No offense but if you, Microsoft or anyone else thinks that will kill Steam, you need to get your head checked.
Comment has been collapsed.
lol No one that has replied even took the time to go find out for there self. Every news article on the subject clearly states it's just a gateway into the Xbox ecosystem. Last time I knew Xbox was a console not a personal computer.
This is just basically a way to easily purchase games and contact friends.
Comment has been collapsed.
@OP
Stupid title is stupid.
Valve is ahead of Microsoft in pc gaming and it won't be too long untill Valve kicks in into the living room aswell with the steambox and their OS.
The only way Microsoft can become competition to Valve, is to make Windows 10 the only OS that can run games from xbox systems. If they actually pulled this one off, i could see them being a threat to Steam as long term rivals. And both of us know that ain't gonna happen.
Microsoft kinda ruined their console experience this generation, the next one might be penalised because of this aswell, meaning they are in risk of collapsing in the console department. And when that happens, what do you do? You go back to pc gaming, because that's where all the real potential resides. Of course this also means that other competitors can easily jump in and knock Microsoft over a little.
Steambox + SteamOS + DecentSteamAccount = Bye-Bye consoles @ living room
Comment has been collapsed.
Microsoft will never be a competitor to Steam...Ever.
Comment has been collapsed.
HERESY ALERT 1 DEPLOY THE INQUISITION! DECLARE EXTERMINATUS! MAY GABEN PROTECT US!
Comment has been collapsed.
Unless of course we get multiple layers of DRM like in the case of GTAIV.
Comment has been collapsed.
Ubisoft games on steam store with ubisoft potato made servers??yeah...merrier...
Comment has been collapsed.
If you understand it all so well, maybe you would be kind enough to explain if you are able to spare some time. Not trying to be confrontational here.
Comment has been collapsed.
its all about a competing marketplace & the shares in it. If Steam was the only platform/distributor then Valve would have no reason to give us deals or to better itself.
Personally, I like having more clients (uplay,origin, ect)just to be closer to those publishers & devs as well.
Comment has been collapsed.
Except, currently, with more clients coming out, steam deals are getting weaker and weaker compared to when steam actually had a "monopoly" as it were. Normally, in a free market, that is how it is SUPPOSE to work though, more competition leads to better deals for consumers and so on.
Comment has been collapsed.
Steam deals are getting weaker? How? Oh, the metagames they're hosting in summer and winter are not nearly as good as they used to be, boo hoo. The actual cuts and the frequency thereof have improved since the other stores got on the scene. Valve has also massively updated their community and client features only in the last few years, when the competitors emerged. For instance, Steam Broadcasting is I think an answer to what Origin was doing with built-in Twitch streaming.
More players in the market is always a good thing. It doesn't need to topple the dominant player in order for improvements to be seen. Even complete failures like Uplay serve as a good warning to other companies of what not to do.
Comment has been collapsed.
not really, if you look at it calmly the competition is getting closer and gets more market share every year.
If valve doesnt stop shooting itself in the foot it will eventually stop being at the top (bad support policies, no real refund option, horrible currency pricing, gambling events like the current one, generally their rules are a mess and support has its own ideas, the trend they started restricting trading lately and annoying region locks)
Imo the only thing steam is ahead with is having steam workshop integration, and thats basically it. I never used any other fluff features since they are useless to me. And if you count out stupid stuff like trading cards, emoticons, market etc what is steam really ahead with? Everything other than community workshop and items, steam is doing worse than the competition. (origin and gog have way more consumer friendly policies - clear refund periods, gog is 30 days, dont remember origin but it was something 7+ days, dont use uplay so cant say, same with support, steam is by far the worst one in this area out of all the big online stores by my experience). From a perspective of casual customer that just wants to buy and play a game, steam isnt ahead at all.
Comment has been collapsed.
Region locks not such a bad thing, in origin for example i bought Bf4 and couldn't install language other than Russian and Polish because it was bought on Russian territory (voice acting is bad as hell in some games and I prefer original or English language (helps learn new words and etc. + with new law they can't use filthy language (don't sure how to say that in English)). Lock or not is a choice of a publisher. Origin support slightly better I used both of them only once so can't say for sure. What's bad with gambling events i can't understand except they don't say everything. GOG... well it's kinda pricey in my region so i don't use it except some free event games and just free games.
