I agree on them publishing games again. For years "Age of Empires 2" was second only to Starcraft in popularity, they should work on that angle again.

All these Mac commercials attack the Windows PC for its flaws, but they never touch gaming in them because they know Microsoft clearly has the market cornered on PC gaming(with very few exceptions, namely Blizzard's dual-OS releases). Microsoft should embrace that, putting out lots of commercials emphasizing the Gaming side of Windows that other operating systems can't compete with. Bring "Gaming For Windows" back in a big way, making it a flagship product for Microsoft. Keep mentioning that if you want to play games on a computer, you gotta do it on Windows. Highlight that the "Hip Young 20's Guy" who portrays the Mac is infinitely more likely to get a PC (and not a Mac) if he wants to play computer games. I'd love to see how Apple would (fail to) use their Mac commercials to attack Microsoft's renewed gaming push.

So mostly, I think they'd need to do marketing if they want to get PC Gaming back strongly again. Unless you specifically look for it, you never see "Games For Windows" mentioned on gaming sites except in passing every few months. Microsoft needs to come back to PC Gaming. Maybe get a few big budget PC titles to fly under the GFW flag. I could see them making a deal with BioWare's "Star Wars: The Old Republic", try to ride on that hype train. Maybe get Mass Effect 2's PC Port to fly under the banner too(if that's not too soon). They could even try getting casual games in under the GFW title, perhaps through a deal with PopCap Games?Posted at 6:01PM on Oct 24th 2009 by RogueJedi86

Those are some really good suggestions put out, although I'm guessing none of them are going to see the light of day:

1) This is something even Randy Pitchford wondered why MS hasn't done yet. The only reason I can think of is somewhat related to the issues MS was facing in monopoly charges by the EU with Internet Explorer being bundled with Windows. Its a stretch, but it is nothing if not an excuse for other companies to accuse Microsoft of a monopoly.

2) This is another thing that I figure would not be that difficult to do (at least a "gamer mode" to Windows with very pared-down services running), but most likely not do so because of perceived competition with the 360. A game-focused OS (assuming something like this would be effective) with modern hardware would no doubt blow any console out of the water completely performance-wise. No doubt the 360 wouldn't need that kind of pressure.

3) This one I would guess can be summed up as not really happening, because there is no incentive for MS to do it. Other that touting whatever version of DirectX is out, there is nothing in it for Microsoft, at least monetarily. Hell, they barely get any money for GFW-branded games (unless they are charging you for updates), and you see how they promote those...

4) Similar to number 3 in a way. Why pump money into a PC game studio and advertising for Windows games when other companies can do it, and gamers can just buy Windows? I'd guess Windows makes more money for MS than any PC game studio ever could, even with the marketing campaigns. And considering the budgets running for AAA games these days, they would just as likely end up being ports, which many AAA titles are right now, both good and bad.Posted at 12:24AM on Oct 25th 2009 by ChimpWithAHandgun

I have been posting about the idea of a game version in tech forums forever, and everyone agrees and wishes it would happen. Even better would be just a Gaming Mode that you could either boot into or a login use that would only have the bare services running. I tried setting up a new user account under XP to do just that, but couldn't seem to get it to work right.

A buddy of mine actually set up his rig as a dual boot, with one normal install and one game install, but it took tons of tweaking to get it just right, playing with all the services and crap. Would be so much easier if MS would just have it as an easy option.

People go with consoles a lot because a game is laggy on their older systems, but usually if you spend a few hours cleaning it up, it will run a lot better. Problem is most people don't know how to do all the tweaks, and don't' feel like the hassle.

Come on MS, give us what we all want!Posted at 12:17PM on Oct 25th 2009 by bamboo

First of all, you don't want a special version of Windows for gaming. That's how they marketed Vista Ultimate and that ended up a waste of money. If they make a special version for gaming it will end up costing too much money.

As for Microsoft helping make Windows better for gaming, do they really care? They're trying to get you to buy a 360. They don't care about gaming on the PC.Posted at 1:43PM on Oct 25th 2009 by Brian

You are right Brian, Microsoft is focused on the 360. In fact, they would like PC gamers to abandon their rigs and buy an Xbox 360 from Microsoft instead. > : (

Why haven't we seen Gears of War 2, Fable 2, the GTA4 episodes, etc. on the PC? Because MS wants us to buy their console. Posted at 11:39PM on Oct 25th 2009 by RKN

@Bamboo: I actually forgot that AMD out out an app called 'Fusion' that basically stripped out non-essential processes and did some overclocking. It did pretty much work, though I never tried the higher settings. At the very least, it showed that a "game mode" does have the power to be effective if done right.Posted at 1:18AM on Oct 26th 2009 by ChimpWithAHandgun

The talk of a "gaming OS" is just silly guys. In the era of multicore CPU's and $500 PC's being sold with 4-6 GB of ram, the meagre background resources required to maintain the host OS while you play your game are just minuscule and are completely irrelevant to the success of the PC as a gaming platform. Windows7 is a fine OS for gaming, that's not the issue.

Which brings me to my rant...

