Epic Games founder thinks Microsoft will essentially break Steam in later versions of Windows 10

People will stop using the term "PC" to mean "Windows", as soon as people stop using the term "Linux" to mean "GNU/Linux".

I still say Linux, so it might take a while.

Well.. From a commercial point of view, "GNU/Linux" is longish...

Imagine to pronounce GNU Slash Linux several times in the same paragraph

Just "Linux" sounds perfect.

About the topic, I wish and hope that Mocosoft will break Steam someday..

It wont happen, that would be a bad idea, we know than windows has a great compatibility with old software, so even if win32 becomes legacy (and this wont happen anytime soon), they would support it properly.

Anyone know an open platform? Lin-something?

Lin-Lin-FreeBSD? yeah, I was thinking about that one too.

Anyone against Linux would have said the same kind of "in five years, they'll control the whole universe!" would have been accused of [FUD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt)'ing.

We've got to be fairplay and not accept this kind of arguments because it pleases us.

this was a $9 billion increase in profits from the year before for Apple, while MS has been showing rocky gains and losses.

Thats wrong, its the 1st and 2nd quater 2016 the profit was declining by about 15 % for Apple.

The results were better than expected, not making it a better result compared to the years before.

[quote=wvstolzing]

A really dirty trick M$ could play, though, would be to limit the use of DX12 only on UWP (or whatever it's called) applications. In that case, M$ wouldn't even have to bother sabotaging Valve; since Steam would thus be rendered irrelevant for new games, as long as those don't use Vulkan, of course.

Too risky. A lot too risky. Having a similar API like Vulkan and Steam with a huge client base, EA only publishing in their Origin that could certainly kill off DX12 in favour of Vulkan in a very small timeframe. If companies like EA do not like something it would be sharing their profits. This is why we do not see EA games on Steam anymore.

Vulkan is the threat of the Industry to Microsoft not to do anything wrong with DX. Anything like exactly this. Because then the technology becomes a business decision, a decision for or against their own profit. And porting DX12 to Vulkan is "pretty easy", not saying it isn't a good amount of time for the engine devs, but being platform agnostic already (most engines), if Microsoft goes that way that transition would be very quickly done. The business case (give away 30 % of your profit or not, in EAs case) does not even need to be calculated to know that in such a case Vulkan was to favour. Especially because most engines will have a Vulkan renderer in the future anyway, because of Android.

And killing off Vulkan is hard, because it's completely in the hands of the driver developers, and not Microsoft. And the driver developers do not have any interest in Microsoft, they're not making money because of them, but because of the games requireing high-end graphics cards. So they'd rather listen to the game industry than on Microsoft.


Last edited by STiAT on 27 Jul 2016 at 5:36 am UTC

Anyone against Linux would have said the same kind of "in five years, they'll control the whole universe!" would have been accused of [FUD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt)'ing.

We've got to be fairplay and not accept this kind of arguments because it pleases us.

Normally, you would expect different arguments to be plausible about a loose group with 2% of the market than about a monopolist that has been convicted of using illegal practices to maintain said monopoly. See, if you say "This person may be about to leverage their monopoly power to gain still more control and revenues!" that is basically a plausible thing to say about the monopolist, but probably not about the group with 2%.

If you wanted to say Linux was going to plot to use their near-monopoly of the supercomputer market to do something, that might be plausible--if it weren't for the fact that open source platforms make Microsoft-like shenanigans very difficult in the first place, and that "Linux" isn't a unified entity.

It wont happen, that would be a bad idea, we know than windows has a great compatibility with old software, so even if win32 becomes legacy (and this wont happen anytime soon), they would support it properly.

Anyone know an open platform? Lin-something?

Lin-Lin-FreeBSD? yeah, I was thinking about that one too.

LinGNUBSD??

Lingnubsed.....

We all know that Amiga/Workbench is the real PC. Everything else is a pale imitation.

In theory they don't, in practice they do dictate policy. You remember that whole UEFI thing back when windows 8 was released. Only because the EU intervened did Microsoft amend their required implementation guide to include a section about being able to disable the secure boot functionality on x86 systems.

You said it. They try, but as long as they're large and important enough to have such influence, they're also likely to get pushed back due to monopoly concerns. Their lobbying machine get these lockdown measures declared legal in the thoroughly corrupt system we call the US government (Please don't shoot me! I'm an endangered species!) but then slightly saner governments in the EU force/allow hardware manufacturers to leave these locks wide open. They're not much saner and are almost as corrupt, but they still hold on to a semblance of sanity.

Hmm. Is it possible to be both cynical and an optimist in the same paragraph? I think I might just have done that.

We all know that Amiga/Workbench is the real PC. Everything else is a pale imitation.

I beg to differ:


UEFI was the first step to making Windows the only operating system that works on a PC, killing steam & replacing it with Windows store would be a further step down that route, it may take a few years but it is going to happen.

If that ever happens, Ill go full PS4,PS5 and STEAM indies

goVEGAN

UEFI was the first step to making Windows the only operating system that works on a PC, killing steam & replacing it with Windows store would be a further step down that route, it may take a few years but it is going to happen.