And yeah... sorry for bad English
Comment has been collapsed.
Origin only allow refunds on EA games. To match that Steam, would require only allowing refunds on Valve games. For the end user, that wouldn't make sense to be able to get a refund on some twenty-some games our of thousands. As for GOG, there's a reason most big studios don't distribute through them. Nice user-friendly policies will make sure that your game library will be exempt from the latest releases from large studios. At least Steam now allows you to cancel a pre-ordered game at any time before the actual release, that's a beginning.
As for support, Valve could definitely take a page out of Origin's book. I understand they must be flooded with tons of support issues from people and there's probably more than half of it that isn't Steam-related, but a good increase to their support staff would be very helpful. Origin support does have an easier time since they've got a lot less games to support and it's mostly their own games. And, to be honest, 9 times out of 10 I have needed to contact support for stuff that should have been working properly in the first place. (Like CD keys not registering correctly and not going to my account.)
Comment has been collapsed.
Origin has much better support. Contacted their chat support a few times, live person in very little wait. None of this "send an email, get a bot reply a week later" garbage that Steam Support pulls.
Comment has been collapsed.
Actually, Origin allows you to get a refund for your horrible game (limited as it is).
https://www.origin.com/en-ie/great-game-guarantee-terms
I would love to see something of the sorts on Steam (so I can return that shitty Darksiders games!!).
Disclaimer: haven't tried it myself.
Comment has been collapsed.
True, I think i'll still just stick to classic windows 7.
Comment has been collapsed.
DirectX12 will do you good with compatible games/apps on Windows 10, you should keep that in mind.
Comment has been collapsed.
That is true, Microsoft didn't release the latest DirectX for Windows 7. But my laptop is really shitty and running them on the newest DirectX even on the lowest settings will make my laptop catch fire.
Comment has been collapsed.
Only if the gamedevs will write games for them. Currently it's not that many that do. They are too lazy to learn new stuff. See also: Linux ports.
Comment has been collapsed.
Vista was the prototype for 7 but I guess they decided to just release it. Windows 8 was just 7 combined with their mobile OS. 8.1 added the desktop and 10 might be shitty but it might be good. Seems like Microsoft does a rotation of a shitty OS then a good one. I'll be waiting to see how good it is overall after people use it for a while.
Comment has been collapsed.
Steam has lots of competition. It's biggest being EAs Origin service(The highest grossing Humble Bundle was the Origin Bundle). UPlay, GOG.com, Impulse, Amazon Digital Services, Desura, GameStop, Games for Windows Live, Direct2Drive are all competitors as well.
On top of that there are dozens of retailers that sell Steam keys for cheaper than Steam does like GamersGate and Green Man Gaming, all of which makes Steam lose sales.
Comment has been collapsed.
origin and desura are competitors and gfwl was, gog will be when galaxy is on general release rest well how can i put this theyre partially dependant on steam for their business model or in the case of direct2drive i believe totally dependant
Comment has been collapsed.
Games for Wandows Live+STEAM+RGSC+SecuRom+Denuvo+Unoplay+Origin.
Comment has been collapsed.
Oh, dear. It would be really, really fun if they went to actually destroy Steam.
You know, like they destroyed Netscape, not like Ballmer raged he'd fucking KILL Google.
I don't think they'd avoid getting split up into three companies after that.
Comment has been collapsed.
I will stick to the non Dudebro platforms thank you! :D
Comment has been collapsed.
I'm not seeing how this is such big news ?
there's already xbox smartglass and xbox music and xbox blah blah blah. tons of xbox apps on windows 8, windows phone 8 and on android. And it will function just like them all combined without the ability to play xbox games or any real benefit aside from controlling the xbox from your PC. So, all it killed actually was my mood.
Comment has been collapsed.
Well that's good. Maybe with some competition Valve will finally get their shit together and fix a bunch of their bugs and issues and maybe buy some actual servers.
Who am I kidding?
Comment has been collapsed.
Yep. Watched a Charlie Brown Christmas on some guy's stream the other day. Was pretty comfy. Also, we can stream random stuff to our friends in private now, which is actually pretty cool.
