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The Verge: Microsoft wants to make the Xbox app the home of PC gaming

R

Reizo Ryuu

Member
Danknugz said:
you must have incredible luck then, everyone i've talked to about it (granted it's only been one or two people) said they always have issues updating it, never works, has to retry 20 times over multiple OS restarts, etc
Click to expand...
Yes and amd and nvidia reddit are full of people with random issues as well, but that's not representative of the whole, people that don't have problems aren't making threads or calling support just to say everything is fine, you simply don't hear them but they tend to be the vast majority, unless there's actually something wrong and the company issues a statement/recall.
 
Magic Carpet

Magic Carpet

Gold Member
The verge article mentions they have a new refreshed UI that went live today. I just hope I don't have to reinstall Indy Jones cause I want to play tonight.
 
ToneyJ

ToneyJ

Member
Stop trying to make Xbox happen.

Fetch Mean Girls GIF by Paramount Movies
 
D

Danknugz

Member
Reizo Ryuu said:
Yes and amd and nvidia reddit are full of people with random issues as well, but that's not representative of the whole, people that don't have problems aren't making threads or calling support just to say everything is fine, you simply don't hear them but they tend to be the vast majority, unless there's actually something wrong and the company issues a statement/recall.
Click to expand...
what you said is true but not so sure about the xbox app working smoothly for the vast majority, the reason i brought it up is because most apps do work fine through a process known as quality assurance, somehow this one app sticks out from all the rest i've used over the years as simply not working, not updating properly, acting kind of like it's installing and working but then not actually working, and in the worst case, preventing me from running installed games unless the app updates, which it then fails to do, so i literally can't play any games installed through it. i've never witnessed an app so poorly tested and designed like that before.

what makes this even more glaring is that MS designed the OS it runs on, so if anyone should be able to design it to work well it would be them, unfortunately it seems UWP as a whole is garbage.
 
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D

Darsxx82

Member
It is clearly seen that there is an attempt to improve and organize the XBOX ecosystem around a unit.

At this point, now what would surprise me is if the next Xbox "console" was not the rumored hybrid/PC. It is right now the best or only way in which the multiplatform strategy would make sense or be understandable. Compatibility with the maintenance of its own ecosystem (with in-house manufactured devices/hardware) that could have the support of 3rd party Studios and Editors and that manages to bring together a healthy user base.

At the GDC in March it seems that there will be news about it.

PS. I perfectly understand the people who criticize and regret the state of the Xbox Store on PC and how MS has been unfortunate for a long time in being an option compared to Steam or any other PC Store...... It is another thing to understand people despise and regret the possibility of them starting to work and reversing the situation as if that were somehow negative 🤷
 
D

Dane

Member
Danknugz said:
you must have incredible luck then, everyone i've talked to about it (granted it's only been one or two people) said they always have issues updating it, never works, has to retry 20 times over multiple OS restarts, etc
Click to expand...
I never had issues with it tbh, the only time I had something wrong it wasn't even from it: it was that Rage 2 automatically saves every config change you do and one of them outright crashes the game and if you try to open again it will crash, had to delete the .ini to reset to default.

Honestly I never had a lot of the Windows 10 issues, might be an exception, but perhaps is it because I always let it update? Every time I had suspicions of windows screwing up something it turned out to be the specific software or something related to it, the only time I've ever had of Windows screwing up was when they removed the SafeDisc process in an Windows Vista/7 update, this made disc drives unable to run games who used this DRM such as Stalker Clear Sky and Civilization IV.
 
Interfectum

Interfectum

Member
If Microsoft really wants the Xbox App to be the PC gaming platform, then why are Xbox, Activision, and Blizzard titles still appearing on Steam? If they’re serious about pushing exclusivity, they should go all-in and keep those games confined to the Xbox App.

Nothing’s worse than a leader who can’t make up his mind. Phil Spencer’s indecision is steering Xbox right into the dumpster. He needs to pick a direction, commit to it, and move forward.
 
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D

Danknugz

Member
Dane said:
I never had issues with it tbh, the only time I had something wrong it wasn't even from it: it was that Rage 2 automatically saves every config change you do and one of them outright crashes the game and if you try to open again it will crash, had to delete the .ini to reset to default.

