ugachaka :: Jacob was here

Service Pack 1 is on the way.

While I wait for the big fixes, Microsoft did release an update today that offered a number of fixes for Vista, and along with this update, several third-party software and drivers have been updated to improve at least my own Vista experience. ATI issued a new update for my video card as well, and Logitech put out a new version of SetPoint for my Bluetooth keyboard and mouse that kept it from interfering with Vista–and causing me a huge pain by making me have to constantly approve Logitech to check for updates.

Only time will tell, but according to testing, this might be the beginning of my system running a bit faster and being less Vista-y.

Photo courtesy of the Poppyseed Bandits

If you are running Vista as well, make sure you click Windows Update and download it all. If you asked me, this update couldn’t come soon enough, and I hope the various elements of my computer that have not appreciated my installation of Vista to get over their stuck up attitude.

Fingers crossed that Service Pack 1 continues the fixes.

Hearing that XP with the third service pack performs faster than Vista with it’s first service pack isn’t encouraging.

Apparently, XP still opens Word 10% faster according to the latest benchmarks. Microsoft must still be optimizing the Vista system…

I like Vista thus far overall. It runs smoothly and fairly fast on my desktop, an AMD 64-bit, dual core built with Vista 64-bit in mind, but I have two mine gripes recently that have made me regret the upgrade. Unfortunately, they might be more the fault of third-party drivers.

First, Vista doesn’t recognize my processor correctly. It thinks I have a single core for some reason, and AMD has release no additional driver to correct this issue. Apparently “Vista includes their latest driver.” Apparently not.

Second, my Logitech MX 5000 Bluetooth desktop still works just as specified, but my desktop doesn’t recognize that there is a Bluetooth hub on my computer for me to connect to other devices. A slight annoyance with syncing. Logitech has not had an updated driver since I installed Vista either.

I searched around looking for solutions, but it seems like I will be stuck with these problems until Vista SP1 is released–sometime in January? Pretty please?

IPTV is one of the cooler features I would like to see on my Xbox 360. I have already goofed around with linking it up with my Vista PC to share as a media center. (I even installed Vista just to make it happen.) But IPTV would really make it a cool feature since there might be a chance for shows that I miss on broadcast television to be replayed and picked up on my IPTV.

You see, I am one of the few people who doesn’t have the holy DVR or Tivo box sitting in my media center. Too expensive for us single go-gettter types. IPTV would be great.

Now if we can just get past the rumors and the speculation to a final release date, that would be sweet, Microsoft.

Vista has been driving me nuts lately…

My Bluetooth hub, coming through my USB hub for my Bluetooth keyboard and mouse from Logitech, has completely stopped being recognized by the hardware, and I have had to turn off Aero and all the graphical animations of Vista to keep it running smoothly since in the process of installing Vista, half my RAM was burned up. Now, I can replace the RAM, but I seriously have considered whether I should make a move back to XP. My system ran fine then.

The only problem with that scenario is that I will probably want to cut back to Vista when SP1 comes out in Q1 2008. I guess I will just tough it out. I can pick up another 1 GB stick of RAM and maybe the graphical enhancements will come back online. Then, my only problem will be my absence of a Bluetooth hub and lack of several other custom drivers for my computer system.

To top things off, my MDA touch screen is starting to become unresponsive. My tech is not being good this month. No twinkie.

Vista has been out for about 4 months now and in beta testing by some of my friends for longer, but here I am still waiting to purchase it. You see, my college has an agreement with Microsoft to sell software to its students at discount rates–XP for under $20 and such.

Now, it makes sense that Microsoft would not want to just throw the OS out to the masses of college students as soon as it releases so that early adopters will have to run out to buy it at full price, but making us wait over 4 months just seems silly. Don’t you want your customers to get a hold of the Vista OS and fall in love with it as soon as possible so that they demand to have it on their next computer for whatever company they get hired to work for after school or in purchasing their next system?

