Blizzard Exec Backs Valve's Critical Windows 8 Outlook

[long2know]

I'll probably switch entirely to Linux when Win7 gets dated. Right now, I dual boot for the most part. I do all of my dev work (VS2010/2012) in a virtual machine anyhow - and VMWare/VirtualBox are just fine for that regardless of the host platform.

 

[drwho1]

"He also predicted that top-tier OEMs will exit the market thanks to the new OS. "They’ll exit the market. I think margins are going to be destroyed for a bunch of people," he said. "


That's the most stupid "prediction" that I have read.
If windows 8 fails, which IS a more likely prediction, because most users will stay on Windows 7, then how exactly will this affect most users?

The other part about the tablet... made me laugh, no one who plays seriously will ever play on a tablet.

 

[sykozis]

[citation][nom]john_4[/nom]Lets just tell MS (we want to control and own it all) and their proprietary DX to FOff and move to Linux and Open GL gaming. Games written for OS X are already using Open GL and Nvidia and AMD support it on the cards.[/citation]
Yes, lets move from DX, a technology that stays fairly well up to date....to a much older API that nobody really wants to support...

[citation][nom]molo9000[/nom]Apple made the App Store for OS X and yet there's still Steam for Mac and you can install/run anything you want on OS X without ever using the app store.I think it's extremely unlikely that Microsoft would turn Windows into a iOS style "walled garden".That would go against everything a desktop OS is supposed to be. It would never be allowed by anti trust agencies anyway.[/citation]
MS would face anti-trust suits in the US, and anti-competitive charges in the EU.....

[citation][nom]sp0nger[/nom]Aoneone your retarded, us real gamers want steam not the shitty windows store[/citation]
No "real gamer" ever wanted DRM, thus, they never wanted Steam.

[citation][nom]yeahhedeservesit[/nom]Loads of reasons to thumb him down.The 360 uses catch this.Obslete PC hardware. As to it's damn near a weak low end PC. So it's completely biased by saying "His kiddie console isn't obsolete." when it is from the day it ships. Just like PC's.And anyone who finishes their own sentence in a "LOL" deserves to be thumbed down on its own.[/citation]
Game Consoles serve a very large "niche" market. Compared to PC's, yes, they're obsolete. Considering the market they're designed for, they only become obsolete when they're replaced and games are no longer released for them.

 

[jhansonxi]

[citation][nom]sykozis[/nom]Yes, lets move from DX, a technology that stays fairly well up to date....to a much older API that nobody really wants to support.[/citation]It's not older. OpenGL specs get updated every 6 months or so and is extensible so hardware capabilities are not limited by the specification. Major DirectX updates only occur with new Windows releases. M$ has used it as the basis for encouraging OS upgrades by making it exclusive to a new Windows release even when an older version of Windows was capable of running it. They've also paid game developers to make their games exclusive to the newer version of DirectX even though the games were coded for the previous version of DirectX and didn't use any newer features (like Halo 2). Some people have even made attempts to backport DirectX to the previous version of Windows:
http://www.techmixer.com/download-directx-10-for-windows-xp/

 

[Blessedman]

Linux can take over the desktop market IF the likes of blizzard and Valve and others realize the stranglehold that Microsoft is about to impose and start developing for Linux. Linux is becoming more user friendly as a desktop alternative and I think that it could become a force for Microsoft and further Apple to deal with. I think the juggernaut that is linux has become more than any patent office can try and contain. This goes beyond games and market place, this could be the beginning of a new era in open source dominance.

 

[nebun]

[citation][nom]Hellbound[/nom]Simple solution... Dont buy/upgrade to Windows 8.. I wont.[/citation]
really now...i am sure you said the same thing when vista and win7 came out, yet you have used and still use win7

 

[elbert]

Blizzard and Valve have no worries on my part. I don't plan on wasting money on windows 8.

 

[leandrodafontoura]

Windows 8 will only do the following:

1)Increase Apple sales
2)Increase Linux downloads

 

[belardo]

[citation][nom]otacon72[/nom]Anyone who says anything on here bad about PC gaming gets thumbed down...lol. As your comment did.[/citation]Yeah, it's silly since PC gaming is blah. Now if gaming went Linux, it would change things. Before PC gaming, it was Amiga that people bought for home use. Very few people actually bought a PC for home, especially when they were about $2000-5000. Yes, here will always be games for PC... But simply looking at the numbers, consoles rules... But even now, consoles are losing sales as they are discovering that the extra long lifespan of the current gen is heavily outdated.

