Data shows Windows 8 hasn't stimulated PC gaming as anticipated

[Lurker101]

I've got three major concerns with this article.

Data shows Windows 8 hasn't stimulated PC gaming as anticipated

Now, who expected Windows 8 to stimulate PC gaming? Not only those who game, but also major games companies have said Windows 8 will be problematic for gaming. Did I miss their comments in amongst the flood of "I hate the Metro UI" posts?

The recently-released operating system was expected to be the savior for desktop computer

Who, if anyone said that Windows 8 was to be the saviour of the desktop? The desktop doesn't need 'saving'. It'll be fine for quite a while, even with the surge in tablet computing. Wasn't Windows 8 supposed to be Microsofts big break into tablet computing and a unifier between systems?

And thirdly, has there really been enough time since its' release to attain any meaningful answers as to the impact of Windows 8, other than it being a rather polarizing issue amongst PC users? Surely, it's better to wait till around February - March time to get some statistics, that way not only have the early adopters settled into Microsofts new bells and whistle OS, but also the vast amount who will have had it pre-loaded onto the laptops and tablets they'll have gotten for Christmas.

 

[TomSEA]

"The recently-released operating system was expected to be the savior for desktop computer..."

How can that be when it's clear that (at least the UI) was specifically designed for portable devices?

And the "savior" for desktop computers? They don't need a savior, they're doing fine. People are buying tablets and notebooks as accessories. Not to replace their desktops.

 

[basilirwin]

"Microsoft and a number of partners had high hopes for Windows 8. The recently-released operating system was expected to be the savior for desktop computer"

I wonder who thought that and why? W8 was optimized for credit-card sized touch screen devices and deliberately made to NOT work on conventional laptop and desktop PCs, you know, those devices which are used by the information producers to MAKE the information consumed by the information consumers on their cute little pads.

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

I don't get why we're talking about this either... Gamers aren't switching because Win 7 is fine. And we shouldn't be talking about gamers, we should be talking about users with multiple monitors, which probably includes any serious gamer. Win 8 doesn't work well on multiple monitors.

TS seems to love any negative news about MS even if it's barely news. An operating system isn't the same as a new game or new smartphone. Give it time. It seems a little premature to discuss low sales on ANYTHING on Dec 6th when the world has a lot of Christmas shopping left to do.

 

[Guest]

Microsoft should stop trying to compete with consoles with a console and instead beat them with a low cost PC type setup.

 

[ReederOnTheRun]

How is any of this in MS's hands in the first place?

PC games are all lame *** ports from console versions, its pretty common knowledge that console sales outweigh pc sales by a massive amount. Until game developers stop trying to make fast cash and actually start releasing games for PC thats more interesting than "press A/B/X not to die" nothing will change.

Win 8 wont change anything and neither will 9 or 10, the responsibility of the state of pc games is with the game dev's.

Hahahaha no. just no.

 

[MrBungle]

I don't get why we're talking about this either... Gamers aren't switching because Win 7 is fine. And we shouldn't be talking about gamers, we should be talking about users with multiple monitors, which probably includes any serious gamer. Win 8 doesn't work well on multiple monitors.

Win 8 isn't bad for anyone that uses mulitple monitors... its bad for anyone that likes to run programs in windows... if MS is going to really go hardcore on this metro thing they need to drop the 's' from the OS's name and call it 'Microsoft Window' instead. Its not a new paradigm Its like DOS with a task switcher (start screen).

 

[Guest]

^"Microsoft should stop trying to compete with consoles and instead beat them with a low cost PC type setup."

That would be an equivalent to a modified Xbox 360 with homebrew enabled. I doubt they would do this.

 

[misor]

I think its pretty clear to anyone with half-a-brain that Windows 8 is a flop. The nerds who don't mind beta-testing operating systems and people who couldn't name their operating system to save their life are the people acting as guinea pigs for Windows 9.

I am very hopeful that Windows 9 will be the final product that Microsoft wanted to deliver. But out of necessity had to get Windows 8 out the door and into the wild as their first step.

I am skipping Windows 8 and looking forward to Windows 9. But make no mistake about it. If Windows 9 isn't what it should be, I have no problem in skipping it as well. Windows 7 Ultimate is taking care of me just fine.

On a side note, the TechSpot captcha system is getting more retarded with every new post I make.

if you have a half-a-brain then you can't certainly know whether a product flops or not.

(I agree that the techspot captcha words are often unreadable; fortunately, techspot registration is easy, as long as you pass the captcha )

 

[Pan Wah]

I didn't anticipate Windows 8 stimulating anything, I'm just glad I imaged my drive so I could roll back to Windows 7 easily!

 

[Guest]

WHO...?

Who thought that Window8 would stimulate PC gaming? This is NOT news, it is only horribly bad predictions. I have been a PC gamer, since before there were PC's.

My first real "OMG.. I can't put this down game" was Wizardry.. & not once have I ever went out and bought an OS, to play a game. Nor, do I know anyone, or had heard of anyone who has ever done this. Now.. I know people who upgraded from Windows98... to WindowsXP to play games. But that wasn't immediate.

Secondly, kids are dumb today and most cannot even handle an OS install. Microsoft is extremely dumb, if they themselves predicted that Windows8 would do anything for Gamers.

I am a hardcore gamer (30h+ week)... my new rig sitting on the floor has WIndows7 waiting to install. Bcuz Win8 does not serve me.

 

[Guest]

I'm waiting for the release of Steam for Linux to stimulate game sales on the Linux platform. I don't think new OS's stimulate game sales, I think new quality games stimulate game sales.

 

[Guest]

Cough...cough.. BULLSHIT.. cough

it was "impossible" the same as M$ claimed no more than 640K was possible in DOS.. but I did it w/o them. I had mine running with 64MB flat memory model on boot many years before anything M$ did even similar.

