News - Valve says a "catastrophe" and Blizzard says "not awesome"

[TheAnimus]

This all needs to be put in perspective, the people complaining here are;

Valve - The company that changed its T&Cs forcing developers to release their DLC on their store and then taking a 30% cut for the privilege
Blizzard - The company that forced a single player game online so that they could then charge its customers for the privilege of selling their items for real money.

The 30% model was originally pioneered by Valve with the Steam store then adopted by Apple before being adopted by MS. Also Gabe made these comments at a Google sponsored event.

Nice first post, explains my views on Valve's comments.

However I will say I dislike the idea of having only one channel for any platform. I wish our EU overloards would look at something like this, rather than the bundling of windows media player.

[Nikumba]

I wonder if the EU will have something to say about this latest approach by MS. They forced them to unbundle IE etc.

Why do you wonder if the EU will say something about this?

Also didn't game say the PS3 was crap and HL episodes every 6 months? While he maybe a gaming god I do not believe everything he says.

Kimbie

[Lord Midas]

The real kicker is the 2 flavours of Win8 which are mutally exclusive... RT and Pro. Pointless.

[Nikumba]

The real kicker is the 2 flavours of Win8 which are mutally exclusive... RT and Pro. Pointless.

The RT is only for ARM processors, but Metro apps should still work with a recompile, so not really sure what you are getting at.

[TheAnimus]

The RT is only for ARM processors, but Metro apps should still work with a recompile, so not really sure what you are getting at.

Or if you use the excellent c# language or any other .Net CLR targetted, there is no difference.

Or if you use the 'HTML5' method of making a Metro App.

[directhex]

Or if you use the excellent c# language or any other .Net CLR targetted, there is no difference.

Here's some delightful naming from Microsoft:

WinRT is the new runtime which Metro apps run on. It's sort of .NET, but not quite. Subset here, superset there, different requirements and limitations. You can't write .NET apps for Metro, and there's no .NET API for it... but your app may run on WinRT with little or no modifications, and you can write C# for WinRT.

WinRT is, of course, nothing to do with Windows RT. Although WinRT apps can run on Windows RT. Wheee!!!

This would be an example of the insanity introduced with Windows 8 - you can't submit an XNA game to the Windows 8 app store, because XNA requires .NET, and you can't submit .NET apps (only Metro-aware WinRT apps). And there's no official port of XNA to WinRT, and real XNA uses namespaces not permitted in WinRT so you can't do that either. So as it stands, the only way to write an XNA game and sell it on Windows 8 is to port it to WinRT, and the new WinRT port of MonoGame (FOSS implementation of XNA). There are MonoGame games in the Windows 8 app store, but no XNA ones. Wheeee!!! Oh, and once again, your WinRT games may run on Windows RT, but also may not.

[Biscuit]

Here's some delightful naming from Microsoft:

WinRT is the new runtime which Metro apps run on. It's sort of .NET, but not quite. Subset here, superset there, different requirements and limitations. You can't write .NET apps for Metro, and there's no .NET API for it... but your app may run on WinRT with little or no modifications, and you can write C# for WinRT.

WinRT is, of course, nothing to do with Windows RT. Although WinRT apps can run on Windows RT. Wheee!!!

This would be an example of the insanity introduced with Windows 8 - you can't submit an XNA game to the Windows 8 app store, because XNA requires .NET, and you can't submit .NET apps (only Metro-aware WinRT apps). And there's no official port of XNA to WinRT, and real XNA uses namespaces not permitted in WinRT so you can't do that either. So as it stands, the only way to write an XNA game and sell it on Windows 8 is to port it to WinRT, and the new WinRT port of MonoGame (FOSS implementation of XNA). There are MonoGame games in the Windows 8 app store, but no XNA ones. Wheeee!!! Oh, and once again, your WinRT games may run on Windows RT, but also may not.

I read that 3 times and i still dont get it

[directhex]

I read that 3 times and i still dont get it

Sounds like you got it perfectly, sadly.

[dangel]

This is far clearer:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33642_7...rt-anyway-faq/

But yes, it's confusing.

[Jingee]

well time for a Valve_OS then Gabe

Or the mythical Steam Box.

[Roobubba]

Developers do have options. Don't produce on windows 8 and concentrate on consoles and Linux. I only use windows so I can play the games I want - if I could play them on Linux I would never buy windows again (or any Microsoft package for that matter)

Completely agree, same here. I have to use Apples for work, but I hate them - slow expensive and completely unreliable. My windows machine at home puts them to shame for a fraction of the cost, but I would much rather be running a decent linux distro instead. Surely it's coming... more and more people seem to be using Linux these days as they realise it's not necessarily the set-up horror it once was for non-specialists.

[nibbler]

Bit of a noob question but here goes: on windows 8 pro will it still be possible to run steam and download games from it? If it is then I don't care at all about this stuff. It's just going to be difficult for people to publish games on the marketplace?

[aidanjt]

Bit of a noob question but here goes: on windows 8 pro will it still be possible to run steam and download games from it? If it is then I don't care at all about this stuff. It's just going to be difficult for people to publish games on the marketplace?

Windows 8 Home, too. The problem isn't what Windows 8 is capable of doing. The problem is with the direction Microsoft is taking.

[iiee]

but apple has been like that for ages and these company's have wasted no time in getting their games out on mac. so I don't understand what they are complaining about.
although Microsoft are doing themselves no favours by charging 30% on a platform no one wants to develop on as it is. they should drop it 20% and give out copy's of RT for free to OEMs so they can compete on a fair playing field. if and when windows RT picks up maybe then look at making money from it. if Microsoft don't stop the rot soon they will find themselves completely out of the race.

Yes but apple allows for steam to exist outside its app store platform (currently) microsoft is seemingly seeking a total lockout on the metro apis. This could put steam at a distinct disadvantage in terms of usability in windows 8. Honestly though i have no idea how microsoft thinks they are going to get this through the EU competition courts who love bashing american tech monopolies (no complaints from me they need bashing but so do some european companies). Regardless of this though a third desktop/laptop environment would be great but i prefer the google/old microsoft level playing field model to the iphone/new microsoft model.

[dangel]

Bit of a noob question but here goes: on windows 8 pro will it still be possible to run steam and download games from it? If it is then I don't care at all about this stuff. It's just going to be difficult for people to publish games on the marketplace?

8 will run any program you like - and it's possible to sideload metro apps outside of the store anyway with a simple command line. The Win RT platform is more like iOS - it's far more restrictive - but the Win 8 desktop platform is not. Seeing as iOS has alternate stores I don't see why the same won't happen for Windows RT with or without MS' blessing. If you're on the desktop then you can quite happily "not care about this stuff" especially if you're not interested in using metro apps anyway. Steam installs and works just fine.

[Zeven]

So Michael Larabel was right when he reported this earlier in the year. Is it safe to say that Gabe's support for Linux is a consequence of him hating Windows 8?