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In this highly detailed article which originally appeared on his site, programmer and game industry veteran Casey Muratori takes a long, hard look at what Windows 8's changes will mean for developers not just immediately, but down the road.
For the first time in the history of the PC, Microsoft is rolling out a new Windows ecosystem for which they will be the sole software distributor. If you buy Windows 8, the only place you will be able to download software that integrates with its new user interface will be the official Windows Store. Microsoft will have complete control over what software will be allowed there.
Microsoft has stated that applications for the older desktop interface will remain unaffected by these policies. As long as they only use applications that run on the old desktop, users will still be able to buy, sell, develop, and distribute software without interference from Microsoft. Many Windows users have taken this as an assurance that the open distribution model that they enjoy today will still be available in future versions of Windows, and as a result, there has been far less public concern about Windows 8 than there might have otherwise been.
But how realistic is the assumption that the Windows desktop will still be a usable computing platform in the future? And what would be the consequences were it to disappear, leaving Windows users with only the closed software ecosystem introduced in Windows 8?
To answer these questions, this volume of Critical Detail examines the immediate and future effects of Microsoft's current certification requirements, explores in depth what history predicts for the lifespan of the classic Windows desktop, and takes a pragmatic look at whether an open or closed ecosystem would be better for Microsoft as a company.
Game of the Year 2032
According to PC Gamer Magazine, and many sources which agree, PC Game of the Year 2011 was Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. In a move that surprised absolutely no one, Skyrim for the PC shipped on Windows, not MS-DOS. Even if the developers had wanted to, they couldn't have shipped a modern PC game like Skyrim on DOS because none of the past 15 years of graphics hardware innovation is available there. It's absurd to even consider shipping commercial consumer software on MS-DOS today.
Hypothetically, let's assume it becomes equivalently absurd, 20 years from now, to ship consumer software on Windows desktop. There are no desktop games in 2032, much like there are no DOS games in 2012. Everything runs in some much more refined version of the Windows 8 modern user interface.
Because no software can ship on this future platform without it going through the Windows Store, the team that built Skyrim would have to send it to Microsoft for certification. Then Microsoft would tell them if they could ship it.
Do you know what Microsoft's answer would be?
I do. It would be "no".
This is not speculative; it is certain. Skyrim is a game for adults. It has a PEGI rating of 18. If you read the Windows 8 app certification requirements you will find, in section 5.1:
Your app must not contain adult content, and metadata must be appropriate for everyone. Apps with a rating over PEGI 16, ESRB MATURE, or that contain content that would warrant such a rating, are not allowed.
And that's the end of it. No Skyrim for the Windows Store, unless of course the developers go back and remove all the PEGI 18-rated content.
That's 2011's Game of the Year, banned from the Windows Store. How about 2012? With several highly anticipated games yet to be released, it's anybody's guess which game will be selected. But a random sampling of internet predictions suggests some of the leading contenders are Max Payne 3, The Witcher 2, Mass Effect 3, Assassins Creed 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, and Borderlands 2. Of the four of those that have already shipped and been rated by PEGI, how many could be shipped on Windows Store?
Zero.
Now, there are certainly many people out there, perhaps even the majority, who believe that games aren't culturally relevant. They are not great art, they might say, and therefore it is irrelevant if a major platform prevented their dissemination.
In the interest of illustrating the importance of an open platform more broadly, let's give our games a cultural facelift. Let's pretend we magically have a bunch of games with content equivalent to no less than the Emmy nominees for 2012 outstanding drama series: Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Downton Abbey, Homeland, and Game of Thrones.
Odds are that Downton Abbey would be the only one to clearly pass the PEGI rating test, but even if somehow the rest of them did, they'd be banned from the store for a variety of other reasons, such as section 5.3:
Your app must not contain content or functionality that encourages, facilitates, or glamorizes illegal activity.
section 5.6:
Your app must not contain content that encourages, facilitates or glamorizes excessive or irresponsible use of alcohol or tobacco products, drugs or weapons.
or section 5.8:
Your app must not contain excessive or gratuitous profanity.
This vision of a future Windows heavily censored by Microsoft is chilling. But how likely is it to actually occur?
