Tim Sweeney: Devs must oppose Microsoft Windows 10 UWP

[Tabbykatze]

Yet Microsoft cannot take control or else they lose pretty much all their enterprise customers......which is where the majority of their profit comes from. So this does not compute and I have yet to hear a decent counter to the point.

The same applies to why they won't look at your data. The moment they do, any self-respecting company will drop Microsoft products like the proverbial hot potatoes.

UWP will be the same. If they take control away from devs, devs won't use it - simples.

That's really what it boils down to.

Apple forced users to change, Samsung and Google forced users to change how they use their devices. A company will always change things to prevent stagnation. MUI was a change, it wasn't well received so they changed again, they didn't force it down your screaming throat and lock you out of your OS if you used the reskinner...

[Saracen]

Yet Microsoft cannot take control or else they lose pretty much all their enterprise customers......which is where the majority of their profit comes from. So this does not compute and I have yet to hear a decent counter to the point.

The same applies to why they won't look at your data. The moment they do, any self-respecting company will drop Microsoft products like the proverbial hot potatoes.

UWP will be the same. If they take control away from devs, devs won't use it - simples.

They didn't force enterprise versions to auto-update, though, did they? Everybody else got no choice, beyond a modest ability to defer, and even tbat only after a backlash. It is not beyond the wit of man, or MS devs, to adopt the same approach to other aspects. It's also done bit at a time, step by step, often with carrot and stick. Or perhaps, more like a drug dealer offering free samples until the user is addicted.

Either way, time will tell won't it?

[Ttaskmaster]

Why are people against a 1 for all system if it's provided by Microsoft when you have Apple and Google doing similar/same.

Because Apple and Google suck...?
Just hazarding a guess, there.

I'm not entirely sure I agree with this sentiment, but even if it is, I don't think the correct means of providing that backlash is to say "Wah wah, it's not fair, Microsoft are developing Windows how they want it to be, someone make them stoooop!"

It's the correct sentiment, essentially - They should be dev'ing Windows how WE want it, because we're the ones that have to use it, no?
For that exact reason, I do not use Linux, MacOS or any of the others - Because Win does what want, how I want it.

Yet Microsoft cannot take control or else they lose pretty much all their enterprise customers......which is where the majority of their profit comes from. So this does not compute and I have yet to hear a decent counter to the point.

A large number of companies cannot afford to keep swapping around.
We only recently got Windows 7 at work and we must have over 20,000 PCs, plus any number of servers and whatever else, that all requires MS stuff... Don't even ask about the phones. On top of that, we're not really allowed to make massive profits, so any upgrades we're forced into will be paid from money we take off the vast majority of YOU lot... and it's not as if another, richer company can just sweep in, buy us out and take all our business away with a quick 'cash injection', either!
I understand we even ran trials to see if we could swap to Mac or Linux, a couple of times... Almost every process would hard-crash as if Y2K had been everything people thought it would be!!

We (and you) are stuck with MS.

[Corky34]

Yet it's interesting how he doesn't rail against Apple's walled garden...

Would that be the same Apple that has less than a 4% market share of gaming PCs?

No one has to release games or apps on UWP. There are plenty of other ways to deploy your software....in fact many would argue that there are already too many ways!

Today there is but who knows what tomorrow may bring, apparently UWP is more secure and is obviously going to be the focus of development going forward, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that Microsoft may slowly obfuscate access to win32, for security reason or some such, it's also not beyond the realms of possibility that their sp..err...telemetry shows them that UWP is used more than win32 binaries so they're going to remove it.

Yet Microsoft cannot take control or else they lose pretty much all their enterprise customers......which is where the majority of their profit comes from. So this does not compute and I have yet to hear a decent counter to the point.

The same applies to why they won't look at your data. The moment they do, any self-respecting company will drop Microsoft products like the proverbial hot potatoes.

UWP will be the same. If they take control away from devs, devs won't use it - simples.

It won't be a moment thing (IMO), it will be a slowly slowly catchy monkey thing.

[YazX]

agreed, thats why i bought ROTTR from steam, and if GOW Ultimate didn't leave MS Store and make it to steam then they will lose alot of money since most of people don't like the new windows store crap they made.

either ways, MS has always to screw up one way or another, they screwed up in win8 and rectified the situation now, now they are screwing up on the store end and will come back next year rectifying the situation, not sure why to risk it from the first place, stupid decisions by stupid novice people.