Seriously, the costs of the next gen should be a lot cheaper to design... But the GPUs really need to something like a AMD 7870 or GF 650. Life span will need to be reduced to 3-5 years... Not 8-9 years!

 

[Guest]

this is a stupid amount of comments neglecting the fact that most of you pirated windows 7. feel free to say you payed for it and blah blah. either it came free on your cheap acer/hp/whatever...or you "tested it" and never looked back. you will get windows 8 the same way, you will still have steam(which is awful), and you will settle into it just like every other os microsoft released. get off your high horse and make your own os(maybe a version of linux worth something).

 

[blazorthon]

otacon72, a PC can last just as long as a console can and anyone who thinks that a modern gaming PC doesn't look far better than a console is either using a very crappy display or doesn't know what they're talking about. For example, no console plays in true 1080p. The best that they can ever do right now is upscale lower resolutions to 1080p and that's not even close to the same quality.

A PC can last as long as you want it to and it will always outperform the console of the refresh cycle time frame that the PC is from if the PC is simply higher end. Consoles have never been more high end than the highest end PC possible at any time within at least the last decade. The consoles are always made with technology that has been obsolete in the PC markets for a year or two (sometimes even longer) and they can never keep up. The Xbox 360 and PS3 can't even come anywhere close to the 8800 GT's graphics performance and it's about five years old. You could still play on it with today's games and they'd play better than those consoles can play the console versions (despite those versions being much more optimized) of the same games.

Beyond that, having an Xbox 360 and a PS3 since their launch times and they still work today is almost a miracle. Most people don't get nearly as much time out of them. PCs tend to have no trouble lasting that long and when they don't, it is usually far cheaper to repair them and you can do it yourself if you want to. They can also be upgraded in performance extremely as time goes on for even greater and greater performance for higher and higher quality, something that consoles can't do too much of at all. Going from an 8800 GT to a Radeon 7850 would cost only $200-$280 or so, depending on the model that you go for, if you live in the USA. For most people, that's much cheaper than upgrading to the next generation of console (when it comes out) despite being far faster than the rumored setups and it's also cheaper than even the current Xbox 360 and PS3 are over their refresh cycle for most people because most people end up needing to replace theirs once or twice. PCs also have stuff such as Steam that offers far more high-quality games for the money.

Even if you don't overclock, that's a five year time frame between upgrades and the performance increase is so huge that it will max out any game's texture quality at 1080p while having even more performance to spare. In less than top-graphically demanding games, the 7850 can be great even in unusually high resolutions such as 2560x1440. Heck, even in today's most graphically demanding games, the 7850 could manage 2560x1440 and 2560x1600 at frame rates that console top out around.

There's also the fact that the mouse and keyboard input interface is much quicker than using the console controllers. In FPS games and such, that means that you can have faster-paced gaming along with the higher visual quality.

Console gaming isn't crap like some people like to argue, but it is most certainly not cheaper except for idiots (especially if used game sales really do get stopped) and the quality that it offers is outdated before the consoles even launch. If not for consoles holding the PCs back so much, the difference would be even greater.

 

[belardo]

Linux is quite easy, especially if the user doesn't see the cli. The MAC OS X shows what a unix based OS can look like. Hell, the 1985 Amiga which MULITITASK is a variant of Unix in its heart. Hence, using MS DOS/WIN 3.x was such a downgrade... Even win9x was still substandard in many ways.

Linux only needs games, Intuit and Adobe CS to really get a jump start.

But here is the real kicker to make Linux Fly... Linux power users need to get over themselves. Many of them actually have a power trip. They want to keep making their own trees, etc. they tend to attack anyone who tries to make a STANDARD LINUX.

They need to agree to have a standard Linux platform that Avg Joe can DL or buy for $5.00 off the shelf. A standard that Adobe and other companies can stick with at least. Sure keep all the forks for server and whatever, but let there be a common standard. Android and ChromeOS is an example of a STANDARD Linux that allows easy and stable development. AMD and Nvidia are still weak on Linux and need to get their act together.