Honestly I never had a lot of the Windows 10 issues, might be an exception, but perhaps is it because I always let it update? Every time I had suspicions of windows screwing up something it turned out to be the specific software or something related to it, the only time I've ever had of Windows screwing up was when they removed the SafeDisc process in an Windows Vista/7 update, this made disc drives unable to run games who used this DRM such as Stalker Clear Sky and Civilization IV.
Click to expand...
i always keep win 10 up to date and there has been the occasional time where the xbox app does update properly, and it seems to get better as time goes on, but I think it's more of an issue with UWP, MS should have just stayed with win32 but they forced UWP, some say this was an attempt to further monopolize the industry

www.forbes.com

Tim Sweeney: Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform Must, And Will, Die

Image credit: Microsoft Strong words coming from Epic Games' Tim Sweeney today. Microsoft has recently been making a push to unify the Windows platform across PC, Xbox and mobile, and Sweeney is not a fan. In an editorial in The Guardian, the veteran game developer argues that Microsoft is...
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com
 
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R

Reizo Ryuu

Member
Danknugz said:
i've never witnessed an app so poorly tested and designed like that before.
Click to expand...
Sure, and that's your experience and I'm not discounting it.
I have a friend and our other friends always joke that he has some kind of weird bad luck aura, because he just keeps having nonstop issues with everything randomly, if you were to listen to him you'd think pc gaming is still some 90s compatibility hellscape.
 
DAHGAMING

DAHGAMING

Gold Member
It pretty much already is, as I mentioned the other day its the best store on PC and where everyone is playing the true game of the year.
 
N

namenotfound

Member
BennyBlanco said:
Forget Steam. The Xbox app is worse than:

- UPlay
- EGS
- Origin
- Twitch/ Amazon Launcher
- GOG Connect

And every other superfluous launcher available. It’s a giant piece of shit and actively steered me away from gamepass. Getting updates is a huge chore through Windows and some games would refuse to install at all.
Click to expand...
I'd place it above UPlay and I haven't tried the Amazon Launcher even though I have a lot of games because of Prime. UPlay I associate with everything wrong with publisher launchers. That was a piece of shit. Today's current Ubisoft Connect still worse than Xbox. I associate Ubisoft Connect with, fail to pull cloud save, fail to upload cloud save, please sign in again no session found (like I exited the game. what do you mean you can't find my session. I was in 10 seconds ago). Ubisoft PC game launcher software is impressively a piece of shit for having about 15 years of iterating on their software. Origin wasn't bad for at launch, they just practically did no improvements to it for the rest of its years and then the EA App comes out and it's practically the same level of usability. EA too over a decade of pretty much no improvements along with regressions. That client though I think was better than EGS but I imagine it being not worth the effort for whatever process it was to list games in Origin because damn near no one did. Which then to EGS which releases in 2018 but doesn't release self publishing tools until end of 2023. After Stardock decided they didn't want to be a PC store with Impulse anymore and sold it to GameStop, every PC storefront has been fumbling every step of the way. Like they take minimum viable product as, it runs, rather than minimal viable product to be competitive in the current market

Top 2 worse though definitely the irreclaimable storage space without a disk format era of Windows Store and GFWL. One took your storage. The other one wanted you to pay a Gold sub to play multiplayer games on other companies/peoples servers, crashed your games especially that overlay where they seemed to prioritize animations over speed and functionality, would screw up licenses and make you call support because you installed the games too many times (sometimes it'd be one time but something happened in that GFWL backend and devs implementation that screwed it up) and you exceeded the install limits
 
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Buggy Loop

Buggy Loop

Member
I mean, "never tell me the odds" and there's been huge turnover scenarios historically in many fields but, I would say the odds are stacked against them as of now. Gaben would have to die and the succession then make Steam a cluster fuck of a store for even this to work out.
 
GHG

GHG

Member
The Cockatrice said:
Good luck but thats impossible. Steam is no longer just an app. It's a community. These dumb-ass corporations like Epic/EA/Ubisoft and MS are clueless af and are trying to compete with not just a store app, but basically a social platform.
Click to expand...

It's just further evidence that the decision makers at these companies are disconnected from the products and services that they try to sell - they don't actually play games, if they did they would actually realise what would need to be done and the size of the task if they wanted to compete with steam.

Just launching a storefront in 2024 is nowhere near enough, not even close.
 
