Microsoft achievements in PC gaming?

Marketing folks can find some more positive ones to add.

Copy from: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-03-08-microsoft-admits-games-for-windows-flaws#comment2192416

(scoped to last few years, there's no denying MS had some great achievements in PC gaming before Xbox became priority)

- Closing his most relevant franchises and studios, as Flight Simulator and the MechWarrior series. **
- Trying to impose a monthly fee for online gaming with GFWL.
- Trying to push a platform (GFWL) relying on matchmaking in a world in which competitive gaming turns around dedicated servers.
- Preventing successful companies dedicated for long term to PC as Remedy to release his products outside Xbox 360.

I'll add those I was bit annoyed about:

- Not turning Freelancer into more epic franchise than Mass Effect. Having Freelancer & Halo engines could've at one point spawned a fork team using both to make something new.  I'd like to see more "hybrid" games 1/3 of adventure,fps-action,rpg in space setting since the 80% FPS + 20% linear story based approach to things is getting so worn out.

- Making moving of save games complicated with GFWL. I wanted to show an offline save I made to friend on his computer and it didn't work. Well then I reinstalled my PC and haven't even bothered to try to install that game again since the complications I experienced with moving the saves. In contrast, I have some save games from 1992 that still work.

- Don't get me started on some games like Limbo being console exclusive apparently just because it's not trivial to do DRM on PC - but was it trivial on Xbox either? There's some companies that have done DRM quite succesfully (years to crack) on PC so it's not like it can't be done. It's also easier to click a link and start progressively downloading & playing a game on a PC you already have than to buy & setup a console and then learn the controls of a pad. Everyone knows how to use keyboard, mouse or fingers on a tablet, how many know how to use analog pad? This predicts death of consoles but I think MS & Sony will keep pumping advertising money & getting exclusive deals to keep them unnaturally alive like a zombie.

(**) I don't know enough about these to have any opinion but my feeling is that when developers are bought by big publishers there's a risk of turning the creative process into more of factory process, what else would explain all those bland big money games that seem to be churned out with designs and settings that seem to have been spawned out of depths of design meetings rather than from years of slow idea development and eventual writing. I think the industry should be there just to do the production, to make the dreams reality, rather than be heavily involved in initial creative/design process by telling the creative people what publisher wants year two down the road.

You are suggesting playing mario, bayonetta, ninja giadne, racing games, fighting games, many sports games better on keyboard, mouse, or touch screen than an analog controller?

Anyway, my bro just bought CitiXL on my GFWL account and he doesn't need my account logged in to play later, which is really great. Don't want him to use my account, but, using my account consolidates purchases, which is a better idea. Funny thing about online purchase, he was trying to buy it on CitiXL official site, but, both AmericanExpress and MasterCard blocked his purchase as the site is suspecious. So he ended up buying from my account.

And most of save systems are nothing to do with GFWL anyway.

Analog controllers (what quality joysticks and flight controllers are there for Xbox and how many games support them?) exist for PC. The point was more that if you own a PC, starting a game from browser is bit easier than ordering and setting up a console. I always read that consoles are easier to play with since you just do a,b & c. Well is a,b & c process to play a console game easier than clicking a link on the browser? PC gaming may have been complicated in 1992 but today I say that console gaming is more complicated than PC gaming with all the console setup, subscriptions and whatnot. And with tablet/laptop you're not tied to one room unlike with console which resembles a traditional desktop pc except it happens to be hooked up to a TV (which is also a dying concept since TV watching has been going down and people use Internet more now). So TV is dying and consoles will go with it. The next generation doesn't care about TV and won't own one and they can already play on their PC with analog pads so only reason to buy console is because MS forces developers to make all decent games console exclusive.

re: save game systems:

The GWFL encourages some sort of "account" system that's outside the game, this entices tying the saves up to such account that used to be within the game - so unless there's guidelines in place to enable easy move of saves it will be easy to make the game such that saves may stop working, and that eurogamer comment thread indicates that this has happened.

@androidi:

4 hours ago, androidi wrote

PC gaming may have been complicated in 1992 but today I say that console gaming is more complicated than PC gaming with all the console setup, subscriptions and whatnot.  

Last weekend I bought Farcry 2 through steam, was a deal they had going. Taking my money and installing it went pretty smouth. I just can't play it online, it kicks me out of the games with a cryptic PunkBuster error. So I spend like 2h on reading up on the error, trying installing/updating PunkBuster by hand. And it still keeps kicking me out. I have yet to buy a console game that's that broken...So I disagree that consoles are more complicated.

@Tokter: Well that's the problem with using 3rd party stuff. The whole copy-protection / anti-cheat thing should be built into the OS hypervisor and partially in hardware. Essentially there should be a two or more isolated "desktops", one is the one we know and another is the protected one where the games run. Bit like you can run vmware in Unity mode, it looks like the guest OS app was running on the host OS to the user. This way the DRM stuff doesn't interfere with other stuff and I can run all the kernel debuggers and cheating programs I want and the hardware+hypervisor isolates them from the protected desktop running the game.

Hummm....

Originally I wrote a detail list of counter arguments. But, I deleted them all.  I just want to say this, the console vs PC war is simple pointless. I do agree on PC gaming experience can be made easier (WinPh7 did it), but, I certainly don't agree on fighting consoles.

10 hours ago, androidi wrote

@Tokter: Well that's the problem with using 3rd party stuff. The whole copy-protection / anti-cheat thing should be built into the OS hypervisor and partially in hardware.

Not going to happen. Desktops aren't like consoles, nothing is protected from the end-user. As soon as some company tries to use a hypervisor or the TPM then enterprising hackers need only emulate the necessary hardware to figure it out and to place an attack.

There is no complete solution for piracy and cheating on the desktop, but I think companies like Valve are setting the right example. It's a shame all the other publishers think that Steam is a threat to their business and try (and fail) to compete with it, rather than working with them.

EDIT: Can I say that I'm secretly waiting for a company to install a hypervisor or some other kind of rootkit without my permission on my desktop? I've never really had the chance to sue a company before (they all tend to settle before-court with me, I want the fun and excitement!)