Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2024]
- Thread starter Shifty Geezer
- Start date
depends on where people want to be playing.
cheapchips
Veteran
I can think of reasons, but honestly I'd just be guessing as to which you think are obvious.
You cant do it, unless you're going to raise the price of the consoles significantly and basically stop treating them like subsidized hardware. The whole 'console model' involves selling the hardware cheap to build a large install base where they can take a cut of every game sold on that platform. If you allow people to bypass your store and your cut of game purchases on the device, then the console model completely falls apart. You're just selling a PC at that point with a 'suggested' store.
But everybody will obviously ignore that cuz PC gamers will inevitably just use and buy from Steam instead. Microsoft cannot build their own store/frontend or whatever that will get people to genuinely stop buying from Steam. It's just too dominant at this point. If Microsoft is trying to get away from competing with Playstation, they will do far worse if they want to try and compete with Valve in terms of game sales.
It's just not feasible. Valve is the only player that could maybe do a 'PC console' with a subsidized price model.
cheapchips
Veteran
It'll be one of those where the number of people dropping out to Windows might not be as big as you'd expect. The hassle free / play anywhere Microsoft store version has some value add.
You could also just charge a fee for unlocking a poper windows boot option to offset the subsidy.
(although I'd envisage it would be just another virtual machine. That's how Xboxes run their games afterall)
I dont know man. I really think Steam simply has a rock solid hold on the PC market that I cant see some 'portability' factor breaking. Especially when Valve also has a system that offers portability at a subsidized price, and could quite feasibly directly compete with any 'console' Microsoft produce as well, doing the exact same thing as them but with Steam at the forefront instead.
I also just dont think Microsoft is ever gonna beat Valve in terms of the 'user friendly' aspect, either. Microsoft is just too bloated a corporation to really nail down that gamer-first vision like Valve more or less manages to.
A fee is an interesting proposition, but it'd have to be a big one. Like, $300 on top of the $500-600 original pricetag.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Which is basically what it appears the EU intends. I'm not sure for how much longer they will be tolerant of consoles locking out 3rd party storefronts.
So, if that happens (looks likely, but who knows, maybe Sony and Nintendo can change the mind of people heading the EU), then consoles potentially become not much cheaper than PCs. Well, at least PlayStation and Xbox style consoles which sell close to cost.
Regards,
SB
It's much easier to argue the validity of your locked-in ecosystem when you actually provide consumers a tangible, significant benefit via subsidized hardware and low cost of entry. Doing away with this would be actively harmful to gamers and the gaming industry.
Apple was never gonna stop selling iPhones or doing their App Store if Epic fully won. But MS/Sony/Nintendo might well have to reconsider whether doing a console at all makes any sense if others can come in and bypass their ecosystem. This would be dropping a nuclear bomb on the industry. Even if it survives, it would be a very different world.
thinking about it, that model is Xbox, and you know how it went. A Windows console that can be managed by a 5 y.o. kid, like a Steam Deck, with possibilities to open it to other stores is a really good value proposition. It'd be good for Windows, for gamers who don't want to deal with just a single store or capped possibilities if you dont use Linux (Steam Deck) and for MS in general, which could have the upper hand 'cos the OS is theirs
I imagine MS getting around this by offering a traditional console at a traditional price point while offering an unlocked version for several 100s of dollars more. Most console gamers will just buy the traditional console and other will just buy a windows PC while the unlocked version will see minimal sales.
I can see MS using off the shelves parts to build a traditional console, but I don't see MS spitting out Alienware like device with an option for a GUI specific to a living room setting especially when they will just run into antitrust issues because now gaming PC manufacturers will argue that MS has an unfair advantage as it has the ability to leverage its control of windows to benefit its gaming PCs. MS and others would be better off eschewing the selling of hardware in the EU and just selling a living room GUI to euro PC gamers. It's a much broader market as no one is locked to a specific set of hardware under a particular brand.
Furthermore, I doubt the EU will be able to push an unlocked console model where popularity of third-party stores is high. Thats disruptive enough to the platform owners' business models to warrant pulling out of the EU and servicing the EU fanbase through the grey market. The EU is attractive to platform owners because their volume of license fees it generates. But take that away and there is literally no point of selling consoles in Europe.
If MS can produce a profitable console off a limited userbase (20-30 million consoles) and make GP viable as streaming business, it may be sufficient to limit their gaming business in EU to just PC sales and GP subscriptions.
