Microsoft takes a lot of heat from PC gamers, and in some cases, rightfully so. From new Windows updates crashing games to old features in the Control Panel being moved or depreciated, Microsoft tweaks Windows so often that’s impossible for everyone to be onboard. There have been a few instances where Microsoft truly dropped the ball, though, and it’s taken years for Windows to crawl back.
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Pushing games to UWP
It turns out gamers like to mod their games
There was some point in the mid-2010s where Microsoft wanted to clamp down on Windows. It envisioned a Windows that could run on multiple devices, from your desktop to a Windows phone, and it would be able to control that spread with cross-platform applications that could run on these various operating systems. And, of course, Microsoft would be the sole publisher of these apps. The result was the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), which has been slowly dismantled since, alongside initiatives like HoloLens.
UWP apps have problems in general, but they’re particularly problematic with games. The most obvious issue is that you didn’t have access to game files with a UWP install. You couldn’t mod your game, and you couldn’t track down an EXE to add to your library as a non-Steam app. UWP apps also had issues with overlays and third-party software, and when they were first introduced, they didn’t even support variable refresh rate.
Naturally, PC gamers didn’t take well to UWP games. Developers who bought into Microsoft’s platform would often release two versions of their games — one through Microsoft Store and another through other storefronts. This led to some games performing better or worse depending on the platform you purchased them on. Although most UWP games were mobile titles ported over to the Microsoft Store, several major Xbox releases were initially UWP apps, including Gears of War 4, Quantum Break, and Forza Motorsport 6.
In 2019, Microsoft said it would start offering Win32 games and applications through the Xbox app and Microsoft Store. The dismantling of UWP games has been a slow process, but Microsoft has continued to offer Win32 apps through the Xbox app and Microsoft Store over the past several years, alongside releasing Xbox Game Studios titles on Steam. Now, I can freely browse through my installation of Avowed that I downloaded via Game Pass, and that’s certainly a much better experience than what UWP apps offered.
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DirectX 10 and Windows Vista
A major API update that was swept under the rug
I don’t want to dog on DirectX 10 here because it didn’t do anything inherently wrong. In fact, it was a significant update that cleared out closed features like DirectInput and laid the groundwork for the heavily multithreaded APIs we have today. But DirectX 10 had a very short lifespan. According to the PCGamingWiki, there are about 3,200 DirectX 9 games and just over 4,000 DirectX 11 games. DirectX 10? There are just 87 games.
There’s a reason for that, and it largely comes down to Windows Vista. DirectX 10 was exclusive to Vista, and unlike more recent versions of DirectX that have carried across new OS releases, it died alongside Vista. There were two main reasons DirectX 10 had such a short lifespan. It was included in a historically unpopular Windows release — which itself was flanked by two of the most popular Windows versions ever — and it wasn’t backwards compatible. If you wanted to play a DirectX 10-exclusive game, you needed Vista.
That flew in the face of DirectX 9, which has continued to serve as a foundational API for backwards compatibility due to its support in every Windows version since Windows 98. Naturally, developers weren’t interested in developing two versions of their game to support DirectX 10 and 9, much less developing a game exclusive to an unpopular OS. The vast majority of games either came with a DirectX 9 fallback or skipped DirectX 10 entirely. That’s why games like Civilization V and Far Cry 3 have DirectX 9 and 11 versions, but no DirectX 10 version.
DirectX 10 has been left in obscurity as a result. It’s not that the API failed — the DirectX team at Microsoft has a pretty good track record of backwards compatibility and feature support — but moreso that it never got a chance to shine due to the failures of Vista.
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Games for Windows Live
A warning sign of DRM implications
You knew it was coming. Games for Windows Live (GFWL) was a colossal failure that, even decades on from being introduced, still creates problems from time to time. The idea behind the service was to bring Xbox Live to PCs, fit with a fee for online services. That caused a stir with PC gamers alone, but the failures of GFWL go much deeper. Games that launched on the service have seen re-releases and retooling since to make them available, as the closure of GFWL largely locked players out from accessing their games.
Although GFWL was only prominent in the late 2000’s, the storefront wasn’t closed until 2018. You can still use the GFWL overlay if you install it on your PC manually, as well as connect to Xbox servers, but that’s not the main issue with the service. When GFWL was introduced, physical copies of PC games were still prominent. And if you have a physical copy of a game that requires GFWL, there’s a good chance it won’t work.
Beyond the issue with physical copies, developers also relied on GFWL to generate new product keys if they were using Microsoft’s DRM. The most notorious example of GFWL’s failures is Grand Theft Auto IV, which was delisted from digital storefronts in 2020 due to Rockstar not being able to generate new activation keys through GFWL servers. It was replaced with Grand Theft Auto IV: Complete Edition shortly after, and that’s a trend we’ve seen with a lot of GFWL titles.
In addition, GFWL is a closed system. Unlike a lot of online services today, there was never any concept of transferring saves or achievement progress. That means that, if you start a game on GFWL, you won’t be able to pick up where you left off today. Or, at the very least, you’ll need to track down a physical GFWL copy of the game you’re trying to play and hope the servers will authorize you. Good luck with that.
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On stable ground
Microsoft has swung big and missed hard several times throughout the years, but gaming on Windows today feels more stable than it’s ever been. Microsoft isn’t constantly wrestling users away from the platforms they prefer for a closed ecosystem that Microsoft controls, and the company’s game publishing wing has consistently delivered titles on other storefronts to give players choice. Some Xbox features, such as the Game Bar, are even leveraged to improve performance of hardware like the new Ryzen 9 9950X3D.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has added features to make Windows 11 more useful for gaming, from Auto HDR to DirectStorage features. Although stumbles are still common, at the very least PC gamers aren’t wrestling against a multi-trillion-dollar corporation to control their games.
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source: https://www.xda-developers.com/3-times-microsoft-has-tried-and-failed-to-reinvent-pc-gaming/
