You might imagine that the person in charge of the Games for Windows initiative is likely optimistic about PC gaming. And you would be imagining correctly. Kevin Unangst of Microsoft spoke with Gamasutra about the health of the initiative. His verdict? SUPER healthy!
Unangst explains the motivation behind the initiative:
As a gamer, you should just be able to plug this thing in and know that it's going to work with the monitor I have, or if I've got a feature like parental controls that I actually use, I shouldn't have to worry about which games work with it and which games don't. Why should a game not install the same way, and why should I answer thirteen questions when with a console, I stick a disc in?
I think our principle has been that on console, consumers had a consistent set of expectations. They know when that disc goes in, it's going to do a certain set of things. Mostly, they don't have to worry about it.
And, to that end, the Games for Windows initiative is meant to solve that universal PC gaming dilemma:
As a gamer, you should just be able to plug this thing in and know that it's going to work with the monitor I have, or if I've got a feature like parental controls that I actually use, I shouldn't have to worry about which games work with it and which games don't. Why should a game not install the same way, and why should I answer thirteen questions when with a console, I stick a disc in?
As for that optimism I spoke of earlier, here's a little taste of Unangst's feeling about the Windows platform:
Overall, I think the platform itself is incredibly healthy, and there's more developers on Windows than on any other platform, especially when you look across casual, subscription, MMO, Korea, China...there's an explosion there. There's a huge opportunity, and by far, it is the biggest platform on the planet for gaming.
For Games for Windows, we see nothing but growth over the last year. I said there are over 60 titles, we went from zero to twenty-plus publishers who are in the program, and we see more and more titles.
Don't worry, though, he doesn't only toot his own horn. He also toot's Valve's horn:
I think Valve has done a great job with Steam. They've been at this now for five years, and they've been ahead of the trend, in terms of enabling digital distribution and making it simple for people to get games without having to buy a box. That's back to the trend I talked about earlier. They're part of that. In addition to the work we've done on Games for Windows Live, I think those are spaces you're going to see us in.
And then Unangst spends a few minutes talking about competition is healthy, which is always amusing coming from a Microsoft employee.
As for Unangst's assertion that PC games are the locus of innovation in gaming, well, that comes right here:
PC will always be at the center of the innovation that is happening for gameplay -- new game types, new business models, new distribution models.
It's lead in the Internet, it's lead in the acceleration of graphics, and I don't see any reason to believe that the PC will change, and that trend will go away any time soon. It is at the forefront, and I believe it will continue to be at the forefront.
And who knows, in that vision of the future, everything may be called a PC, right? Everything's going to get more intelligent and more Internet-connected, and the investments that Microsoft's making in both of those worlds I think will allow us to bring better experiences to consumers, no matter where they come in. They start on the consoles? We're going to make sure that when they add a PC to the mix that that experience gets better, and vice versa.
I particularly like how Unangst covered his behind for making the broad statement "PC will always be at the center of the innovation that is happening for gameplay" by suggesting that maybe in the future everything will be called a PC. He's a wily one, that Mr. Unangst.
The full interview is available here, if you're interested in more of the nitty, gritty details about Games for Windows. And, don't look now, Unangst, but Fallout 3 developer Emil Pagliarulo thinks all of that innovation you've got over on the PC is migrating with the gamers over to consoles:
"...I think we're starting to find that there is a market for [hardcore 'PC RPGs' on consoles]. People like myself and some people that work here actually grew up as hardcore PC guys, and now we're older, we have kids, we don't have that much time, so we've transitioned. We're console players now.
"But we still have those PC game sensibilities. Those are the games we like. So I think BioShock has a little bit of that too. You can definitely feel the old System Shock roots in that game. So hopefully there's a trend there."
I'll let you in on a little secret, kids, I'm one of those hardcore PC guys who transitioned to being a console player. Windows? That's a young man's game.
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