Anilrgowda

December 7, 2006 - Microsoft stopped by the office today to give us a quick update on the progress being made with Windows Vista as well as chat a bit about the future of PC gaming and how they're hoping to help advance its popularity with gamers. Most of what we were shown today were features that we've seen before. Still, it's hard not to be happy with the Parental Controls system for all of Vista including web browsing, games, and timers for computer use. The games explorer still looks like a much more friendly place to find your games than it ever has been on Windows previously including standard storage for save games and the ability to load up a save game from the desktop. The Games Explorer will also include whatever descriptors publishers would like to include along with performance ratings which will hopefully give gamers a better clue how well the game will run on their PC.

One of the big pushes for Vista and gaming is the inclusion of the DirectX 10, which should add a lot of new options for developers when programming. While there aren't a ton of games being released in 2007 for DirectX 10 (Vista is built on DirectX 9 architecture so DX9 games are still very much supported) the few that are could possibly be some pretty big titles. Games like Crysis, Hellgate: London, and Age of Conan will lead the charge into a new graphical horizon. We'll get the chance to check out more of these titles running using DX10 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas in early January.




Hellgate: London
As most PC gamers will know, PC games have been without a cohesive push since their inception. Windows has been the default gaming platform for PC games, but now Microsoft is making that official by including the Games for Windows branding that should help to create an actual product and get some console gamers to consider PCs as a more viable option. To this effort, the Games for Windows brand will sit on a stripe across all of the PC game boxes that are partners with the effort. While MS isn't going to charge a fee to evaluate PC games or have any real kind of exclusion policy, they will be requiring certain features. Games for Windows games need to include:


Games Explorer support
Parental controls
Compatibility with the Xbox 360 controller (where applicable)
Widescreen support
64-bit processor support
Multi-core and multi-threading support
Media Center support (Premium and Ultimate Vista packages ship with Media Center)

Microsoft is also hoping it can help pave the way by teaching better installation procedures for Windows Vista so people can get into games and play quicker. Halo 2 will even be able to play from disc so that gamers can stream the game and play while it's installing in the background. We'll have to wait and see how well this feature works but it's an interesting proposition.

The Games for Windows push is already starting to push into stores. Microsoft reports increased sales of games in the stores that have been given more attention and they're hoping that a similar result comes from more marketing efforts. Part of the issue is that it's actually representatives from Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo that set up many of the displays you see in software retailers. With the Games for Windows brand, Microsoft intends to send more representatives to set up Games for Windows sections along with test machines in store so that players can try out some of the newest titles as they can with consoles. This presents more of a challenge with increases in technology, updates, and so on. The cost of such an effort is going to be considerable, but MS is banking that it'll be worth the effort.


Crysis
Lastly, we chatted a bit about the possibilities for Live! Anywhere, which will include the PC and Mobile versions of Xbox Live!. Besides the great new addition of cross platform capabilities, demonstrated most notably by Shadowrun which will allow PC and Xbox 360 players to participate in the same online match, Live! Anywhere should eventually create quite the buzz in the realm of game matching and multiplayer services. While services like Gamespy and Xfire are popular today, it's easy to imagine that many developers will just choose to come over to Live! especially in the cases where they're already developing a game for Xbox 360. Should the PC version of Live! (it will be a bit different to fit the inputs and participating audience) be as easy to use as its Xbox counterpart, Microsoft could become a very, very successful player in online gaming.

Microsoft also dropped off a complete build of Windows Vista today which we'll be taking the time to play around with before the final product ships to consumers at the end of January. There's still working with manufacturers of hardware to make sure everything is functioning properly, but the end of development is very close now. We're sincerely hoping that Vista turns out to be as handy for gaming as MS has promised, but it's hard to imagine that it'll be all flowers and kittens at launch. Still, the possibilities are bright for PC gaming now that Microsoft has decided to throw their weight into creating a viable platform for gaming.

Look for more updates about Vista, DirectX 10, Live! Anywhere, and Games for Windows in the future.