Former Steam Director Leaves Microsoft After Six Months

[Strazdas]

Whether win8 delivers improved performance has nothing to do with the fact that one of the core strengths of PC gaming is that the games are built to run on a variety of machines. You may have to do a little work sometimes, but the expectation is that a game built for PCs will run on any reasonably up to date PC. Developing PC releases which will only work on one OS flies in the face of this strength of the gaming platform.

See, the thing is you said Win8 is bad for gamers and i was attacking that point solely. gamers praise win 8 for its updated performance in games and use it extensively. Its the other users that have most problem with win 8 as they dont care that much about getting as many FPS as they can but rather how the windows interacts.
and games were developed for a single OS for a very long time. Mainly windows. in fact its only as of late that we start to get amount of multiplatform titles that can be called significant. This is of course due to raising popularity of linux and osX more than anything, because now they finally have an install base its worth porting to.

DOnt get me wrong, i hate windows 8, im just saying that PC gamers do like it on average.

 

[Lightknight]

I wouldn't be surprised if this is the first sign that Microsoft is finally ready to admit that its future in gaming lies solely with the Xbox. This isn't necessarily a bad development, or even particularly noteworthy in and of itself. It's not as though MS has been doing anything with the platform anyway; its most significant move in years was to pull away from the market, and while that was initially presented as the first step toward a better and more focused approach, the feeling now (and especially under new leadership, as has been pointed out) may be that it just isn't worth the effort.

I really do hope MS gets back to me on this - impactful or not, it's a big move - but I'm not holding my breath.

I was kind of hoping that he was there to revitalize the Microsoft Live storefront for the Xbox.

Maybe they hired him more as a consultant and his consulting is done? Or, maybe his vision didn't jive with Microsoft culture.

 

[SecondPrize]

Whether win8 delivers improved performance has nothing to do with the fact that one of the core strengths of PC gaming is that the games are built to run on a variety of machines. You may have to do a little work sometimes, but the expectation is that a game built for PCs will run on any reasonably up to date PC. Developing PC releases which will only work on one OS flies in the face of this strength of the gaming platform.

See, the thing is you said Win8 is bad for gamers and i was attacking that point solely. gamers praise win 8 for its updated performance in games and use it extensively. Its the other users that have most problem with win 8 as they dont care that much about getting as many FPS as they can but rather how the windows interacts.
and games were developed for a single OS for a very long time. Mainly windows. in fact its only as of late that we start to get amount of multiplatform titles that can be called significant. This is of course due to raising popularity of linux and osX more than anything, because now they finally have an install base its worth porting to.

DOnt get me wrong, i hate windows 8, im just saying that PC gamers do like it on average.

I never said, nor meant it was bad for gamers, though I think it's bad for people in general. It's just they're tossing out one of the advantages of pc gaming by releasing something only for this one OS. You'd think that their experience trying to do away with the used game advantage of consoles with the xbone announcement would have taught them something about this. Yeah they were developed only for windows, but any reasonably up-to-date windows machine could run them, you didn't need the latest windows to run a pc game, hell it's only in the past few years that devs are skipping xp functionality.

 

[Neyon]

10:1 odds they fired the guy because it's pretty clear they have no desire to actually have Windows be a gaming platform. I'm kinda surprised they were willing to hire him in the first place.

This. Perhaps coupled with him telling the higher-ups things they didn't want to hear.

 

[ThatDarnCoyote]

So nobody here thinks that when one guy gets bounced from two different companies in six months, it might have something to do with the guy?

That was my thought too. He leaves Steam "under a cloud", and now he's left Microsoft similarly. He may just not play well with others.

 

[Vigormortis]

I never gave them any such shit; but then again, I remember the Microsoft that thought Windows ME was a legitimate product and who torpedoed software development firms just to avoid having to compete with them.

Oh, I never implied that you had. I was just pointing out the utter irony of the situation.

That part of my comment wasn't directed specifically at you. It was more a general observation stemming from your comment.

We'll see.
I'm leaning towards "Second verse, same as the first. This time though, a little bit worse."

Which, in my opinion, is one of the more likely outcomes.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Oh, I never implied that you had. I was just pointing out the utter irony of the situation.

That part of my comment wasn't directed specifically at you. It was more a general observation stemming from your comment.

Fair enough.

We'll see.
I'm leaning towards "Second verse, same as the first. This time though, a little bit worse."

Which, in my opinion, is one of the more likely outcomes.[/quote]

Aye.
More broadly, it seems to me that the momentum consoles enjoyed from the mid 200x's is winding down. The market cap for gaming is still growing, but the consoles no longer command the lion's share of that growth.

 

[barbzilla]

I wouldn't be surprised if this is the first sign that Microsoft is finally ready to admit that its future in gaming lies solely with the Xbox. This isn't necessarily a bad development, or even particularly noteworthy in and of itself. It's not as though MS has been doing anything with the platform anyway; its most significant move in years was to pull away from the market, and while that was initially presented as the first step toward a better and more focused approach, the feeling now (and especially under new leadership, as has been pointed out) may be that it just isn't worth the effort.

I really do hope MS gets back to me on this - impactful or not, it's a big move - but I'm not holding my breath.

Even if you get a response, I'd be flabbergasted if it were anything but the "we have chosen to part ways, and wish him all the best with future endeavours" copypasta.

That said, either it indeed is a sign of MS dropping PC gaming, or they've decided stale and dumb suits them just fine. Which would imply that Holtman left because he couldn't be arsed beating his head against a corporate brick wall.

Honestly, I'm favouring the latter.

Have to say, I'm with you on this one. The environment with Microsoft and gaming has become more and more strained as time goes on. They had a great idea in the beginning, but blew it up with corporate greed. The only route they can really take at this point is to either A: scrap previous work and rebrand, or B: find a clean exit strategy to remove themselves from the losses without setting off any PR nightmares.

 

[red ant]

He was hired to get rid of GFWL it makes sense for him to leave before.