Its funny EU wants to target consoles in such fashion because the PC where such a reality can be more easily produced is nevertheless dominated by one player.
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Whether it's a value proposition for consumers isn't really the point here. It's whether it makes sense for Microsoft to offer such hardware at a subsidized price point. That's the sticky issue. How do they make money from this endeavor if they aren't making money on the hardware and people are free to buy and play games on Steam instead of some Microsoft Store?
I'm not gonna buy games on the Microsoft Store over Steam if I have a choice. We know the vast majority of PC gamers will choose Steam over any other storefront on PC when possible.
It would be a terrible, losing bet in my opinion.
I'm not sure which hardware lock you're referring to here.
Valve allows SteamOS to run on any hardware. If you're a 3rd party ODM and want to make a gaming handheld and want it to run SteamOS, no problemo.
The other way around, Steam Deck can and does run Windows just fine, and Valve even went to the effort to provide all the needed drivers for their custom Steam Deck hardware: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6121-ECCD-D643-BAA8
I gave Windows on my deck a try, but much preferred the SteamOS experience; a bit better performance and fewer stutters on the stuff I play.
the point is that the value proposition comes from the fact that the Windows Store would be plug & play, as I said, for 5 years old people, like a traditional console. If you want to add mods and dig deep into the "console's" innards, play on other stores, add mods like Elden Ring mods..., I mean, the things that people like me usually do, then they could offer a way to unlock that knowing that it is in the users hands.
Tbh I'd never buy a Xbox console -handheld or whatever-, more of the same. But if they have a hybrid -like say a hybrid fitness bike- console/PC they could win a buy on the Windows Store for simplicity -people like me also like simplicity, just not locked away- instead of on Steam or any other store where you must use your hardware as a "regular" PC.
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good point. Still you have to go to a FAQ, it's not a straightforward option. Valve want you to use their store on their OS and so on. As I said in another post, I know a couple who are the most hardcore console players ever and bought a Steam Deck and they love it and treat it like a console.
They know it's a PC, but it's super easy to use for them, so they treat it like any other console 'cos they don't have to deal with anything, it just works.
Dunno about the maturity of their Windows support, but when the Steam Deck launched, the drivers for Windows and the whole experience wasn't good, you were kinda forced to use Linux to unlock the console's potential.
The big one is anti-piracy measures. A PC OS can't beat the traditional game console OS in that area which doesn't ever allow unsigned code execution by design. That's how console vendors enforce their exclusive right to be the sole digital market regulator for their own platforms and it gives stronger confidence for game developers to participate in it as well without having to implement DRM themselves especially ones which require constant online validation ...
The other reason being is that console APIs are more powerful than PC APIs. Console vendor subsidies for hardware aren't the only way to get a cost advantage over equivalent PC hardware but the fact that game developers can better optimize their software with a specialized API for it means that they can provide their customers with great performance at a very reasonable price ...
Valve is now a monster.
More than 500 games on Steam earned over $3 million in 2023
More than 500 games on Steam generated over $3 million in gross revenue in 2023, according to new stats released by Val…
www.rockpapershotgun.com
The numbers are huge. Still Microsoft could compete with them if they make Windows a bit more accessible to all kinds of gamers, just with the advantages of having Windows which is almost 100% infinite backwards compatibility, better framerates, less stuff like Proton.
A device like that is not about making money from the hardware, but build Windows loyalty, so to speak. Gaming is where Windows beats all its OS rivals nowadays in every possible way. Many people install Windows 'cos of gaming. It's not that you need Windows like in the past where all the software was launched on Windows but not Linus.
Xbox is already plug'n'play, as much as any console platform can be these days.
But in an open PC environment, it'd be no more 'plug n play' than any other PC.
There's no magical middle ground here that straddles both worlds while being able to defeat the traditional console financial model at the same time. It just doesn't exist.
Quick API question. Would there be any practical difference between NVAPI and Microsoft exposing that type of IHV specific functionality through an optional DX call?
Supposing that they're the same functionality which hits identical hardware/driver paths there shouldn't be any performance difference but from an ergonomic usage perspective, driver extensions like NVAPI aren't as nice for game integration compared to official optional API extensions ...
Outside of temporal upscaling, you won't see many games regularly using "exotic" features offered by driver extensions. Depending on how invasive a feature is such as a theoretical extension to avoid PSOs which is central to the design of modern explicit APIs, the vast majority of developers will refuse to implement major redundant functionality ...
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