For Windows RT, the version of Windows for low-power tablets and phones, this future begins on October 26th. Each and every Windows RT device sold will only be able to run software from the Windows Store, and all Windows Store apps must follow the certification requirements quoted above, as well as dozens more. Windows RT users won't have 10 or 20 years before they can no longer play the world's most highly acclaimed games on their Windows devices. Those games will have been forbidden from day one.
But for Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro, the versions that most desktop users will have, the timeline is not yet certain. Unlike Windows RT, these versions include the classic Windows desktop that still supports open distribution. Is it possible, then, that desktop users will never have to experience this future?
A brief examination of Microsoft's own history suggests quite the opposite.
Anatomy of a Microsoft Platform Shift
In the late 1980s, much of the consumer computing world was already using graphical user interfaces. Machines like the Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, and Atari ST had grown dramatically in popularity, and each shipped with a modern graphical operating system pre-installed. PCs, on the other hand, still typically ran MS-DOS, a command-line environment where applications had to individually implement their own rudimentary interfaces.
Despite this drawback, the PC was nonetheless flourishing. Because it was an open hardware platform and had achieved wide adoption in the business space, many of the era's most famous productivity programs -- like Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect -- treated MS-DOS as a flagship business platform.
Then on May 22nd, 1990, Microsoft shipped Windows 3.0. This version of Windows could do something no previous version could: it could run MS-DOS programs alongside native graphical apps. For the first time, people could run standard business applications without leaving a consumer-friendly interface. The Windows GUI itself may not have been as flashy as what was available on other platforms, but it gave people the option of using just one OS for everything, and customers wanted that. Adoption rates soared.
Over the next five years, Microsoft continued adding new APIs to Windows. Although people still developed MS-DOS programs, it became increasingly difficult to ship a business application that didn't integrate with things like the Windows font manager, printing services, standard dialogs, and rich clipboard. Customers came to expect these things, and MS-DOS applications simply couldn't use them.
As most apps either transitioned to native Windows versions or became defunct, games were the one major holdout. They lived and died by performance, and couldn't afford the overhead Windows introduced. But eventually Microsoft found a way to give games the hardware access they needed, and slowly but surely, native Windows games became increasingly common. By the time Windows 2000 was introduced on February 17th, 2000, only 10 years after the release of Windows 3.0, running MS-DOS programs had gone from the key feature that made Windows what it was to a tacked-on compatibility mode only meant to support legacy software. MS-DOS as a platform, and any programs still tied to it, had faded into obscurity.
On July 22nd, 2009, nearly two decades after the release of Windows 3.0, Microsoft introduced the version of Windows most of us use today, Windows 7. If you try to run an MS-DOS application in Windows 7, you get a dialog box that says:
You may still be able to run the program, but you'll have to download and install a special "Windows XP Mode" package from Microsoft's website or use third-party emulation software to even try.
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Arguably, the biggest competition Xbox faces isn't Playstation or iPhone, it's Windows. Microsoft competes with itself in two huge gaming arenas, but loses in many ways with the PC: hardware sales, lack of store control, lack of social media control, piracy, etc. Conversely, Microsoft has much better control of all those things in the Xbox ecosystem.
Kill of the PC, focus on Xbox. Makes perfect sense. And all those top games you mention? Xbox releases.
PC hardware is different in that gaming systems carry a premium for their performance feature beyond common desktop systems. But Microsoft isn't in that business. It is motivated to encourage PC upgrades to thus sell new Windows licenses but the PC gamers represent a small subset of that market.
The criticism that Microsoft doesn't offer adult content is more a measure of how the world regards games compared to how they look at movie and other video content. Grnd Theft Auto has been a huge franchise for over a decade but too much of the public still regards interactive games as solely for children. (I'm reminded of the story my mother tells of seeing the 1954 animated movie of George Orwell's Animal Farm and how some audience members were angry because they'd brought their children and weren't expecting a metaphor on Stalinist Russia.)
The game industry needs to make more effort to be regarded as a spectrum of content tyes just like the movie and TV business. The sales channels will respond accordingly if the business matures and they can treat a game like GTA the same way they sell an item like The Sopranos through the video section of their venue.
I don't think Microsoft is going to kill the desktop environment any decade soon. It has too much value. However, I can see parents viewing Windows RT as more suitable for their children thanks to the limited routes for software. Although that increasingly becomes moot as the web becomes more capable.