Comment has been collapsed.
It isn't worth anyting if it's getting worse. Valve is too glorified.
Comment has been collapsed.
I'm excited.
I'll be focusing more on what we are doing on Win10 in January, it's time for us to talk about gaming on Windows. -Phil Spencer
You guys know who Phil Spencer is right? You know, the guy heading XBOX? This might be the first step in Microsoft bringing games like Halo to Windows. Let something like that happen and watch Valve shit bricks.
Comment has been collapsed.
That would be great. We need more competition for better customer service, games and so on.
Comment has been collapsed.
Here's a short history of Microsoft promising PC gaming support, courtesy of RPS
Games for Windows Live “will continue to get better,” said senior producer of Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business, Kevin Unangst, in 2011, before the service continued to get worse. It closed down earlier this month, trapping gamer’s saved games inside with a final act of malice.
“It is our job to lead the way on PC,” said Microsoft Games Studios’ general manager Dave Luehmann in an interview with MCV in 2010, before pointing to Age of Empires Online and Microsoft Flight as examples, not knowing that both games would be mediocre, that support for each would be discontinued, and that no further games would be announced.
As a bigger online store was launched in 2010, Peter Orullian, group product manager for Windows PC and Mobile, told Kotaku that they aimed to “bring some of the rigour, thought and success we’ve had on console to bare in the PC space. PC games is a place where we are doubling down.”
“Windows 8 will represent a real new push into PC gaming,” a source told TechRadar in 2010, proving simultaneously why you shouldn’t quote anonymous sources and why people sometimes want to remain anonymous.
“It is absolutely important and a strategic advantage for us over, for instance, Apple,” Microsoft’s Leila Martine told TechRadar in 2009. “So should we be focused on involving and putting on features such as DirectX 11? Absolutely we should.”
“Games for Windows truly thrived in 2007. We went from two titles in 2006 to a continually growing portfolio of over 60 titles here at CES 2008,” said Kevin Unangst, senior global director of Games for Windows in the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft, as part of a press release. “We delivered on our promise one year ago to reinvigorate the PC gaming space and bring the best portfolio of games to Windows. And this is just the beginning. With our partners, we will continue to drive the resurgence of Windows-based gaming.”
“For the first time in Microsoft’s history, we’re releasing an operating system built from the ground up with gaming as a core scenario. With a worldwide presence of over 200 million gamers of all stripes, we’re taking the world’s most popular gaming platform and making it easier, safer, and more fun for everyone,” wrote Peter Moore in a letter in 2007. He continues by predicting a PC gaming “renaissance”, and it would be almost six months before he’d state that he was “overly optimistic”.
Comment has been collapsed.
The majority of that mess was under Marc Whitten. I was never a fan of him either, especially after all the DRM mess with the Xbox One.
I can only hope that Phil Spencer, who took over in March of this year, can make the changes it's going to take to put gaming a top priority in Windows 10. The man's already turned around the Xbox One and made the changes it needed to be the top console after Black Friday. He's made a awesome promotion of the Xbox Music app by giving away over 100 free music albums. He's done really well since taking over at the beginning of the year. With that, I'm hoping changes are coming to Windows gaming as well :D
Comment has been collapsed.
264 Comments - Last post 2 minutes ago by adam1224
6 Comments - Last post 26 minutes ago by steveywonder75
150 Comments - Last post 31 minutes ago by Hawkingmeister
1,247 Comments - Last post 48 minutes ago by WaxWorm
82 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by GarlicToast
71 Comments - Last post 2 hours ago by LighteningOne
145 Comments - Last post 5 hours ago by seaman
122 Comments - Last post 8 minutes ago by SilentGuy
57 Comments - Last post 12 minutes ago by CptWest
763 Comments - Last post 13 minutes ago by CptWest
16,942 Comments - Last post 14 minutes ago by cpj128
8,142 Comments - Last post 20 minutes ago by greddo
3,467 Comments - Last post 22 minutes ago by LeDeNew
1,356 Comments - Last post 28 minutes ago by Soulitaire
You heard it right, with your purchase of Wandows10(TM) you too can be the proud owner of this amazing gift to humanity.
Comment has been collapsed.