Microsoft wants to monopolise games development on PC. We must fight it.
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I’m not questioning the idea of a Windows Store. I believe Microsoft has every right to operate a PC app store, and to curate it how they choose. This contrasts with the position the government took in its anti-trust prosecution, that Microsoft’s free bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows was anti-competitive.
My view is that bundling is a valuable practice that benefits users, and my criticism is limited to Microsoft structuring its operating system to advantage its own store while unfairly disadvantaging competing app stores, as well as developers and publishers who distribute games directly to their customers.
The specific problem here is that Microsoft’s shiny new “Universal Windows Platform” is locked down, and by default it’s impossible to download UWP apps from the websites of publishers and developers, to install them, update them, and conduct commerce in them outside of the Windows Store.
It’s true that if you dig far enough into Microsoft’s settings-burying UI, you can find a way to install these apps by enabling “side-loading”. But in turning this off by default, Microsoft is unfairly disadvantaging the competition. Bigger-picture, this is a feature Microsoft can revoke at any time using Windows 10’s forced-update process.
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If UWP is to gain the support of major PC game and application developers, it must be as open a platform as today’s predominant win32 API, which is used by all major PC games and applications. To the PC ecosystem, opening UWP means the following:
- That any PC Windows user can download and install a UWP application from the web, just as we can do now with win32 applications. No new hassle, no insidious warnings about venturing outside of Microsoft’s walled garden, and no change to Windows’ default settings required.
- That any company can operate a store for PC Windows games and apps in UWP format – as Valve, Good Old Games, Epic Games, EA, and Ubi Soft do today with the win32 format, and that Windows will not impede or obstruct these apps stores, relegating them to second-class citizenship.
- That users, developers, and publishers will always be free to engage in direct commerce with each other, without Microsoft forcing everyone into its formative in-app commerce monopoly and taking a 30% cut.
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Valve’s Steam distribution service is booming with over 100m users, and publishers like Adobe, Autodesk, Blizzard, Riot Games and EA are operating highly successful businesses selling their games and content directly to consumers.
Microsoft’s situation, however, is an embarrassment. Seven months after the launch of Windows Store alongside Windows 10, the place remains devoid of the top third-party games and signature applications that define the PC experience. Where’s Photoshop? Grand Theft Auto V? Fifa 2016? There are some PC ports of what were great mobile games, and some weirder things, such as the Windows 10 port of the Android port of the PC version of Grand Theft Auto from 2004.
But the good PC stuff isn’t there, with the exception of Microsoft’s own software products. Does Microsoft really think that independent PC developers and publishers, who cherish their freedom and their direct customer relationships, are going to sign up for this current UWP fiasco?
In my view, if Microsoft does not commit to opening PC UWP up in the manner described here, then PC UWP can, should, must and will, die as a result of industry backlash. Gamers, developers, publishers simply cannot trust the PC UWP “platform” so long as Microsoft gives evasive, ambiguous and sneaky answers to questions about UWP’s future, as if it’s a PR issue. This isn’t a PR issue, it’s an existential issue for Microsoft, a first-class determinant of Microsoft’s future role in the world.
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Unless Microsoft changes course, all of the independent companies comprising the PC ecosystem have a decision to make: to oppose this, or cede control of their existing customer relationships and commerce to Microsoft’s exclusive control.
TWIN PEAKS is "something of a miracle."
"...like nothing else on television."
"a phenomenon."
"A tangled tale of sex, violence, power, junk food..."
"Like Nothing On Earth"
And Microsoft's shitty response is that the Store is perfectly open for everyone to use
Quote:
In response to Sweeney’s allegations, Kevin Gallo, corporate vice president of Windows at Microsoft, told the Guardian: “The Universal Windows Platform is a fully open ecosystem, available to every developer, that can be supported by any store. We continue to make improvements for developers; for example, in the Windows 10 November Update, we enabled people to easily side-load apps by default, with no UX required.
“We want to make Windows the best development platform regardless of technologies used, and offer tools to help developers with existing code bases of HTML/JavaScript, .NET and Win32, C+ + and Objective-C bring their code to Windows, and integrate UWP capabilities. With Xamarin, UWP developers can not only reach all Windows 10 devices, but they can now use a large percentage of their C# code to deliver a fully native mobile app experiences for iOS and Android. We also posted a blog on our development tools recently.”
TWIN PEAKS is "something of a miracle."
"...like nothing else on television."
"a phenomenon."
"A tangled tale of sex, violence, power, junk food..."
"Like Nothing On Earth"
Fuck dev's that made games exclusively for Windows when they could have adopted open standards like opengl for the last 2 decades to stop this kind of bullshit. If dev's had of avoided MS proprietary crap, NVIDIA and ATI/AMD would have upped their game like valve catalyzed the last couple of years.
Last edited by AmpegV4 on Fri, 4th Mar 2016 12:52; edited 1 time in total
Isn't it easier to just paint all the text orange man?
Also i couldn't give a single shit about Microsofts plans. As i am VERY sure, they will never monopolise games development .
And if they do, i'm probably already dead anyways. (If that idiots company even somehow manages to stay alive that long)
Isn't it easier to just paint all the text orange man?
Yes, maybe next time.
TWIN PEAKS is "something of a miracle."
"...like nothing else on television."
"a phenomenon."
"A tangled tale of sex, violence, power, junk food..."
"Like Nothing On Earth"
Isn't it easier to just paint all the text orange man?
