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[Shadowlord]

You forgot xna! And and and moving on...

[Ludorum Rex]

"We have never had a desktop OS where the OS vendor controls application sales"

I meant in an exclusive way - it is still perfectly possible to install OSX applications from a (downloaded) installer. But true, Apple has always tried to move things this way - towards controlling the application and media sales and distribution. It was always one of the great things about Microsoft that they did not do this. It saddens me that they are no longer a "developer developer developers" company, but are trying to copy-cat Apple instead. If I wanted Apple products I'd be an Apple customer. I am not. I like Windows. I don't want my Windows to turn into an Apple-like.

[Beggars` Sect]

there is a large number of games that you could easily run without steam that are on sale on it

It is quite telling that you fail to observe the huge paradox contained in this sentence 

Apple and Google did their thing on mobile devices - I am not a fan of the application ecosystem on either of those platforms, but it is still a completely different situation compared to a desktop OS.

Apple does their thing on a Personal Computer too, besides what are "mobiles" these days but portable computers with touchscreens and operating systems? It`s not different at all and it just sounds like you`re shifting goalposts here.

Valve is a 3rd party who had a major stake in reviving a dying PC gaming market.

Ah, that ole chestnut. It`s a myth - unprovable feel-good tale. PC market was never dying, it was just in transition, facing terra nova in shape of digital distribution and direct console competition. But Sir Gaben arriving on the battlefield under H-L flag and saving the day sounds much better, I admit that.

They have been decently benign in their business approach, offline availability, ability to use codes from store-bought games, ability to use codes purchased directly from the developers, very decent developer income splits (small studios got a far smaller piece of the pie in the physical distribution days - as in more than ten times less). I haven't seen Valve do anything to secure exclusives. Of course they are not angels - and they have made dubious decisions, but the fact that they don't control the OS makes a world of difference.

Now, nothing personal here mate but this sounds like Walmart`s middle manager explaining to an investigative journo how his company is really good for everybody, nothing to see here. Unfortunately, it`s still spin. Store bought game has Steamworks on it anyway, accepting code from the dev means another Steam user for free (digital, eh), income splits are the lowest of all storefronts. They don`t control THE OS, but of course they tried to push out not only their own OS but hardware too. But these are details...most importantly, the elephant sits chuffed in the corner of the room: for a bit of convenience people signed off their right to the ownership of a product they paid for.

Disclaimer: even though it might seem so, it is not my aim to spark another pointless anti-status quo flame war. Been there, done that, the battle is lost, I moved under a big rock. And by no means am I defending MS here - their recent moves stink to high heaven. However, above examples demonstrate the strange, fascinating ways human beings can rationalise away and adapt the narratives to create some sort of safe haven...a defence mechanism, perhaps, still quite depressing though.

The bottom line is, sure, it`s okay to fire broadsides at current MS initiative - but if at the same time, for example, you don`t see the problem with the fact that the entire Internet (and more to come) is being progressively devoured by one huge advertising corporation then your perception is somewhat skewed, in my opinion.

But then, said corporation said once that they won`t be evil*, and also you can ride a scooter in the office if you work for them. So dunno, I might be wrong here

*actually, they just dropped that pesky clause

[Shadowlord]

for a bit of convenience people signed off their right to the ownership of a product they paid for.

What do you think ownership means with software, exactly?

[Ludorum Rex]

@Beggars' Sect

The PC market PC was dying, and yes you are right, it was also transitioning. Valve was a main part of that transition. If you walked into a games store in the period before digital distribution took off - it was console games everywhere. And the PC games? Almost only major studios and publishers. Stores had to paid to give games shelf space, the retailers and distributors took a rather hefty chunk of the income. I am not claiming that there would not have been other companies taking up digital distribution - but I am quite happy it was a 3rd party and not a Microsoft themselves, because an OS vendor also controlling the main store has a lot of power. (I don't think the EU would have accepted an MS dominated digital distribution space anyway, but that's a different discussion)

