IDtenT You need to realize that "But it's just like Steam!" isn't a very persuasive argument in favor of the XBox One, just like it's not a good argument in favor of EA's Origin.
Yes, it's kind of like Steam. But it's not Steam. It doesn't have Steam's volume. It doesn't have Steam's sales. It doesn't have Steam's level of trust. They need to show people more than that if they want to impress.
When people are talking about DRM, I will bring up Steam. When people talk about a digital platform, I will bring up Steam. It's not an argument in favour of XBO. It's an argument in favour of the viability of a digital platform.
We cannot talk about sales until such time as the console has time to mature, as Steam has. It will have almost as great a selection as Steam does. Steam's wasn't trusted at the start. They have a lot left that they have to show, but I can't help it when people need to be spoon fed about the future.
- Steam got an Offline Mode
Which never worked when people had online issues in the 2000s.
- Steam doesn't cost anything (no monthly fees)
That's got nothing to do with the digital platform. The monthly fee will allow dedicated servers and more cloud support than Steam can offer.
- Valve isn't a publicly traded company
Well shit. Neither is Zenimax.
- Valve hasn't tried to buttrape PC gamers like Microsoft did in the past several times yet
You really missed the 2000s didn't you? Maybe you don't live in third-worldia where literally everyone complained about Steam.
I’ve written this before but almost ALL the decline in both the PC and console market can be traced back to those assholes, Xbawks came out in 2001 and the glorious Codex was founded in 2003 because games started to majorly decline around that point.
Oh Lord. So Herve never happened? WoW never happened? F2P never happened? Microsoft wasn't to blame for the formation of the Codex. The decline was driven by the consumers - the platform irrelevant. The broshooters would just have had success on the PS3.
Deus Ex --> Deus Ex: Invisible War
Baldur’s Gate 2 --> Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance
Black & White --> Fable
Good thing those are all shit or disappointing games.
It was the new Microsoft console market taking over. Consoles were popular before, but neither Nintendo nor SONY gave much of a fuck about PC gaming and left it alone, in fact they still don't and largely have their own games and studios.
While that may be true, because of geographical reasons, studios would still have created third party games for the PS3 and ported them to the PC. If anything it's the PS2 that ruined everything with its worldwide success. I have no problems with Nintendo, as they've always filled a niche.
Microsoft came rushing into the market, stopped internal companies like Ensemble, Aces, FASA etc. from producing worthwhile titles over time and ended up closing them while buying up others like Bungie, Lionhead and Digital Anvil (including some console devs like Rare) to have games ready for their gaming platform.
So they're basically EA? Wouldn't it be better then to complain about EA being the harbinger of decline? I mean EA had absolutely great studios and it all went to shit - long before XBox was released.
For instance before Microsoft bought Bungie, Halo was supposed to be a PC/Mac-focused Shooter
In my personal definition of decline, FPS games have always been a part of the decline. So it wouldn't have mattered.
They also paid off Third Parties like Epic, Remedy, BioWare and Double Fine etc. for Exclusives and are still doing it even to Indie studios today.
Sony has never done this!
They turned DLC practices into what they are today, they were the first to charge for it with "Mech Assault" in 2003:
I don't agree with the DLC hate train. DLC is a great model for developers.
Microsoft popularized games like Call of Doody: Modern Whorefare and Gears of Brown and helped establish the “gaming industry” as it is today.
So this is why CoD is exclusive to XBox?
They are generally known for repeatedly fucking or trying to fuck over Independent developers.
I really couldn't care less about indies. They mostly push out shit. MS have however done a few things wrong. The paid patches should never have become part of policy. Steam only recently became super friendly to indies, with the greenlight thing. There's noting that says MS won't steal that idea. What MS is doing is not allowing anybody to place their game on XBO and so is Valve.
And they popularized paid-for Multiplayer and are still trying to push through these practices that SONY/Nintendo hadn't jumped on earlier (but now apparently have, if anyone wants to thank somebody for having to pay for Multiplayer on the PS4 thank Microsoft). PC gamers luckily didn't adopt it, partially because Steam was already a thing at that point and Games for Windows Live with paid Multiplayer fell flat on its face:
http://www.1up.com/news/games-windows-live-multiplayer-free
Popularised? MMOs were popular long before XBox. Paying for matchmaking was a shit move, but it wasn't expensive and it added an incentive to making multi-player as good as possible. Remember that the original XBox was the first networked console, and online multi-player was a new thing. PC gamers wouldn't adapt (it being an open platform and all) unless they got dedicated servers and the cloud, which is what MS is pushing out now. Don't be surprised when EA (or even Valve) starts trailing a paid dedicated-server/cloud service for games before the end of the decade on the PC.
They have shit like licensing/royalty fees for the amount of discs of a game:
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/08/01/carmack-rage-to-look-worse-on-360-if-limited-to-two-dvds/
They have stupid “Certification processes” that cost most devs lots of money and time but as a bureaucratic step doesn’t make much sense other than in making Microsoft more money:
http://the-witness.net/news/2012/07/thoughts-on-consoles-and-certification-processes/
They've made mistakes in policy. It happens with all big corporations.
And they're absolutely trying to pull their bull crap on the PC too with the likes of Windows 8 and the Windows Store.
They're trying to ape Apple. We'll see if it works or not. They have not disabled their OS from being an open platform where you can install shit from other sources.
They tried influencing the PC market with arbitrary shit like “DX 10 and Halo 2 Exclusive for Windows Vista” to push their new OS, it didn't work that time either:
http://www.geek.com/games/halo-2-pc-to-be-vista-exclusive-561727/
They will do the same with Windows 8, certain games (like possibly even "Titanfall") will only be available for Windows 8 and possibly only through the "Windows Store".
No shit. They've done marketing? Sony doesn't release first party games on Windows at all. They also didn't release PS3 games for the PS2.
The only thing holding them back so far is that they haven’t managed to establish a foothold in the PC Gaming market to the same extent they did on consoles and their budget is respectively small for more PC fuckery. On top of all of that they seem to be thinking of the PC market as a “tablet market” now as can be seen by developments with their new OS and the choice of “Windows 8 Exclusive” games.
More marketing.
I would switch to Linux in a heartbeat if Microsoft didn't manage to also kind of monopolize gaming on the PC with their development and use of DirectX and certain programs like Photoshop and similar were available for it. This is also why I find the Steam push for Linux intriguing and am hoping for success of their "SteamBox" and more and more games being available for Linux.
Good luck with that. Getting people to actually invest in an open OS that's not made for any gaming.
The only thing so far keeping Windows "relatively" safe from overnight becoming a closed-off platform are a lot of business interests involved (Microsoft is making the most money by selling their software to offices and big business around the world, which run a lot of third-party programs etc. and even develop software themselves that rely on Windows being an "Open platform") which wouldn't be too pleased and would similarly show them the middle finger.
But they are absolutely greedily eyeing Apple and all the money they are making by selling all software and content directly over their store and are taking it a step at a time.
They're eyeing Apple, but they'll never drop the PC. It's still their main business.
They are one of the most poisonous fucking things in the industry and single-handedly helped decline both PC and console gaming at the same time over a span of a decade.
I hope you didn't run a MS OS back before the decline.
I'm enjoying your butthurt tremendously.