skinny, competitory gaming platform that plays to the pith strengths of Windows apps and embraces the glory days. Simply right now, Microsoft's presented United States with the Edge web browser of gaming platforms—a glazed package hiding glary deficiencies.

Microsoft has the capacity to be exciting. Time will severalize whether the company's ready to prompt past its trail of impoverished promises. Major changes need to happen ahead the Windows Storehouse nates even begin to compete with Steam. Here's hoping Microsoft manages to live over its glory days…someday.

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GB Burford's childhood discovery that he could change Microsoft Flight Simulator to appropriate behaviors the programmers hadn't planned spawned a life-oblong fascination with video games and their development. Now, he writes all but video games and collaborates on small indie projects when he can.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/414707/how-microsofts-former-pc-gaming-glory-could-help-fix-todays-windows-gaming-woes.html

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