N

namenotfound

Member
They've been saying this since GWFL and that was actually somehow their best try because they actually did try to compete with the full feature set of Steam at the time. They just fumbled it by it being a buggy piece of shit with default install limit DRM and paid online. After that they're efforts have been bad and the target to compete with has gotten higher. Probably had the best effort since they were on that Xbox Live Gold mission to get PC gamers to buy in. For me now what I expect from a launcher storefront where I'll buy games rather than just take free games, Steam Input, Big Picture Mode/SteamOS/Proton/Linux, Curators, Inventory, user reviews, downloading games over local network from other computers, people can hate but data on concurrent users is how stumble on a lot of indie games. I swear EGS has been talking about improving their clients community features since 2018 and its barely changed. They tried to hype people up on a public development issues board for EGS and it's just become a bit of a meme for how static it's been since it was made public. Like take it down it 3 years ago. It makes you guys look bad


Trello

Organize anything, together. Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, know what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process.
trello.com trello.com
 
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Generic

Generic

Member
More than 100 of these new titles are also Xbox Play Anywhere, so if you buy the Xbox console version then you can play the Xbox PC version too. “Universal Xbox ownership, as well as universal cloud saves on Xbox, and cross-play between Xbox versions on console and PC (and other platforms, at the developer’s discretion) are awesome features players love,”
Click to expand...
This is awesome.
 
M

Mayar

Member
Mmm, remind me, what happened to the companies that wanted to create their own launcher and drag players from Steam there? If Microsoft has no plans to buy Valve, I have no idea how that will work.
bold-strategy-dodgeball.gif
 
LooseLips

LooseLips

Member
StereoVsn said:
Until they decouple Xbox App from the horrendous Windows Store, it’s still going to be a large pile of 💩💩💩.
Click to expand...
I hear you on that one, but looking at the new app now - it seems they... have? It took me to purchase in the xbox app and, I didn't buy, but it seemed pretty seamless.

It's a start.
 
Kacho

Kacho

Gold Member
Draugoth said:
The app is good but it's nowhere near as good as GOG or Steam
Click to expand...
It's better now than a few years ago. It's still a mess though. I have multiple versions of the same Forzas in my library for example.

They are obviously going to revamp the app in the near future. They better do a good job. I also better be able to play ALL of my Xbox games. If not, they can get fucked.
 
Danny Dudekisser

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
oh my God, Microsoft, please FUCK OFF.

Every time they try to get more involved, they make shit worse. There is no benefit to customers, whatsoever, and anyone entertaining the notion that "maybe this time will be different" is delusional.
 
Astray

Astray

Member
I am gonna pull a O onQ123 and take my victory lap because I have called this move since April 2024 at the very least.

If anyone thinks Microsoft is going to play nice with Valve after they snatched the PC Gaming market from underneath them then you need your head checked. The only reason they kept releasing games day 1 on Steam is because they were a weak publisher that simply needed to.

Microsoft is not Epic or GOG, they have a lot of tools they can use to create an edge over Steam and potentially really hurt Valve:
  • Must-have content that is simply not easy to replace for PC players like Elder Scrolls, Fallout, DOOM etc.
  • The ability to do feature integration with Windows (can implement things like quick resume rest mode etc and make it only work on their stuff).
  • Cloud streaming (which would potentially enable them to sell game units to players with weak rigs).
  • Contacts with devs/publishers and money for moneyhatting.
  • Much, MUCH greater reach with OEMs and chipmakers for hardware initiatives.
This is why Valve is doing hardware, they need to supercharge Steam OS's share in the PC player market ASAP in order to be more robust against this exact kind of attack.

Receipts for my victory lap:
Astray said:
The idea that Valve managed to make PC gaming on Windows a success and denied Microsoft that money still rankles with MS top brass to this day. I still remember when they tried the UWP shit way back when. Valve was founded by ex-Microsoft people too so that adds to the asspain.
Click to expand...

Astray said:
I actually think that Microsoft are on a collision course with Valve in the long-term. They clearly think of the PC arena as "theirs" and they have a unique market power and integration with Windows to be able to make a PC platform that competes with Steam.
Click to expand...

Astray said:
The 100m sub plan has been largely abandoned by this point. They're not trying to get to 100m by brute force anymore, to the point where Satya has removed GP numbers from his KPIs.

I get it, it's fun to meme on that plan's failure, but that plan is past-tense by now.

I've been doing some thinking about this, and what I think they're trying to do with this is to see if they can:

- Energize more Xbox users, where they have a lot of GP penetration, to play COD and away from things like Fortnite or Apex where they only get %30 to a game where they get %100. Even if they lose out on the $70 entry price, that's a worthwhile risk-reward for them.
- Convince Steam users to take a sub in GP and see if they can steal an audience from there, if they manage to convert even %10 of Steam COD players to GP then that's a massive win of its own. This is why PC Gamepass is still very competitive in terms of pricing.

I really don't think people see how much competitive pressure Valve has to face in an environment where Xbox is not the spearhead of Microsoft's gaming efforts.