[LSG501]

maybe it's me but I don't have an issue with MS doing this with games...most games are already heading down a 'day one patch' so making it download only via a unified and 'secure' store makes sense. As said there was no complaints about Apple doing this on multiple platforms yet when MS who is arguably the major desktop player for games comes up with it they all start moaning. It would also in theory remove the issue of pirate games...

I do find it comical that Sweeney is trying to tell MS, the OS producer, how to run their business when without the OS they themselves wouldn't really have a business. It's not like they can't make stuff more readily supported in Linux or even OS-X... but that would of course mean getting decent drivers etc done and I'm sure they don't want to do that as it would mean spending some of their own money. Yes I know there's steam OS but it's not exactly that great from what I've seen.

I will say I don't want it with 'professional' programs though as I'd hate to get things like 3DS Max or Adobe software via that approach, they're enough of a rip off already.

[scaryjim]

Would that be the same Apple that has less than a 4% market share of gaming PCs?

Yes, and that's my point. He doesn't rail against Apple's walled garden because there's no real risk of it impinging on his profits. Let's not make him out to be some heroic freedom fighter pushing for greater openness in technology: he's doing this because he views it as a threat to his bottom line. He may also be making some important points about openness of technology, but again, the right response there is to work with other like-minded people towards an open platform for PC gaming. Not to complain that a company is moving in its own direction in an attempt to maximise its profits in a changing technological world.

[spacein_vader]

Yes, and that's my point. He doesn't rail against Apple's walled garden because there's no real risk of it impinging on his profits. Let's not make him out to be some heroic freedom fighter pushing for greater openness in technology: he's doing this because he views it as a threat to his bottom line. He may also be making some important points about openness of technology, but again, the right response there is to work with other like-minded people towards an open platform for PC gaming. Not to complain that a company is moving in its own direction in an attempt to maximise its profits in a changing technological world.

Apples walled garden ISN'T in the area it has 4% of gaming PCs though. As I understand it anyone can develop & software however they like on OS X. Apple & Googles walled gardens have been accepted because they were new platforms. Nobody knew any different. Equally nobody cared when MS did the same on its phone systems.

My own feeling is that any devs not in MS pocket will carry on designing games & other software on the .EXE model.

[BroDragon]

The problem with Microsoft's direction is that they want all games to run through the Windows Compositing Engine which will have a dramatic effect on how games function. It forces borderless windowed mode, forces V-sync on, limits refresh to 60fps with no G-Sync or FreeSync, sandboxes the .exe and .ini files which prevents overlays such as FRAPS, MSI Afterburner/RivaTuner and mods from functioning. Even if they can buy developers cooperation, gamers will rebel and look to other APIs such as Vulcan. I don't know why Microsoft repeatedly fails to understand that the way to run a successful business is to find out what users like and want and provide for it. Do NOT buy games from the Windows Store until Microsoft gets it's act together.

[Tabbykatze]

The problem with Microsoft's direction is that they want all games to run through the Windows Compositing Engine which will have a dramatic effect on how games function. It forces borderless windowed mode, forces V-sync on, limits refresh to 60fps with no G-Sync or FreeSync, sandboxes the .exe and .ini files which prevents overlays such as FRAPS, MSI Afterburner/RivaTuner and mods from functioning. Even if they can buy developers cooperation, gamers will rebel and look to other APIs such as Vulcan. I don't know why Microsoft repeatedly fails to understand that the way to run a successful business is to find out what users like and want and provide for it. Do NOT buy games from the Windows Store until Microsoft gets it's act together.

Do you have a sauce for that? Or is this extrapolation from the uwp documentation

[Corky34]

I do find it comical that Sweeney is trying to tell MS, the OS producer, how to run their business when without the OS they themselves wouldn't really have a business.

Yea what was he thinking, that's like complaining about the government that's running the country instead of just emigrating.

Yes, and that's my point. He doesn't rail against Apple's walled garden because ...

So he should just shut up and not voice his concerns, the day that people can't speak out against changes that effect them is a sad day indeed.

[jag272]

Do you have a sauce for that? Or is this extrapolation from the uwp documentation

I believe the source everyone is referring to is this. I will just quote my post in the other thread rather than rewrite it all.

I happened to go searching myself after seeing this comment and seem to have found the source.

It seems to be a fairly well written article, but not a site I regularly read so unsure about credibility.

