fix-the-spade said:
To be honest I think the best thing Microsoft can do for PC gaming is bugger off and focus on Xbox.
For distribution Steam, GoG and Origin already exist, so they're just a minor competitor at best.
For DRM Steamworks and Origin are considerably more reliable (and less painful) than anything Microsoft is likely to produce.
If Microsoft must 'support' PC gaming they would serve everyone best by ignoring DRM and 'social platforms' entirely and just releasing titles on all the other distribution platforms. We and they already know that even if they get GFWL back into every major PC release for a decade those games will be primarily bought on Steam and not the Microsoft storefront.
This apology-promise sounds like when EA promise to stop abusing their investments and IP, whether disingenuous or clueless it's equally unlikely to be true.
The problem here is that Microsoft is involved regardless because core parts of the Windows OS are nessesary to support gaming.
The way that graphics drivers have to be written is microsoft's influence. DirectX is Microsoft. Every stupid API call, driver structure, core feature in the OS... All of it microsoft can mess with in ways that influence how well PC gaming actually functions.
Sure OpenGL exists, but on Windows that's usually implemented as a DirectX wrapper.
The existence of DirectX in the first place was critical to making windows a viable gaming platform. Before DirectX was something that worked properly, the majority of games were made for DOS.
Why? Because DOS is so minimalist, you can barely even call it an OS...
It does almost nothing for you, so a creating a DOS game is pretty close to writing a program that interacts directly with the hardware, with nothing inbetween.
That's a lot of work.
It's also completely impractical in a modern multi-tasking OS, because there's no way you can get away with any program having that degree of direct hardware access without running the risk that it could screw up everything on the system if it wanted to.
(that was in fact a risk with dos programs, but since DOS can't multi-task, there's only so much damage you can do short of messing with files that aren't part of the game itself.)
In short, without Microsoft's support, PC gaming as we know it would die pretty quickly.
It's anyone's guess if something like SteamOS or the like could pick up enough of the pieces for it to recover, but... The way things are now, Microsoft's continued support is vital to PC gaming...