Twenty years from now, if the desktop went away, would anyone under the age of forty care?
What if you had a closed gaming console software ecosystem with a controlled upgradable platform? XBox PC, with XBox branded hardware upgrades provided by the big players like nVidia or ATI. Make things swap out in a user-simplified manner, like the XBox hard drive, and limit the immense swath of slight variations to a few notable upgrade levels.
You'd never spend $2000 building a hot-rod gaming console... unless you couldn't do the same with a gaming PC anymore.
I don't think this move from Microsoft has anything to do with misunderstanding the adult nature of video games - the XBox has plenty of them - I think it has to do with finding ways to turn the unprofitable aspects of computing into profitable ones.
The upcoming Xbox720 runs a version of Windows 8 RT, likely on PowerPC. This means that it will be MUCH easier to port Xbox720 games to Windows 8 RT for x86 desktop computers. While you still have the option of porting to the normal win32 desktop, nobody outside of studios with external pressures like Valve will do it, because you'll save tons of development time releasing in the "Windows Store", as most of the work was already done developing for the Xbox720.
The Xbox720 is due in late 2013, and in the years following more and more AAA games will be released for Windows Store. If Win8 matches Win7's success, most games will be Windows Store by 2015 or so. If it matches Vista, probably 2018. But it WILL happen eventually.
That will kill Steam. And that is why Gabe and Valve hate windows 8, and re pushing hard for Linux gaming, and are trying to jumpstart their own console, etc.
Seriously, did I miss something? AFAIK, Microsoft hasn't even confirmed that they're working on a new console, much less a) a 2013 release, and b) running W8 RT.
Yes, your theory might* have some merit. But please, don't represent your speculation as grounded fact.
* I say "might" because it doesn't seem quite accurate, although it is worth consideration. As shown early in the article, the Windows Store seems intent on killing gaming on Windows, by prohibiting M-rated titles. This makes little sense if Microsoft's intent is to merge Windows into the Xbox. If I were the type to engage in idle speculation, I would suspect some "XBox OS" (or perhaps a version of Windows) being prepared for the PC, to once again segment the market between "gaming" and "professional" computing.
There have been various leaks from the Durango (X720) devkit, including multiple eBay sellers, and they all show Windows 8 running the WinRT API with screenshots from VS. It's unclear whether it's PowerPC or x86, it could actually go either way. The devkit is obviously x86. Anyway, could they be fake? Sure. But does it make sense? Definitely.
MS doesn't stand to benefit from segmenting the market in the manner you propose. They make money from every sale in the Windows Store. They want it to be successful. Moreover, the whole raison d'etre behind Windows 8 is avoiding market segmentation. That is why the same OS runs on tablets, computers, and (soon) phones.
Since Microsoft makes a good OS followed by a bad one, I expect Windows 8 to be a spectacular failure.
NO. Win8 was built this way as a tool to bludgeon market share in mobile and tablet by abusing the existing desktop monopoly. Limited cross platform support is the *tool* not the reason.
That MS are both desperate enough and willing to screw over desktop users to do this is what's so bloody annoying. That they completely screwed WP7 users with this last minute change of plan is a warning not to trust them.
MS see a huge pot of cash if they can copy Apple and own their users more completely. I don't intend to be 'owned' by convicted monopolists or play any part in allowing them to succeed.
Do the same content guidelines apply for games as they do for generic apps? Even Apple allows games with M-rated content onto their stores. I have a feeling there will be the same parental controls that lock younger users out of R films and M games on the Xbox.
It's too early to judge. We need to wait and see what does and doesn't get rejected by Microsoft before we jump to conclusions.
This isn't the first time a company has been called out on terms that hurt either the user or developer (or both!). I've seen companies revise their agreements after the some blogs pointed out the consequences and the users started raising hell.
That said, the certification requirements _clearly_ prohibit Steam, since one of the requiements is that you may not download any executable content. So Microsoft would have to make a special exception for Steam. Whether they will or not, or whether Valve will even attempt to go that route given the inherent risk in doing a Metro version only to have it exist solely at the whim of Microsoft, is anyone's guess.
But I would argue that we are missing the point if we focus on Microsoft's behavior on a case-by-case basis. The freedom to publish is something that has been enjoyed by PC developers for several decades now, and it is no small philosophical change for Microsoft to unilaterally end that with Windows 8.