Also i couldn't give a single shit about Microsofts plans. As i am VERY sure, they will never monopolise games development .
And if they do, i'm probably already dead anyways. (If that idiots company even somehow manages to stay alive that long)
The thing is they already did monopolize games development with whats known as directx. Todays game dev's literally hand their games source code to other companies and say (we have no idea how to OSX, Linux or other please help us) to port their releases across. 9/10 times the port uses a wrapper which effects performance.. none of this would be a big deal if dev's didn't lock themselves into ms directx proprietary hat party.
Last edited by AmpegV4 on Fri, 4th Mar 2016 13:07; edited 2 times in total
It's why MS treat pc gamers like shit too, its so far monopolized there isn't even an alternative for you to try if you want best performance, they can do whatever they like without even possibility of customer backlash.
You pizda matiis need to get with the times and change your avatars.
Mine transforms into a Belgian jihadist... how much more do you want me to get with the times?
That's great but it would be ace if it would change with time of the season. I think you need to trim the beard and change the santahat into a bowler, that would make it more hipster.
So you're half-way there with the transforming robot.
what are the new and great features that uwp is supposed to have?????
You can make shitty mobile phone games that will run on PC too
TWIN PEAKS is "something of a miracle."
"...like nothing else on television."
"a phenomenon."
"A tangled tale of sex, violence, power, junk food..."
"Like Nothing On Earth"
Isn't Epic used to work closely with M$?(Gears Series)..
Oh the Irony
Yes, but even back then (or at least post-GeoW1) their main business was licensing out their engine which wasn't eg exclusive to Xbox.
TWIN PEAKS is "something of a miracle."
"...like nothing else on television."
"a phenomenon."
"A tangled tale of sex, violence, power, junk food..."
"Like Nothing On Earth"
And Microsoft's shitty response is that the Store is perfectly open for everyone to use
Quote:
In response to Sweeney’s allegations, Kevin Gallo, corporate vice president of Windows at Microsoft, told the Guardian: “The Universal Windows Platform is a fully open ecosystem, available to every developer, that can be supported by any store. We continue to make improvements for developers; for example, in the Windows 10 November Update, we enabled people to easily side-load apps by default, with no UX required.
“We want to make Windows the best development platform regardless of technologies used, and offer tools to help developers with existing code bases of HTML/JavaScript, .NET and Win32, C+ + and Objective-C bring their code to Windows, and integrate UWP capabilities. With Xamarin, UWP developers can not only reach all Windows 10 devices, but they can now use a large percentage of their C# code to deliver a fully native mobile app experiences for iOS and Android. We also posted a blog on our development tools recently.”
If "side loading" is now the default, then all the "criteria" for "opening" UWP, as set by Sweeney, are met. Any store can now install "UWP" apps, and since the Microsoft store is not part of the middleman, "M$" will not get 30%. Oh, the same 30% that Steam gets for … no other reason than Microsoft gets, maintenance, storage and bandwidth. But, of course, "M$" is teh devil.
UWP is now as "open" or "closed" as DirectX is, or has ever been. Let me guess, "DirectX on Windows is just bæd becoz M$, mmkay"? Anyone advocating for OpenGL use here has no clue how bad that is compared to DirectX, and how slow that committee-driven nonsense moves compared to the strong arm of "M$". There is a reason so many developers chose to use DirectX for so many years, even with console ports which where 90% OpenGL compliant, still ported to DX. There is a reason why OpenGL renderers have been lacking in both performance and quality, compared to their DirectX counterparts (when available at all). And now all these interested parties, claiming suddenly that OpenGL "of course" outperforms DirectX, uhh you know, the latest spec OpenGL vs 2006-2007 DX code.
I guess now that Sweeney is at it, the year of the linux desktop is upon us. You know what's ironic? Even with linux, to get any tolerable performance, you still need to use closed-sourced vendor drivers. The open source ones are really behind in almost any aspect. Good luck convincing the vendors to fully open source their drivers, including GPU microcode.
Isn't it easier to just paint all the text orange man?
Also i couldn't give a single shit about Microsofts plans. As i am VERY sure, they will never monopolise games development .
And if they do, i'm probably already dead anyways. (If that idiots company even somehow manages to stay alive that long)
The thing is they already did monopolize games development with whats known as directx. Todays game dev's literally hand their games source code to other companies and say (we have no idea how to OSX, Linux or other please help us) to port their releases across. 9/10 times the port uses a wrapper which effects performance.. none of this would be a big deal if dev's didn't lock themselves into ms directx proprietary hat party.
That's a load of horse manure. The big studios, developing their own engines, have render paths for each platform they target. While none of current or previous generation consoles have full OpenGL implementations, they are very close (some have OpenGL ES implementations). So these engines have ~DirectX (X360 and XONE are not exact DX/D3D as Windows), ~OpenGL render paths, and still the ports, even for Windows, are handed down to third party developers. Of course they have the know-how, they already have a render path that is almost there for Linux and OS X. They just don't care. Even those that do the Windows port internally, they just take the DirectX code path and make it Windows compatible, because that yields the best performance and is easiest to maintain. Later, publishers ask some porting house to do ports for Linux and/or OS X, sometimes only handing down the source for the Windows port, rather than the entire codebase with the console render paths. The use of wrappers around the existing PC ports is sometimes because of laziness, but sometimes it is just due to the low price the publishers are willing to pay for these afterthought ports.
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