There are of course many things Microsoft can do to improve PC gaming, and the ideas detailed in the article are a good start. The problem is I think MS, or at least many employees in its home/gaming division know this - it’s largely a matter of allocating funds and interest from the top. And there’s little of either. If one were to be cynical (me!?), if anything it almost looks like the Games for Windows campaign is a trojan-horse for promoting the 360.
When Vista was coming out, there was grand talk of how MS had discovered in surveys that gaming was one of the most popular reasons to use Windows, news which likely provoked the reaction of “No shit Sherlock!” from PC gamers. Microsoft was going to go after the PC gaming market aggressively, not only with Live!, standardizing the retail box format (a good idea and long overdue), but even going so far as to create PC gaming kiosks and deploy them in Gamestop/EB Games to promote the power of the PC – the numbers I heard from MS officials is that you would see them in the “thousands” over the course of Vista’s first year.

Of course, reality was altogether different. The kiosk deployments were incredibly sporadic (I never saw one), the Live! service was a flop out of the gate by charging you for features that were free in every other PC gaming service (not to mention the way they planned to win PC gamers hearts was a port of Halo2 – and not a very efficient port at that, requiring ridiculous system requirements at the time and of course, requiring Vista), and their new “gaming” OS ran existing games slower than XP with far higher requirements (not all MS’s fault though, OEM’s have to share the blame here).

MS has expressed Halo3 won’t be coming to Windows because Halo2 did poorly – well of course, tying an ancient game to an OS which received almost universaly poor reviews (justified or not) and which consumers stayed away in droves doesn’t exactly spell blockbuster. Again though, this is something I think MS knows full well, it’s more of an excuse to not possibly dilute their 360 flagship title, as silly as I think that is (especially at this late stage of Halo3’s shelf life).

If Microsoft were truly serious about promoting the PC as a gaming platform, it would do the one thing which generates gamers interest - *actually publish games*. MS cited the economic downtown as reason to knife many projects, but naturally this excuse for basically halting all PC game publishing is pure nonsense. Even in that “disastrous” quarter, MS had a *profit* of over 1.6 billion. MS has thrown away *billions* on the 360 and barely seen 15% of that come back yet, however we’re to believe Flight Simulator and encouraging ports of say, Gears of War 2 were close to bankrupting the division? Please.

I’m not about to suggest that MS release every game that’s been on the 360 for the PC on release day, that won’t happen and with at least single-player games the specter of piracy is real enough for me not to question that philosophy too aggressively. But there’s no reason, outside of considering the PC as competition for the 360, that MS doesn’t at least advocate, if not in some cases actually fund some ports of games, or as the article mentions original titles.

The fact is at this point, you stand a chance of receiving a PC port of a console/multiplatform title the *least* if the publisher is MS these days. Cripes, even Sony is making more PC games than Microsoft.

From MS’s perspective, it’s easy to see why they want the 360 to succeed. They’ve invested so heavily in it for one, but more importantly it’s a closed platform. Not only do they have to worry about piracy to a far lesser extent than the PC with games, but its closed nature means it’s an easier sell to content providers over all – from renting movies/music to downloadable content. MS has a stake the entire chain, and what corporation wouldn’t want that? When you take into account the game licensing fees, add in arcade titles, DLC, renting movies from MS themselves etc – they likely get a fair chunk of change when all is said and done on a year over year basis with the 360. Every company wants the cable model.

Of course, they could get some of that on the PC too – but the Games for Windows marketplace app for the PC is a sad joke, it looks as if there’s a team of 3 people working on it. While the 360 Marketplace gets new features on a yearly basis, the PC Marketplace maybe gets a new *demo* on a yearly basis.
It’s sad, but more importantly I think it’s shortsighted. It’s reducing the value of the Windows platform to consumers in an era where there is the most competition amongst OS’s there has been in a while and it’s probably going to keep increasing. If my Windows box is reduced to email/surf/flash-based viewing, why would I stick with an MS solution? Apple’s offerings are looking pretty damned attractive and even Linux continues to improve every year if I don’t want to pay the Apple premium. I of course would probably still have a console, but that’s a finicky business in itself – Sony may learn from its mistakes and fight back far harder with the PS4. If it becomes #1 in that gen, then at that point those PC gamers you lost suddenly become a lot more important.

I have a 360 now so obviously MS is getting a good chunk of my change on both fronts, but what I don’t think they realize is that they could be getting even more. I’ve bought games for both platforms – the 360 and the PC, Gears of War and Mass Effect being two examples, and playing both on the PC as compared to the 360 can be painful as you realize how superior the PC versions are.

The 360 and the PC can *coexist*, but they can’t when you give the one platform on life support an aspirin and pump up the healthy one with steroids.

Posted at 1:41PM on Oct 27th 2009 by Regional Coffee

Awesome post, Regional Coffee. You absolutely nailed the potential megafail M$ is setting itself up for. Still, I honestly wonder how badly Microsoft would have to screw up to lose the fanboys and skittish IT managers who keep it alive.Posted at 1:44AM on Nov 2nd 2009 by Psycros