- Casey
The ToS do relegate *all* applications to PG-16 or below. Parental control or otherwise.
It's never too early to try to avoid an impending train-wreck (see the responses of Notch and Valve to that train-wreck).
Does it matter if Windows 8 make a exception for Steam or not when its policy results in Valve pushing for Linux?
I can't see this. MS's desire to control the store and run these services itself is the whole point of this move.
"Even Apple allows games with M-rated content onto their stores."
This is... not really accurate. App store games don't get ESRB ratings; some of them might have gotten M ratings, but even M ratings are carefully positioned at 17 to avoid being "adult content." Apple have rejected plenty of apps for "violence" that aren't actually violent, and endless apps for being "adult content" because they happen to show a nipple or penis, regardless of context.
If Microsoft wants to strong-arm everyone into the Windows 8 format... I prefer freedom of choice.
They can make their store - compete with Apple, but why force us to go along with it completely? The start menu was in Windows 8 beta up to a point, then they pulled it completely. Start/Run/Search... start menu... gone. Yes, the floaty-tiles are the start menu... oh look, my monitor isn't touch...
Perhaps this article is a bit reaching... but do you really want companies like Microsoft to get to a point people buy it, accept it, and no one wants to balk because "hey it's Microsoft, we get it pre-installed, we're supposed to like it".
BTW: beta of Steam is made to run ala Windows 8 touch panels.
> they think it won't get on Windows 8...
Steam runs on Windows 8 right now... I am running it.
In native Metro or legacy Desktop mode?
Original Article: "In short, the desktop in Windows 8 is where MS-DOS was in Windows 3.0. This brings us to a pivotal question: if Microsoft is as committed to the new Windows 8 user interface as they were to the GUI of Windows 3.0, what will desktop support in Windows look like going forward?"
The article takes a long-term perspective: not what will run on Windows 8, but what will run on 9, 10, and whatever comes after those.
In the same way Steam has always run... on the desktop of course.
> The article takes a long-term perspective
Then it should a more plausible one.
The desktop is not going away. Visual Studio, 3dsMax, Photoshop... those will never be full screen only Metro applications.
Metro is not about killing the desktop style applications. It is about killing Win32 APIs. It is about killing 3rd-party installers that have been be bane of a stable windows platform for decades. It is about reinventing the way Windows applications are made to make the platform more reliable.
If you look at the WinRT APIs you can already see how it was designed to support windowed applications as well. This is the 1.0 API... you can bet it will be expanded to support desktop applications next.
"Metro is not about killing the desktop style applications. It is about killing Win32 APIs."
You seem a bit confused. WinRT apps are all "Modern UI" apps, and all Modern UI apps can only be distributed through the Windows Store. So if you kill win32, you kill the desktop.
I agree that the desktop isn't going anywhere. It's a superior paradigm for actual computing, developing, and multitasking. You won't see autoCAD for WinRT any time soon. But you _will_ see games for WinRT, because the xbox720 uses WinRT as I posted earlier.
I don't think we have to wait and see to perceive how that can be abused. But though I loved this article's point that the only way true innovation is set free is in an open environment (kind of a "butterfly effect" rule of breakthroughs being stifled down the road by some arbitrary rule now), it is probably the weakest point in the cautionary stance.
It's not like innovation failed to happen on the Apple store as it flourished on the open Android platform. And since Microsoft has NOT ensured they get a share of every transaction, then it can only be the control of malware, brand, and uniformity of experience they are pursuing, right?
Clearly, because that worked pretty well for Apple.
Textual is a great example. It was an awesome app, but they wanted to get into the App store. Apple demanded some rather strange things that have never been explained: a change to the default styling, and the inability to size the window below a certain width.
I've also seen several apps that would be useful rejected because Apple deemed them too simple. Why can't an app simply be very, very good at what I want it to do? Why does it need extra bells and whistles?
Thanks,
- Casey
If a customer finds themselves not being able to do what they want like they can on an open platform, they will go elsewhere. Many developers actually profit from releasing their software on these alternative stores because it's so easy to publish there. I can easily envision a windows store alternative that would actually begin to compete with the windows store itself.
They will drive more consumers to piracy.