Microsoft is already recentering around Windows and PC being the main aim (this is another reason why they're pushing influencers to the 'who needs consoles anymore, PC is the way' narrative), and they have a lot of control over Windows and how it integrates with gaming, control that no competitor to Valve has ever had.
Click to expand...
Astray said:
Microsoft has significantly more resources than Valve and EGS combined, not just in terms of money, they control Windows, which is an access point for the vast majority of Steam users. Microsoft can make Windows have new gaming focused features that only integrate with its store (things like Rest mode or Quick Resume etc), that would be a way to stand out from Valve's offering in a way Valve can't really combat (and if they play it right, they won't have to face much antitrust scrutiny, they aren't forced to make features that benefit their competitor).

This is why Valve is investing in Linux. They know that Microsoft will be coming after them in some way (and they already tried with UWP, look at Gabe's statement about W8).

Additionally, with the Activision purchase, Microsoft controls Battle.net, which is a launcher that has a sizable amount of users, they're not starting from scratch here. It's only a matter of time until they decide that Elder Scrolls 6 etc etc should be launching on there instead. With Xbox downsizing they will need to extract more from PC gamers.

I think that Gamepass on Steam is not beneficial to either party (Valve gets less money than if they just sell the games, and Microsoft has to share the much smaller sub revenue with them), they may sweet talk in public about how they'd love to get it there, but there's a reason the service never landed on Steam in almost 5 years of operation now.
Click to expand...

Astray said:
I talked about it yesterday, but Microsoft is far closer to doing this than Sony is (and have far greater imperatives to do it).

Not only do they have big IP leverage (something like ES6 exclusivity or a big Minecraft update can do wonders for this storefront), they also control Windows and can integrate it with their storefront (really, storefronts, they also own Bethesda and Battle.net) in a way that Valve simply couldn't match.
Click to expand...

Astray said:
Honestly speaking? Because they were so busy trying to fuck with Sony that Valve stole the PC gaming market from under them.

I think Microsoft now not only have the big IPs that can and likely will bring gamers over by force (let's be real, no one is going to ignore or boycott Elder Scrolls 6 or the new COD), but they can also tweak Windows to help add features that no other storefront can have: Quick Resume, Rest Mode, native RGB in-game integration etc etc.

These are both things that Epic or GOG have never had at their disposal.
Click to expand...
 
Shake Your Rump

Shake Your Rump

Banned
Dat clickbait headline. If you read the source, no one is saying anything like the headline. This is just introducing a new UI for the Xbox app along with a few hundred titles that have been certified as universal apps.

This is pretty cool. I mean, who wouldn't want their Xbox games to be universal purchases on PC? Buy once, play on either platform with your cloud saves. I don't really buy Xbox or PC games (despite owning both), but it seems good to me.

On a side note, the image in the MS blog post informed me that EVONY is still up and running. Holy shit! Remember that? "Come play my lord"...

xboxappinline1.png
 
StereoVsn

StereoVsn

Gold Member
LooseLips said:
I hear you on that one, but looking at the new app now - it seems they... have? It took me to purchase in the xbox app and, I didn't buy, but it seemed pretty seamless.

It's a start.
Click to expand...
It’s same backend. It’s still integrated MS store which is the main issue.
 
ReBurn

ReBurn

Gold Member
I noticed that it was different when I logged in to play solitaire. Still only played solitaire.
 
GHG

GHG

Member
Astray said:
I am gonna pull a O onQ123 and take my victory lap because I have called this move since April 2024 at the very least.

If anyone thinks Microsoft is going to play nice with Valve after they snatched the PC Gaming market from underneath them then you need your head checked. The only reason they kept releasing games day 1 on Steam is because they were a weak publisher that simply needed to.

Microsoft is not Epic or GOG, they have a lot of tools they can use to create an edge over Steam and potentially really hurt Valve:
  • Must-have content that is simply not easy to replace for PC players like Elder Scrolls, Fallout, DOOM etc.
  • The ability to do feature integration with Windows (can implement things like quick resume rest mode etc and make it only work on their stuff).
  • Cloud streaming (which would potentially enable them to sell game units to players with weak rigs).
  • Contacts with devs/publishers and money for moneyhatting.
  • Much, MUCH greater reach with OEMs and chipmakers for hardware initiatives.
This is why Valve is doing hardware, they need to supercharge Steam OS's share in the PC player market ASAP in order to be more robust against this exact kind of attack.

Receipts for my victory lap:
Click to expand...

Valve know this.

There's a reason they've gone full steam ahead with developing SteamOS in the last few years and really fleshing it out (pun intended).

They are doing this to protect their business.
 
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