I think LinuxMint is the best step in the right direction, but they are based off Untunbu... But I like LinuxMint more, it's trying to Bring over Windows users... It's slick and simple and not scary.

Windows8 made me try out Linux again... And I want windows 7 to be my last MS OS, period. It may take a few years as I'm happy with win7.

Today is not 6 years ago when Vista came out. Android and iOS have shown the general population that we DON'T NEED WINDOWS!
I typed this whole response on an iPad1, I didn't feel like powering up my desktop.

 

[belardo]

DRM on PCs keeps me from buying PC games. SecuROM7 is not allowed. Also limited installs? Screw that. When I buy a game, I want to install it as many times as I need to. Hence, I never bought any of the bio shocks, mirrors edge even when they are $5 on amazon. I'm cool with cd keys. I bought an old game so my kid will have his own key. With Steam and and consoles, there is usually not this problem. ( it's bs when a steam game like bio shock still sticks u with secROM! That is the distributor fault, not steam). As we ALL know, all secuROM games are cracked... I know I can get Bioshock and Mirrors edge. So they really only punish their paying customers. Waste money paying for SecUROM, etc to also prevent 2nd hand sales?!

 

[back_by_demand]

[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom]It already has most of the smartphone market, most of the server market and 90+% of the supercomputer market. It's a huge fail on the desktop (in terms of adoption), but more around 2-3%.So if you look at its totality, Linux actually rules the world - Windows is only dominant on the PC.[/citation]
Servers and supercomputers account for less than 2% of all the computers in the world, just because it is a server it is still just running a single OS - and smartphones are not computers so you can get that idea out your head
...
The thing is, steam is not a Windows 8 App, it is still just an x86 program that can install and run on Windows 8 totally normally. There is no and will be no removing of backwards compatability to x86 so Valves rant is a moot point. So what if GWL or Xbox Live is on Windows 8 already, anyone who wants Steam downloads and installs it anyway - paranoid bullshit is spreading like wildfire and people need to just calm down and dial back the histrionics a few notches

 

[K2N hater]

Ballmer brings uncertainty and recession to the industry! Ballmer is a terrorist! Go after him boys!

 

[Slomoshun]

[citation][nom]otacon72[/nom]I stopped PC gaming years ago. I buy one piece of hardware hook it into my LED TV and don't have to upgrade anything for years. PC hardware is obsolete 6 months after you buy it. Thumb me down all you want I don't care..lol[/citation]
Umm..consoles are outdated before they're even released, you know that right? The reason people PC game is because we don't want to wait 10 years for upgrades. We upgrade as we see fit. Your comment is beyond stupid and is a typical response of a console gamer. What I mean by that is you idiots are wrong 99% of the time and yet you don't see it. Its...so obvious.

 

[Guest]

To the guy who says Linux will never have more than that 1% of the market that it now has... Funny, they used to say that about Windows.

 

[teh_chem]

Aside from use on mobile devices, I'm not seeing this huge push to upgrade from Win7 on behalf of most users. So all of this worrying by game developers and studios might be a very moot point (at least for the near-term of the next couple/few years).

That being said, if Blizzard is complaining about Windows 8, then they really ought to re-examine their own current efforts as of late.

 

[A Bad Day]

I'll be installing Windows 7 onto my future rig in 2013.

 

[ravewulf]

I won't be switching to Linux, but I won't be "upgrading" to Windows 8 either. I'm just going to watch MS fail with Win8 and (hopefully) make a decent Win9. If things stay bad I might consider moving to ReactOS (not linux/unix, but an open source Windows-NT based system) when it is stable and feature complete (currently only in the alpha stages).

 

[killerclick]

[citation][nom]back_by_demand[/nom]Servers and supercomputers account for less than 2% of all the computers in the world, just because it is a server it is still just running a single OS - and smartphones are not computers so you can get that idea out your head...[/citation]

Quibble all you want, but Linux is much more important than Windows in terms of what's running it and what depends on it. Microsoft's importance in the grand scheme of things is diminishing every year, and the Windows 8 debacle will make that clear even to die hard fanboys.

 

[tomfreak]

[citation][nom]sp0nger[/nom]Aoneone your retarded, us real gamers want steam not the shitty windows store[/citation]and how would u know an unreleased product is shitty? Steam was shitty back when it first launch. You have to see how it run a couple of months first b4 u see how shitty it is.