More importantly, they will drive consumers into the hands of those who will profit from piracy.
Whatever happens, it's gonna be a great ride and I look forward to whatever windows 8 brings to the world.
You won't see many legit developers posting their products on the Win8-cydia analogue, just as you don't see them putting their wares on iOS's Cydia.
After reading through the article itself, I have to agree with Jordan. Many assumptions are being made by the author on what will and won't be accepted by the Windows Store; with those assumptions being presented not as opinion or supposition, but as simple fact. If not fact where the author is saying "this will happen" fact by omission by not saying it won't. In the end, I think that it's far too early to run around like the proverbial chickens with our heads cut off screaming how Microsoft (through Windows) is destroying the future of gaming by this choice. Thus, yes Frank, to answer your question; we as journalists are better served by reporting simply the facts and standing aside to let what happens happen.
Nothing has changed.
Windows RT will be locked-down like iOS, but of course iOS is regularly jailbroken too.
With Windows RT, I'm having some of the same concerns again and this article covers most of them very well. I really don't like the fact that Microsoft is the gatekeeper of apps for the platform. I don't like they have one-size-fits-all content rules. I don't like that people can't install apps from anything other then the Windows Store. Fundamentally, I don't like the fact that one company would be in a position to break or significantly influence my business plans - this is just too much control. Sure, iOS is exactly like this, but this is also one of the reasons I haven't developed for iOS. And yes, Windows as a platform isn't perfect but most of the time it has been the best choice for me. I don't expect the average consumer to be as concerned as a dev about these things, but I do think the perception of ownership and control of the hardware has played a large part in the rise of Android.
If Microsoft wants to seriously compete with the iPad, it needs to do more than just setting a similar price and adding a few hardware features that will likely be matched next hardware cycle. It needs to compete at a philosophical level. It needs to allow users to select multiple, different application stores which have their own content rules. Let me use Steam, or whatever else out there has the content I want to purchase. It needs to enable users so they are in control of their device, and they know it. If they lock us into a PG-rated padded room where only the content they approve is available, they will lose customers to Android.
The solution to these problems seems pretty clear to me. Allow users to select from a number of registered stores, where each store would have their own content policy. Allow users to install apps from local storage. These are both easily doable, and would address the biggest complaints I'm aware of about the new platform. Retain the open environment that has been so important to the success of Windows in the past.
I hope Microsoft changes course on this, I've been a loyal customer, developer and fan of the company for a long time and I would like to see them achieve success with their new products. I fear they may be too blinded by the success of the iPad to see their own best path.
It's nice to see many of the good things from previous favorites being done in Windows8 - but I want the extreme friendliness towards developers that HP had.
If platform makers try to make good margins on the hardware they are hated by developers who see it as limiting the installed base for them to sell into. But without those margins on the hardware you have to get a piece of the action on the software. (Apple manages to do both but scarcely anyone else does.) Would Android be worth Google's time if the Play store weren't the primary venue for software on most Android devices?
If the Microsoft desktop goes away there won't be lack of a replacement. The question is whether the replacement can be a viable business while having to take over advancement of the hardware platform on its own. And will that replacement have any numbers beyond a small hobbyist realm? Having the freedom to do whatever you want isgreat but don't be surprised if you lack an accessible platform because nobody wanted to cooperate or put some of their revenue towards keeping the platform alive.
This is bullshit. Microsoft has never made soup-to-nuts platforms before; running Linux on commodity PC hardware is no more "parasitic" than running Windows on commodity PC hardware. (Go ahead, ask IBM's OS/2 team how they feel about Windows on their platform...)
Furthermore, people running any software they want on the hardware they have paid for has been the expected model for PCs since... well, since PCs. Phones are different, driven to closed platforms by regulatory and (often theatrical) security pressure, and staying there because they figured out a way to make money from that (though even then, iOS's success was from being *more* open than the previous carrier stores, not less).
So don't try to pretend there's anything "parasitic" happening here. This is a radically new model for PCs, and one profoundly more unfair from the perspective of users and third-party developers.
Article assumes that R-rated content block on Marketplace is here to stay (although apparently everything else can change) and since for no apparent reason desktop will be gone in 20 years, we won't be able to play Elder Scrolls games (or a lot of games for that matter). So Microsoft is going to kill all R-rated games. Why? Nobody knows, but this is what we're supposed to believe.