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/General...icrosoft-Store

From my understanding the modding being unavailable etc is infact MS Store only due to the game being encrypted. However, depending on how you build your game under DX12, the lack of hooks for FRAPS etc appears to be a very really thing under WDDM 2.0, as I get the impression each game effectively runs in it's own sandbox, can be read but not written to. This should in theory be easy enough to for the likes of FRAPS etc to adjust to, its just a question of say, are framerate readings as accurate if theyre trying to read a different "layer" sandbox, as opposed to pulling the statistics directly from the game. MS are apparently heavily pushing towards the use of WDDM 2.0 if the article is to be believed, doesn't mean you can't not use it though. But theres positives and negatives to using it, as with anything.

[LSG501]

They didn't force enterprise versions to auto-update, though, did they? Everybody else got no choice, beyond a modest ability to defer, and even that only after a backlash. It is not beyond the wit of man, or MS devs, to adopt the same approach to other aspects. It's also done bit at a time, step by step, often with carrot and stick. Or perhaps, more like a drug dealer offering free samples until the user is addicted.

Pro users can update when they want too and adjust the 'reboot on updates', they just need to play around with group policies which isn't in home version... I get alerted to updates but then can chose when I install them, it's not being deferred from what I can see, I've also stopped it from automatically rebooting. Admittedly there's still room for improvement in selecting individual updates to update or not update because that's limited by the app they released but it's not as bad as it could be.

Yea what was he thinking, that's like complaining about the government that's running the country instead of just emigrating.

well technically you can just emigrate 'freely' within the EU if you're not happy, going elsewhere might be a bit more tricky but the option is there if you're willing to adapt at your own expense (learn the lingo etc) - note it costs money like I said earlier. We also have the choice of voting on a different person in charge (ie change the OS). Having said that the government isn't running a profitable business (no matter who's in charge) and they've just got a massive hole where our money is leaking out, they've just plugged it in the room where their expenses/wages are kept. MS is still making money so must be doing something right

So he should just shut up and not voice his concerns, the day that people can't speak out against changes that effect them is a sad day indeed.

No but he's trying to get people 'angry' over what isn't really a big issue (IMO) for the developers, it's about money as usual. As said earlier this store idea would actually help them in that it would open up to more than one platform without any additional work (outside of initial code changes) and would in theory reduce piracy. Also as far as I can see there's nothing stopping them from continuing as usual and creating a normal program, he sounds more like he just wants access to the 'good bits', without actually using the store ... ie wants all the benefits of using the new platform without paying MS

The Epic Games co-founder requests that Microsoft opens up the PC UWP so that "top third-party games and signature applications that define the PC experience," can find a place in the Microsoft Store.

From a money side of things the only person who's going to get screwed there is the buyer, prices will go up (again), it's not like they're anywhere near as cheap as they used to be, so the dev's won't lose any profit, hell they'll likely make more profit, and I'm sure there will be some very strict restrictions over how many users can use the game etc. He hasn't paid to develop the OS, he's making his money from using someone elses work, if you use someone elses work to make money then you either need to adapt (use the new platform) or do something differently (invest in linux) if they decide to change their product.

Mind you I can also see Saracens view in that this may be another way to tie users into windows 10 and as such is a bit concerning about what the future plans of win 10 are.

He also hasn't complained about iOS which has the same restrictions on what is arguably the most dominant mobile platform but is limited to just iOS devices, you can't even port them 'easily' to another os, well that's the excuse devs seem to use with the lack of windows/android versions lol. With the MS one you're getting 6 platforms, 3 of which are all either getting good reviews (holo lens) or are pretty well respected (desktop, xbox). You can't even install on iOS without using the store so his argument about opening up windows UWP is kind of flawed as most 'mobile' dev's will happily sell their soul to Apple.

[Luke7]

All the devs should threaten jump ship to another OS.

[Corky34]

well technically you can just emigrate 'freely' within the EU if you're not happy, going elsewhere might be a bit more tricky but the option is there if you're willing to adapt at your own expense (learn the lingo etc) - note it costs money like I said earlier. We also have the choice of voting on a different person in charge (ie change the OS). Having said that the government isn't running a profitable business (no matter who's in charge) and they've just got a massive hole where our money is leaking out, they've just plugged it in the room where their expenses/wages are kept. MS is still making money so must be doing something right

Emigrating and voting are actions you take after voicing your displeasure, no?

Technically they're not making money from their OS's, Windows is Microsoft's 4th biggest earner bringing in just over 10% of their revenue from OEM partners, commercial sales don't even register high enough to warrant reporting.