It's not impossible.. it's morons in marketing artificially limiting options in an attempt to gouge more $.

Oh and I've been in IT for over 35 years now. Unlike winbloze kiddies hanging on M$ to do everything for them.

 

[fteumer]

Maybe devs will stop being lazy and learn to OpenGL so we can have some Mac/Linux games coming down the pipe. MS hasn't done jack **** for gamedevs in a while

 

[wiyosaya]

This is Extremely false info, it should be writters falt because they're stopping everyone from buying windows 8.

Reason people dont switch do win8 is articles like this.

there is no real reason NOT to upgrade, besides some bad feeling from all the downhype of some press. no start button? please.... just win-d. the new UI is just an overlay screen, geez....

Double posts here?

Personally, I don't see that there is any real reason TO upgrade. Aside from some performance improvements, there is nothing really spectacular in 8, and this requires that many will have to learn how to effectively use the new UI schema. Not everyone likes to tinker; some people actually like to get things accomplished when they sit at their computer, and 8 will set things back at least a month in that respect - IMHO.

So its been about a month, now, and from the tone of this article, it sounds as if M$ was expecting that the whole world would switch in that time frame? IMHO, yet another indication of M$ megalomania.

Why would game sales increase just because of a new O$ release? It is already well-know that 8 was not designed with games in mind, and it follows that gamers would shy away from it. 8 was M$ foolish attempt to unify the O$ across platforms and reduce their own costs because if that was successful, it would require that only one code base is maintained.

Finally, the business world will not upgrade. It is not cost effective since the business world just finished upgrading to 7. Without the business world on board, as I see it, 8 is doomed to be the next Me/Vista.

 

[Tygerstrike]

"Cough...cough.. BULLSHIT.. cough

it was "impossible" the same as M$ claimed no more than 640K was possible in DOS.. but I did it w/o them. I had mine running with 64MB flat memory model on boot many years before anything M$ did even similar.

It's not impossible.. it's morons in marketing artificially limiting options in an attempt to gouge more $.

Oh and I've been in IT for over 35 years now. Unlike winbloze kiddies hanging on M$ to do everything for them."

Really? Your going to claim your some kind of wizkid IT professional because you discovered himem.sys and emm386.exe? If you were half the IT professional you claimed to be, you would know and understand the difference between low-level memory and high-level memory access. There is no way you could have booted a computer with 64MB's of low-access memory... it just wasn't possible. Even UNIX-based systems ran across that limitation, which is what prompted the creation of utility TSR's like himem.sys and emm386.exe... it enabled systems to access the Upper-Memory Block and Extended Memory Registers (himem.sys) as well as Expanded Memory Registers (emm386.exe).

But you, being the IT professional that you are, you know all about that, I'm sure. Where were you in the golden days when computers needed boot disks in order to play certain memory-extensive games like Ultima VII or Aces of the Pacific? You could have made a fortune selling your "technique" that enabled a fresh boot with 64MB's of RAM in a time when your average PC was sporting 4-8MB's of RAM.... 16MB if you were really really high end.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Yikes, that reminded me of the hair pulling days of managing upper memory allocations. No matter how you managed to configure it there was always at least one program that didn't cooperate. Thus making it easier to (as you mentioned) create a boot disk with upper memory configuration differences and quite possibly booting without the normal memory resident programs.

when your average PC was sporting 4-8MB's of RAM.... 16MB if you were really really high end.

WOW another trip down memory lane, I was flying high when I purchased my first memory upgrade. I believe it was labeled 4MB 72Pin SIMM's which was non-EC if I remember correctly. That give me a grand total of 8MB memory on a 486 SX-50. That was back when Packard Bell was still sold in the states.

 

[Guest]

Does Microsoft actually believe that most people (families) upgrade their OS every few years..? I go over to people's houses and some still run Windows98, or XP.

Crazy^, I know... & I cringe when I see it, but people just don't buy computers every 2 years, more like every 5 years. And most have ZERO reason for Win8, as most jumped from Win98, WinXP.. to Win7. So for most people to buy Windows8 they will probably have to get a new COmputer, as upgrading does nothing for them... wasted $$.



Secondly, what is killing PC sales, is the price of Monitors. Why buy a $500 computer, when a family size Monitor is $600 ?

 

[veLa]

Good thing I have a disk with every version of (pre-service pack) Windows 7.

 

[JCitron]

2 Points about this article:

- Adoption figures are wrong, check http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey you will see W8 accounts for around 5% when combining 64 bit and 32 bit versions.

- PC Game sales will not be influenced by the release of an OS, no matter how good it is. I (and I assume the majority of consumers) will buy games based on cost and quality of a product, not based on what version of an OS I am running. I understand the angle that there were hopes PC hardware sales would increase, but why would that impact PC sales dramatically? Most software can be transferred between PCs meaning there is little reason to buy new software unless it is a serious upgrade of hardware that allows you to play previously unplayable titles.

As it happens, there are naff all games being released this side of Christmas that I want and that I haven't already bought a couple of months ago. There was no massive Skyrim launch like last November only a few mediocre games, most of which didn't meet reviewers expectations.

Most of my budget this last month or two has gone into Kickstarter campaigns to to a lack of inspiring titles being launched this season.

I agree. What good new titles are there? They're all rehashes of the same garbage as far as games go, and they're all very, very expensive.

I was one of the people that upgraded to Win 8, and just as you say here, I migrated my games to the new OS. There was no reason to purchase anything new.

 

[Guest]

How surprising. How about investing in DirectX. I feel it's great time to revive OpenGL, build OpenCL GPU physics engine and make games that run on Linux ... and Os X ... and every windows in this millenium.