Article also states that Microsoft blocked old (DOS and Win 3.x) applications on latest OSes. The truth is that 64-bit CPUs don't support modes required to run 16-bit code. In order to make them work MS would have to emulate the CPU. That means adding feature (software emulation of a CPU) that did not exist there in the past. But when you're clueless about something (as author seems to be), there's always an easy answer: it's Microsoft's fault.
Game industry veteran or not, FUD is just that FUD. When Apple introduced its mobile OS there were few complaints about back compatibility with, say, OS X applications yet semi-closed nature of Windows RT (completely new operating system for new form factors) suddenly is some sort of a problem. For some reason Rosetta was an OK solution from Apple but transition from 16-bit to (still supported!) 32-bit to mdoern 64-bit applications is not enough of a transition.
I mean... What is this I don't even.
Even if the R-rated content block is removed, that is far from the only problem that comes from having one arbiter decide what gets to be on the platform and what doesn't. Even if they're not killing R-rated games, you could at least say they're killing software Microsoft doesn't want on the platform. That can be a good thing (when it comes to malware and such), but also a very bad thing, as has been demonstrated several times on iOS.
Certainly, the 64-bit versions of Windows can't run 16-bit software is because the hardware doesn't support it, but at the same time, they could have integrated an emulator in the OS to keep supporting those. The reason they didn't is because they didn't it consider it necessary, or at least not worth the effort. The chance that supporting the desktop will one day be considered not worth the effort or worse, interfering with the direction Microsoft wants to take the platform is still very real.
iOS never pretended to be MacOS (though I believe it's built on the same base, at least), so it makes sense that people didn't complain about MacOS software being incompatible with iOS. Furthermore, when iOS was introduced, it was considered an OS for cellphones and media players, which traditionally weren't open devices. People are complaining about that now, though.
That being said, my guess is that the closed ecosystem is fundamentally driven by the limitations of ARM processors -- in this case, the Surface ARM processor, its battery life, and the nature of Windows. Third-party apps, if left uncontrolled, will bring the Surface to a screeching halt (perhaps literally). It seems like MS is short-sighted here, but, for now at least, they want their foot in the door of this (to them, and me) multi-touch "world". And it is indeed, a new world of computing. Touch opens up an incredible number of new doors. Portability, the wireless Internet, and a great platform (I hope Surface becomes that -- otherwise I'm wasting my 600 bucks) is the future. Apple has a massive lead on this. Android, from what I hear (and I could be completely wrong) is just too buggy for novices. Surface, I think, is intended for people like me: new to tablets and touch, who would love a huge selection of 3rd-party apps, but fear that the hardware is somewhat primitive and mainly want apps that I know will work seamlessly. I love PCs and the zillions of apps for them. But if my hardware can't run them seamlessly, I will defer to the hardware vendor. I want my software to work seamlessly. And for an ARM tablet, apparently, this goal is often not met with uncontrolled apps.
The touch centric approach is never going to replace content creators needs for a desktop interface so I don't believe the desktop will be removed, but I do believe it will be controlled more strictly in the future under the guise of adding security, safety, etc.
Also I feel that the M-rated issue is irrelevant. When everyone is required to have a Microsoft Account to access Windows they can build in age restriction stuff in the future. I don't think Microsoft is seriously intending to block all adult themed software to the exclusion of the video and gaming industry, its just not their focus for this generation. They just want simple, casual games/apps that are easy and friendly for everyone.
People seem to forget the past so easily.. you know the days when Microsoft outright stole others ideas and software. And now they want us to willingly give THEM control over what we can and cannot release or even write or create? Are you so willing to jump on the censorship bandwagon here?
Sure maybe for the moment there is an 'avenue' that still allows us to release our own products on Microsoft Windows. But you can dam well bet that if enough devs adopt Microsoft's gameplan, Windows 9 will force ALL of us to do their bidding.
But that's fine...get out of the programming industry, more work for me. I don't need ideologues clogging up the works when I'm trying to get freelance work. I'll enjoy continuing my programming career in a growth industry while you struggle to find a decent job.
1) The Windows 8 tile interface is not able to handle complex applications like Photoshop and cannot handle business desktop users in general. Those users matter to Microsoft and that means the desktop isn't going to disappear
2) Third-party apps still install the same way they installed in Windows 7 and business customers will expect that.
