Locking down the ways in which users can get apps on their systems has some advantages for consumers — witness the lack of malware on the App Store compared to the more open Google Play, for example — but the restrictions imposed may be more than many users are willing to bare. Developer and gamer complaints may have won the day this time, but Microsoft will inevitably use its powers to restrict content from Windows 8 platform again, just as Apple has and has been criticised for.
More importantly, those users have different expectations about what they are allowed to do with their computers. To this end, Valve is porting its Steam infrastructure to Linux along with a host of top-tier games. Until then, gamers are going to be left with a choice — stick with PC gaming in the hope that Microsoft allows indie developers the chance to thrive in its brave new tiled world, or jump ship to console gaming and potentially let the thriving PC ecosystem die out.
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Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. Founded in , Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy. Today, we have 9 million users a month around the world, and assess more than 1, products a year. Home Opinion Windows 8 — good for gamers, but what about developers? Is Windows 8 good for gamers? By Stuart Houghton.
Search query. All Videos Images News. Local Shopping. Anytime Past day Past week Past month. About , search results. Yes , 8. Telemetry is a grossly over-rated fear, all you have to do is set telemetry to basic during the Win 10 install. People also ask. As such, unlike Windows 7, you still have plenty of time to use Windows 8. Should You Still Use Windows 8 or 8. With no more security updates, continuing to use Windows 8 or 8. It's great that I can see that my friend has a beacon set for Mass Effect 3 multiplayer on her Xbox, but that does me absolutely no good if I am running the game on Windows through Origin.
Rather than having a useful social connection, we're staring at each other through unbreakable glass. Perhaps we can handwave that one away, since ME3 was released in March and Windows 8 won't be live until October.
But the transition looks to be years long and, at best, confusing as hell. My regular desktop, the Windows 7 one with all three of those games currently installed on it, would beg to differ.
In fairness, the Windows games store is clearly in a pre-launch condition; the big-studio titles I currently play through Steam or Origin may yet appear before October. The list of "all apps," the way to launch programs that don't have Start or Desktop icons, highlights the messy way games get tossed around everywhere. Meanwhile other Microsoft apps, like Solitaire and Minesweeper , show up somewhere else entirely. After a few days wading through the disorganization that I felt Windows 8 forced on me, I can see why developers are concerned.
Yes, existing programs like Steam and Origin run perfectly well in the Desktop environment. But the way they will have to publish and develop their games, going forward, may change dramatically. In an ideal world, Microsoft's unified UI experience could theoretically entice more developers to make PC versions of their games when they make Xbox versions.
And in that same ideal world, they'd all be good versions, not bad ports. But in the real world, the "walled garden" that Notch and Newell were afraid of places the same demands on a PC developer that it places on an Xbox one, and those are often a problem. The certification process for games to get on the Xbox Marketplace does not always run smoothly. Microsoft now stands to become more of a gatekeeper for getting software on their computers than they ever have been before.
Nothing will be stopping Valve, EA, Ubisoft, or any other publisher huge or indie from distributing Windows games online or on disc exactly as they have been for years. But it's easy to imagine the process going awry. Let's say there were a Mass Effect 4 released in Will the two be forced to nest together, as Games for Windows Live has been nested inside of previous games I've gotten from Steam?
And of course, Valve will continue to use Steam as the publication platform for their games. So will I log into my desktop in the distant future to find that, seen one way, my computer tells me that, sorry, Left 4 Dead 3 only exists for the Xbox , while, seen another way, it will tell me I have the game fully patched and ready to play? It all adds a layer of confusion that I don't think anyone particularly needs or wants. Misleading tiles and twisted ways of getting to the information the user seeks don't help anyone.
Developers, publishers, and consumers alike all stand to lose out. Not all the news is bad for Microsoft. It's easy to see a world where a Windows 8 Service Pack corrects many of these mostly surface-level issues, or a world where, like 7 to Vista, Windows 9 comes along promptly and jettisons the bad while keeping the good.
The stability and underlying architecture seem to be there. But adding dozens of steps and strange layers that keep players from their games isn't going to win them any fans. At the moment, Windows 8 is two competing operating systems that don't always play nicely together.
Going to desktop in order to make programs run, and to be able to use more than one app or even more than one browser tab at a time, feels in many ways like having to boot to DOS and then launch Windows did, twenty years ago.
Apps that are installed in Metro can be uninstalled with a single right-click in Metro, but don't show up in Control Panel's Programs and Features listing. Launching an app that goes to desktop mode prevents you from seeing easily if one or two, or ten apps are still running in the background over in Metro.
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