No but he's trying to get people 'angry' over what isn't really a big issue (IMO) for the developers, it's about money as usual. As said earlier this store idea would actually help them in that it would open up to more than one platform without any additional work (outside of initial code changes) and would in theory reduce piracy. Also as far as I can see there's nothing stopping them from continuing as usual and creating a normal program, he sounds more like he just wants access to the 'good bits', without actually using the store ... ie wants all the benefits of using the new platform without paying MS

Well it seem to be a big enough issue for Valve to invest the time and money into developing their own OS and voice very similar displeasure of the direction Microsoft seems to be heading, yes it's about money but i feel that's over simplifying the issue.

Yes the store may actually help them but at what cost? If you cede all control of your program to a third party is that a price worth paying, if Steam forced developers to use Valve's propitiatory API, developer tools, and files would they be so willing to develop under such restrictions.

We also don't know how much longer Microsoft are going to support win32, it's highly probable that going forward Microsoft is going to focus on UWP, is that going to be at the cost of win32, are they going to obfuscate being able to run win32 programs much in the same way as Android does, if or when UWP becomes more popular than the now neglected and hidden win32 binaries are Microsoft going to start removing the now outdated and insecure win32?

He hasn't paid to develop the OS, he's making his money from using someone elses work, if you use someone elses work to make money then you either need to adapt (use the new platform) or do something differently (invest in linux) if they decide to change their product.

Or maybe voice your concerns before going for the nuclear option.

He also hasn't complained about iOS which has the same restrictions on what is arguably the most dominant mobile platform but is limited to just iOS devices, you can't even port them 'easily' to another os, well that's the excuse devs seem to use with the lack of windows/android versions lol. With the MS one you're getting 6 platforms, 3 of which are all either getting good reviews (holo lens) or are pretty well respected (desktop, xbox). You can't even install on iOS without using the store so his argument about opening up windows UWP is kind of flawed as most 'mobile' dev's will happily sell their soul to Apple.

Maybe because he doesn't develop software for iOS and because up until now there was an easy way to avoid that particular walled garden.

Also you not getting 6 platforms with UWP, you're getting a single platform that runs on 6 devices, that's a very different kettle of fish.

[Saracen]

Pro users can update when they want too and adjust the 'reboot on updates', they just need to play around with group policies which isn't in home version... I get alerted to updates but then can chose when I install them, it's not being deferred from what I can see, I've also stopped it from automatically rebooting. Admittedly there's still room for improvement in selecting individual updates to update or not update because that's limited by the app they released but it's not as bad as it could be.

.....

Well, correct me if I'm wrong .... and I could be, as I gaven't kept on top if Win10 evolution since I dumped it.

As I understand the Pro option, it allows you to "defer" not decline an update. Which means you still get it, whether you want it or not? Yes?

Now suppose I have legacy hardware, or software (and I have some of both). Suppose some proposed update renders some such inoperable? It's happened to me in the past with Windows, which is WHY some of my machines are still running XP.

Does it really help me much if the update renders that hardware or software unusable tonight, or next month, because I deferred it?

Being able to defer is an improvement, and controlling reboot options dertainly is, but it doesn't alter the FACT that MS have grabbed control over what is, or is not, installed on my desktop machines, and tried to sweeten the pot by begrudgingly, after a backlash, giving back a little control over precisely when.

It's about as frienly an act as being carjacked, robbed of my new Merc (if I had one), my wallet, watch and all clothes except my underwear, and then the thief taking pity on me and giving me back enough of my own money for the bus fare home. And expecting gratitude for it

Mind you I can also see Saracens view in that this may be another way to tie users into windows 10 and as such is a bit concerning about what the future plans of win 10 are..

That's my real bugbear with MS.

It's not any one thing. It's the pattern.

For instance, the Win8 MUI thing and Start button. It irritated intensely, but it's easy enough to get around. It was also MS's initial stance that "they" couldn't give users the option to select the old UI because Metro/MUI was 'integral'. Then, of course, when third parties developed ways round it, for free, in apparently about 5 minutes, it was "oh".

The REALLY irritating thing, therefore, was not what they did with Start button but the arrogance of mindset betrayed by HOW they did it. Now, having ceded control over updates, MS can alter or amend OS functions, at will, to prevent any future steps to get around their decisions whether we like it or not. Contrast that to the Linux mindset that allows me to pick the entire GUI if I wish to.