3) The Windows app store is developing while looking at the iOS App Store and Google's app store. The iOS App Store is heavily curated and even that store has fraudulent applications get through (fingerprint reader anyone?) while the Google app store is computer-curated and has lots of questionable applications. Microsoft will have to figure out where they stand and if there are additional mechanics they will allow such as certified apps that are managed by the store but distributed independently. Right now, Microsoft created a Windows app store for "mom & pop" so it tries to protect that demographic and provide them with what they might need. Eventually, there will be changes, possibly changes the writer will welcome.
4) A fully locked down Windows environment would result in at least some investigations from European and American anti-trust regulators. Microsoft knows that and knows that they to tread carefully.
If we accept Microsoft are taking the Apple App Store route for the Windows 8 ecosystem, the Apple and Android precedents show that they’ll get away with it, for now at least. It lets them clean up their act, dispelling the reason people move to other platforms; that of viruses and malware. Without end users installing software from any source, giving full access to the PC, the closed model helps less-technical users from getting themselves into trouble.
Let’s assume Windows Store-only software is here to stay. In this model, there are parallels with other industries in the same boat – movies and music also have classifications which Microsoft may want to lock out from the Store. But if you split content from the player, and shift the ‘tainted content’ away from what you’re trying to get classified and accepted into the ecosystem, perhaps there’s a way forward.
There are adult movies, songs with explicit lyrics, and a good proportion of websites are intended for adults. But this doesn’t get the player applications banned – media player apps, radio streaming apps, web browsers. With music, 7digital has a music store for Windows 8. Radio players give access to arbitrary streams.
If the game engine _is_ the app, certified to be malware free, and itself free of adult content, then content to play in the app can be played within it, either downloaded or loaded from local storage.
Perhaps the extreme approach is OnLive, but for local hardware gaming why not have say an Unreal Engine app, or studio specific game engine, which would allow the user to play their game content – a package of media, gameplay, rules, definitions but no executable code. Portable to any platform with the engine App. Is the logical separation of code and content the way forward?
So lets get real, while microsoft may in fact create a apple like market place for its toy-like RT tablets, real machines running real windows OS cannot and will not ever be ask to summit to such nonsense. Its open platform is the reason windows runs the world.
Hence the enterprise distribution program. This is actually a model a lot of ESPs want because it makes their customers even more tied to their services, similar to how the whole thing makes ordinary users more tied to Microsoft.
(And actually, on the iOS App Store, there's a lot of things in the store that just act as a client for some business SaaS, and Apple approves them, and it's not a problem.)
And ESPs as a whole have been moving their development to the web for years now, again because it gives them more control, and reduces porting/distribution requirements between different PC OSs and different mobile platforms.
But the whole thing is irrelevant to game development.
Again, microsoft will never close off it open platform, its what built it, and what runs the world. For RT and silly crap like games for RT, they may, but that is of no consequence.
In effect this also opened up the software market and relegated all the other players to the shadows as pointed out in this very good article.
To attempt to follow the Apple model (a closed system) here is surely a massive mistake on the desktop; it merely takes us back 30 years.
This of course will provide an opportunity for another operating system on the desktop to get its foot in the door.
Only an accountant (or CEO with an IQ of 30) could have devised such a road-path which historically is a known slow car crash.
There’s too many marketing guru’s at Microsoft and not enough people with their feet on the shop floor.
As a case in point, I use a single AMD installer for my drivers on all three of my home OS/es: 8 preview | Vista & Server 2008 R2 and can game on them all. (8 is actually fastest on average. surprisingly server and vista swap times depending on the title!)
Thirdly, you make the comparison between the pairing of MS-DOS to Windows and the pairing of Windows Now to Windows Future. This is not an applicable comparison by any stretch of the imagination, and you actually make the distinction yourself, by stating that your concerns about the future are about control and publishing mechanisms, including curatorship by the OS owner, whereas the move from DOS to Windows was about the underlying architecture and the (quite frankly rubbish and not correctly implemented (look at any good science book or even Wiki' on what makes a true OS - NT was MS' first)) multi-tasking and shared driver capability.