The more I sit around and wait to see what Vista can do, the more tempted I am to go check out Red Hat or buy a Mac. I have been waiting so long with my system hoping to upgrade to Vista and maintaining a close watch over which files I will need to archive so that I can make a fresh install on my hard drive. Now I just want to make a fresh install of something already. Come on Microsoft, get your act together.

Microsoft is currently promoting its new Games for Windows Live environment–basically Xbox Live for PC users–lately. The latest Weekly Update from GamesIndustry.biz explored whether the entire movement might just be part of the marketing for the newly released Vista.

The marketing manager for Valve, Doug Lombardi is quoted in the article almost directly calling out Microsoft for the move.

Moreover, he pulled no punches in his comments on the consequences of that; “if it’s going to use it to promote sales of Vista, that’s really not good for the industry, it’s good for Microsoft in the short term.”

I personally don’t care whether it is to promote Windows Vista or not, but it would be great if Halo 2 players could choose between an Xbox or PC platform and still play within the same community. Too bad if Microsoft is just doing it all to push Vista on us.

The concern, of course, is that if Microsoft acts as a fair-weather champion for the PC, only to quietly edge away when the deed is done and the gamers have all upgraded to Vista, that retreat will signal yet more headlines about the death of the PC as a gaming platform – and it’s in some measure this disquiet which makes PC developers and publishers cautious in their welcoming of the Games for Windows push.

Article originally published in the GameIndustry.biz Weekly Update from 3/15/07. Full text below…

—Full Text—

gamesindustry.biz
Daily Update
15/03/2007

The Games for Windows PR juggernaut rolled inexorably forward this week, with the announcement that Games for Windows Live – the rather wordy PC equivalent of Xbox Live – will appear in May, alongside Halo 2’s long-delayed debut on the platform. Microsoft’s loud declarations of its support for the PC as a gaming platform are approaching near-religious fervour, with each subsequent pronouncement more eager to prove the company’s vast confidence in the future of the market.

Of course, there’s a major catch. Microsoft’s belief in the future of the PC gaming market, and even in the future of the Windows gaming market, is narrowly defined. The company believes in the future of the gaming market for consumers who upgrade to Windows Vista, for games companies who support Windows Vista’s videogame-related features, and of course, only for people who have hardware capable of meeting Vista’s demands – not a problem for many hardcore gamers, of course, but enough to deny the company’s seal of approval to more casual players.

It’s a least partially on that basis that Valve’s marketing manager Doug Lombardi doesn’t trust Microsoft’s intentions. He told us last week at GDC, in no uncertain terms, that he thinks Microsoft’s newfound dedication to the PC is all just “part of the marketing push to help Vista.”

Moreover, he pulled no punches in his comments on the consequences of that; “if it’s going to use it to promote sales of Vista, that’s really not good for the industry, it’s good for Microsoft in the short term.”

Strong words, but let’s face it – for all Microsoft’s efforts to convince the world that it really, truly wants Windows to be the platform of choice for gaming, Lombardi is only saying what everyone else is thinking.

Microsoft is a conflicted company when it comes to games, and the threats to the dominance of the PC from the likes of Apple and Linux are minor and far-off compared to the uphill struggle the firm faces in the console market against the firmly entrenched Sony. If it comes down to it, any decision which calls for Microsoft to choose between the Xbox and Windows will always be made in favour of the Xbox – at least for the foreseeable future.

Vista represents the exception to that rule. Long-delayed and much-criticised, the new operating system is another aspect of the company’s business that needs support – and gaming has, as Lombardi accuses, been drafted in to supply that support.

At the core of this lies what many developers have told me is a little white lie; namely, the careful inference that DirectX 10, Microsoft’s new games technology platform, is so tightly integrated with Vista that it couldn’t easily be retrofitted to Windows XP. Why, exactly, a relatively simple speedbump in the shader technology of graphics cards – which is the primary feature added in DirectX 10 – couldn’t be implemented on XP has never been adequately explained.