UEFI has some technical merit as well, and if it was meant to stop competition, all it achieved was a slight speed bump and a lot of noise.

If that ever happens, Ill go full PS4,PS5 and STEAM indies

goVEGAN

That's pretty much what I was thinking. If the day comes that I can't play any games on Linux but only on Windows, that's the day I cease playing games on PC and switch to PSx. If that's not an option, then I'll go back to board games, RPGs using real dice, and choose-your-own adventure books. MS will not force me to play with them. I will take my ball and go the fuck home.

If that ever happens, Ill go full PS4,PS5 and STEAM indies

goVEGAN

That's pretty much what I was thinking. If the day comes that I can't play any games on Linux but only on Windows, that's the day I cease playing games on PC and switch to PSx.

Hey, fellow penguin-fanciers, relax. I can appreciate a good Sci-Fi dystopia, but Microsoft will never rule the world. This is not in the realm of possibility. Unless absolutely everyone in power goes crazy and everyone else turns to sheep overnight, there's simply no conceivable way of stopping anyone from releasing their game for an open operating system like Linux. Just like there's no way of preventing hardware that enables this from being produced and sold.

UEFI was the first step to making Windows the only operating system that works on a PC, killing steam & replacing it with Windows store would be a further step down that route, it may take a few years but it is going to happen.

I'm sure MS would love to make that happen, but the problem for them is that hardware is commoditized and economies of scale very much operative for computers, and MS only "owns" the desktop segment of that hardware (which is shrinking as a percentage of the whole enchilada). The more of the same widgets Intel or whoever can make, the better for their bottom line, and everywhere except the desktop, those widgets gotta run Linux. Doing the desktop different enough from everything else as to make it not run Linux even though the servers and TV-managing boxes and embedded thingies and supercomputer clusters and yadda and yadda and yadda all have to run Linux, would hurt profits. So they ain't gonna do it, and MS does not have enough muscle in this age to make them.

Also, UEFI is a different category of thing from locking down what runs on Windows. The former was in part a, mostly unsuccessful, move to stop things other than Windows from running on PC hardware. The latter would be an attempt to get more control of, and extract more money from, Windows itself--but if anything it would tend to push more people into running things other than Windows on PC hardware.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 27 Jul 2016 at 5:55 pm UTC

In this case the use of "PC" can be seen as correct: If Microsoft succeeds to close the software part of PC's, why keep the hardware open so people can escape to Linux? Microsoft ARM based hardware is already closed.

there's ARM hardware made by MS?

Lumia phones and Surface tablets? Something like that. They did acquire Nokia back in the day for their hardware expertise after all. Well, they did get the expertise, but lost or got rid of everything else. Including Nokia's market share.

OP Tim is correct - Apple sabotages Windows by making iTunes a bloated piece of shit that makes windows crawl on its knees - it's not hard to look good and act superior when you sabotage the competition.

Microsoft wants to crown itself king and will do everything possible to force XBONE and their ideology and way of doing things - this is the same as apple though.

No surprise I can't support either, and while every system has its flaws or cave-outs, at least on Linux if Developer-X makes a bad choice the project is forked to save the users from the bad choice,

eg - OpenOffice -> LibreOffice,

Or for some but not me, they prefer Mate over Gnome 3.

In Windows or Mac world they make a bad decision you're screwed, your files are in their cloud, you can't turn off updates, your PC bricked because of mandatory Windows 10 update? Too bad.

I blame the Mac vs PC commercials for starting the paradigm of calling all windows based systems "PCs".

It started long before that. "PC" has always been synonymous with Microsoft in one way or another for decades.

not as much, because before the commercials mainly I remember Windows PCs being thing, because Macs were being sold in stores and were referred to Mac PCs vs Windows PCs. But Steve Jobs wanted to make a distinct difference between the two with the commercials by simply stating Macs were *Macs* and Windows PCs were just PCs.

I don't think I've ever heard a Mac referred to as a "Mac PC". What I do remember back in the day is that "PC compatible" was a big selling point for IBM clones, which basically meant they were compatible with IBM PCs meaning they could run MS-DOS. And for whatever reason when Microsoft and IBM parted ways, the term "PC" stuck with Microsoft, probably not by accident.

If that ever happens, Ill go full PS4,PS5 and STEAM indies

goVEGAN

Completely off-topic, but I was 100% vegan for 1 year and 2 months.

Learned a lot, like how to make main courses that tasted good without meat or dairy, where to find good tofu in town. But one word of warning for heavy all-day coffee drinkers like myself, it hampered with my ability to absorb elemental (plant) iron - more than my vitamin C intake was making up for.

Now I'm a partial vegan, I still make all my vegan dishes, and I can go pure vegan for a 1-5 days on occasion. But I also swear by sardines and herring added to that, along with skim milk and eggs. And once in a great while going full "suicide by food" mode with brats/pizza/bacon etc - mainly out with friends.