What I will say though, is that despite this I enjoyed the piece, and think that we do have to keep pushing Microsoft on this, because even though I do not believe desktop is going anywhere I am often wrong, and if we don't make a fuss, it (open deployment capability) will go.
I would also like to say that (IMO) we, as a development and content creation community do not want MS to lose it's dominance or part dominance of the sector. Wintel, despite it's faults, pushed the frontiers (HW & SW) for us, for a long time, and I cannot see how anyone else can affect a similar pushing. Apple are often content to lie way behind the hardware curve and sell "product", and consoles are too cycular(???). This is important, because MS are losing, and Intel with them, and we need them to get back in the game big style. For this reason, I am hoping that Windows 8 is a huge success across the board, and I for one think that as long as that desktop is left open that Windows 8 is almost certainly going to be the best platform to develop and support on. (I still love Visual Studio over all other IDEs for one thing, although the preview edition on Windows 8 is a step backward I think)
Having read the appendices, you cover some of these points anyway :-)
Absolutely no thought on their part has gone into the potential chilling effect on innovation or how Windows' openness has potentially been the one thing that's kept users and developers from completely abandoning it. They're angry at MS for losing customers to Apple, and their response is, "Well, be more like Apple, then!"
You said "Steam runs on Windows 8 right now... along with every other Windows program on the planet."
"Nothing has changed. "
I am sorry but you are WRONG! Diptrace does not run on Windows 8. There are other programs that will not run on Win8, but we really only need the one example to disprove your comment.
Sure, it would be difficult. There would be new things to learn in the transition and some skills that belong to the older-style environments would no longer be useful. But honestly, did you get into software development expecting that you could just lie back and stop learning?
As it stands now, we don't really have an alternative platform to develop on if Windows becomes completely closed off. We'd be forced to choose between developing what we want and having limited exposure or getting large amounts of exposure at the cost of being constrained to a certain development style.
That said, I do like there being some kind of standard in which our software must adhere to. Certification requirements regarding software compatibility and stability, the saving and loading of content, and how content is displayed are all good things. I can't tell you the number of times I've told a developer that something was a bad idea and that it'd come back to bite them in the ass later and lo and behold, it did.
If Microsoft is intent on having a submission process for developers to use the new features of Windows 8, I want it to be more akin to Games For Windows and less like Games For Windows LIVE.
There are two (2!) different platforms - both software and hardware - under the name of Windows 8.
First is a Windows 8 RT Edition, designed specifically for use on ARM-based devices, such as tablets and smartphones. On that market there is Apple with their iPad, iPhone and iPod devices, and Google with their Android devices. Apple use the same approach for app and games distribution which Microsoft using with Windows 8 RT - premoderated, closed site, on which your application appears only if it get approved by a team of experts and testers. Why no one screams about horrific Apple which killing game industry denying its users the right to play Skyrim and other great games? iOS developers has the same amount of troubles and almost the same troubles porting their games to iOS from any other platform.
And second platform is Windows 8 Home and Pro editions which are specifically designed to replace Windows 7 on workstations. This replacement works fine with Modern UI and Classic UI apps so anyone can play Skyrim on a gaming station under Windows 8.
Now, about the fuss... Valve, EA and many others complain only about one thing - that Microsoft cuts them off their "royal right to sell games they didn't make for whatever price they want". Steam and Origin both works fine on Windows 8, tested myself, and so are the games that distributed via these networks.
Although I would welcome a revival of Linux Gaming, from a User and developer point of view :)
As a developer, I've been doing mostly OpenGL based development anyhow with Android, iOS, OSX and Linux - I would love to see Linux gaming make some headway here also. Perhaps we'll see a Steam Linux distro in the future.
I honestly don't believe that Microsoft sees "hardcore" PC gaming as a community they want to support - Tablet gaming, certainly - they've made that clear. But can we blame them? The PC gaming sections at local Best Buys, Futureshop and EB Games, are shrinking rapidly and are often shoved into a corner as more and more PC gamers use digital distribution channels like Steam or Origin to obtain their games. The trouble is, Microsoft isn't offering something like Steam, it's instead trying to mimic Google Play and Apple's App Store. 'Hardcore' gaming on Windows 8 seems like an afterthought.
My prediction is that 'hardcore' gamers won't be gaming on a Microsoft OS in 2032.