I personally welcome this move as it provide developer and us a alternative choice over valve/blizzard.

*valve fanboys, please thumb me down as u want.

 

[ceh4702]

This is like someone claiming the sky is falling. Windows 7 still runs fine. Dont expect too much. Sounds like a bunch of little children hoping santa clause will give them the impossible.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]back_by_demand[/nom]Servers and supercomputers account for less than 2% of all the computers in the world, just because it is a server it is still just running a single OS - and smartphones are not computers so you can get that idea out your head...The thing is, steam is not a Windows 8 App, it is still just an x86 program that can install and run on Windows 8 totally normally. There is no and will be no removing of backwards compatability to x86 so Valves rant is a moot point. So what if GWL or Xbox Live is on Windows 8 already, anyone who wants Steam downloads and installs it anyway - paranoid bullshit is spreading like wildfire and people need to just calm down and dial back the histrionics a few notches[/citation]

You're correct about Steam probably working in Windows 8, but you're also wrong about how many server, super computers, and other such machines there are.

[citation][nom]ravewulf[/nom]I won't be switching to Linux, but I won't be "upgrading" to Windows 8 either. I'm just going to watch MS fail with Win8 and (hopefully) make a decent Win9. If things stay bad I might consider moving to ReactOS (not linux/unix, but an open source Windows-NT based system) when it is stable and feature complete (currently only in the alpha stages).[/citation]

React is based on code that is intended to be compatible with older versions of Windows. Funny thing is that the website for it now says that it is designed for XP/2003 compatibility, but the last time that I was on it, it still said that it is designed for Windows 2000 compatibility. I still look into it every few months because it is interesting and although it's pace is slow, it really is moving, but it might take it ten years before it can replace Windows 7, if ever. It just doesn't have enough people to get it to move at a decent pace. It still hasn't even hit the beta stage despite starting in the late 90s. It seems to be picking up pace very slowly, but it needs to move much faster if the devs for React want to catch up to Windows.

[citation][nom]belardo[/nom]Linux is quite easy, especially if the user doesn't see the cli. The MAC OS X shows what a unix based OS can look like. Hell, the 1985 Amiga which MULITITASK is a variant of Unix in its heart. Hence, using MS DOS/WIN 3.x was such a downgrade... Even win9x was still substandard in many ways.Linux only needs games, Intuit and Adobe CS to really get a jump start. But here is the real kicker to make Linux Fly... Linux power users need to get over themselves. Many of them actually have a power trip. They want to keep making their own trees, etc. they tend to attack anyone who tries to make a STANDARD LINUX. They need to agree to have a standard Linux platform that Avg Joe can DL or buy for $5.00 off the shelf. A standard that Adobe and other companies can stick with at least. Sure keep all the forks for server and whatever, but let there be a common standard. Android and ChromeOS is an example of a STANDARD Linux that allows easy and stable development. AMD and Nvidia are still weak on Linux and need to get their act together.I think LinuxMint is the best step in the right direction, but they are based off Untunbu... But I like LinuxMint more, it's trying to Bring over Windows users... It's slick and simple and not scary.Windows8 made me try out Linux again... And I want windows 7 to be my last MS OS, period. It may take a few years as I'm happy with win7.Today is not 6 years ago when Vista came out. Android and iOS have shown the general population that we DON'T NEED WINDOWS! I typed this whole response on an iPad1, I didn't feel like powering up my desktop.[/citation]

With Linux, I can already run almost all Windows games and have similar performance to Windows, depending on the hardware. The open source AMD drivers have gotten to the point where they can often keep up with Windows (benches show this) and Linux already has DX9, 10, and 11 compatibility. Some distros might need a third party program or driver for it because they don't all have it by default, but that still means that they can do it with that program or driver. Switching to Linux is already possible for far more people than most of us realize. It does mean more work to get stuff to run and really, hating on Windows 8 is not a good reason to switch because simply installing a start menu program into Windows 8 would be a much easier solution to Metro (for those who refuse to deal with Metro directly). However, it is possible for the determined.

 

[JOSHSKORN]

[citation][nom]Kami3k[/nom]Consoles are obsolete before they are even release.... pwnt[/citation]
Yep, have you heard the specs for the XBOX Infinity/NEXT/720? They're already obsolete, yet, the console won't be released until at least Fall 2013, probably later.