It’s rather too convenient that a technology which somehow won’t work on the venerable and largely reliable Windows XP should emerge just as Vista pads out of its den, and it’s clear – forgive me for stating what will be patently obvious to almost everyone, I’m sure – that the whole DirectX 10 thing is just a handy way of forcing gamers to upgrade to Vista.

The situation looks even more nonsensical when you consider that one of the first games to be Vista-only will be Halo 2 – a title which, over two years ago, ran perfectly happy on an Xbox console sporting a 700MHz processor and a GeForce 3 equivalent card, hardware built when DirectX 10 wasn’t even a twinkle in Microsoft’s avaricious eye.

So yes, Lombardi is quite right in his suspicions. While it doesn’t take a man as knowledgable as he is about the PC market to point the finger of accusation at Microsoft’s motives, it is nonetheless fascinating to see the developer of some of the most successful games on the platform giving such short shrift to the firm which is, in effect, the platform holder. You can’t really imagine a Sony- or Nintendo-licensed developer making such an accusation about their platform holders’ motives.

However, the PC market is not the same as the console market – and Microsoft may be the closest thing it has to a platform holder, but the fact remains that it is not a platform holder in PC, and never will be.

Those who saw Microsoft’s decision to weigh in behind the platform as crucial – and those who stand to be most disappointed if the support wanes along with the need to shift copies of Vista – are those who still see the PC market as fragile and declining, a view supported by dropping retail sales in most territories.

The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. The PC market is robust, healthy and diverse – supporting a rich and varied ecosystem of companies on a wide range of revenue streams and value chains. It’s completely true that the boxed game market is in decline, and while that decline may be bumped by Microsoft’s involvement, it is merely a temporary reprieve from the deathbed.

The true PC market – the market which is not measured in figures from NPD, Chart-Track or GfK – is a new economy, a truly 21st century digital marketplace which has been built by companies like Valve and Blizzard, and by a shoal of small, ambitious firms who are realising more and more of the potential of the world’s most connected platform on a daily basis.

Doug Lombardi knows that, of course; Valve’s Steam distribution service is one of the businesses on the vanguard of this market. Blizzard’s World of Warcraft needs no introduction, and its revenues cause green-eyed jealousy in companies across the industry. Linden Labs’ Second Life has uniquely merged the concepts of Web 2.0 and 3D MMOs to create an extraordinary media sensation, and a rather successful business.

Casual game firms like PopCap are turning ten minute coffee breaks in offices around the world into the building blocks of corporate success. Tiny developers like Britain’s celebrated and award-winning Introversion team are building unique, exciting content to fill the demand which is being tapped at last by digital distribution services. The PC market teems with life – but not as we know it.

This is a market which has been built almost entirely without Microsoft’s intervention or assistance – and while the helping hand of the Redmond behemoth won’t be slapped away by any of the companies involved, they are also keenly aware that should that hand be withdrawn, they can continue to grow and prosper without it.

The concern, of course, is that if Microsoft acts as a fair-weather champion for the PC, only to quietly edge away when the deed is done and the gamers have all upgraded to Vista, that retreat will signal yet more headlines about the death of the PC as a gaming platform – and it’s in some measure this disquiet which makes PC developers and publishers cautious in their welcoming of the Games for Windows push.

The irony, of course, is that should those headlines ever appear, the writers who mourn the death of PC gaming will probably do so in between games of Bejeweled; or perhaps while waiting for rest bonus to stack up in World of Warcraft; or emailing a viral game advertising a new movie release to a friend; perhaps while waiting for a new indie game to download from Steam.

PC gaming, as usual, is a few years ahead of the console curve. Those who declare the PC gaming platform to be in ill health on the basis of the disappearance of the games from retail would do better to turn their logic on its head, and worry for the future of retail – because where the PC games disappear today, tomorrow the console titles will follow.