I am not moving any goalposts - there is a massive difference between a phone and a desktop computer. They have a lot of overlap, sure, but so does a TV and a Cinema. I know a lot of pundits really push the "all computing are the same - PCs are just immobile phones with big monitors and peripherals!" agenda, but I find this notion completely ridiculous, and a main factor in a lot of desktop applications these days having horrible UIs and why mobile operating systems are bloated, becoming buggier by the day, and drain stupid amounts of power. Desktop IS different. But sure if MS wants to go ahead and hasten their demise by crippling their OS to try and push their store, instead of actually making the store good, that's their prerogative.

As for Google - I have absolutely no love for their dominance,  would not mind at all to see them knocked off their throne. Google controlling Android is not a good thing for anyone. I look forward to the day when a search engine paradigm shift makes their quasi-monopoly on indexing the internet a piece of interesting history.

But this discussion is not about Google. It is about the Windows Store. Microsoft are trying to emulate all the bad things about Google and Apple. The monopolistic approach to business where revenue is secured by investing in preventing competition and collecting tribute. I prefer competition via product innovation and quality. Valve is not perfect - but they do tend to be more about products and quality, and less about locking-in customers. Of course, they try to lure customers into the store. That's fine. You can still leave if you don't like their product.

At the end of the day Steam is a better store than Windows Store. I would love to see the latter become a viable alternative. I don't want to see it become a "feature" of Windows that I can only use the Windows Store.

[Shadowlord]

As for Google - I have absolutely no love for their dominance,  would not mind at all to see them knocked off their throne. Google controlling Android is not a good thing for anyone. I look forward to the day when a search engine paradigm shift makes their quasi-monopoly on indexing the internet a piece of interesting history.

They have one competitor at least - Microsoft's Bing! (At least with the bing image search, I can tell which images are animated gifs, although it would be nice if searching for image gif returned only gifs )

Microsoft are trying to emulate all the bad things about Google and Apple.

Ha ha!

[Aklyon]

there is a large number of games that you could easily run without steam that are on sale on it

It is quite telling that you fail to observe the huge paradox contained in this sentence 

What, are you going to claim its impossible to sell a game without drm unless its on your company's website for direct sale or gog next? Good joke.
If I for example went and copied my AI War folder outside of ~Steam\SteamApps\common\ and then run the game, it would work perfectly fine. It is a game, sold on steam, that does not require steam running to work. Explain where the paradox is in that sentence that has none.

[Teneb]

there is a large number of games that you could easily run without steam that are on sale on it

It is quite telling that you fail to observe the huge paradox contained in this sentence 

What, are you going to claim its impossible to sell a game without drm unless its on your company's website for direct sale or gog next? Good joke.
If I for example went and copied my AI War folder outside of ~Steam\SteamApps\common\ and then run the game, it would work perfectly fine. It is a game, sold on steam, that does not require steam running to work. Explain where the paradox is in that sentence that has none.

On the topic of paradoxes, all Paradox games also work without steam if you wish for another example.

for a bit of convenience people signed off their right to the ownership of a product they paid for.

Maybe you just don't know, but nearly every single piece of software (the exceptions to this are extremely rare) you buy, no matter where or in what shape, are not yours. You just buy a license to use them. The only difference is that it is pretty damn hard to enforce these licenses on physical stuff.

[BigD145]

there is a large number of games that you could easily run without steam that are on sale on it

It is quite telling that you fail to observe the huge paradox contained in this sentence 

What, are you going to claim its impossible to sell a game without drm unless its on your company's website for direct sale or gog next? Good joke.
If I for example went and copied my AI War folder outside of ~Steam\SteamApps\common\ and then run the game, it would work perfectly fine. It is a game, sold on steam, that does not require steam running to work. Explain where the paradox is in that sentence that has none.

On the topic of paradoxes, all Paradox games also work without steam if you wish for another example.

Stardew Valley. Kerbal Space Program. There are certainly many others. All of which could be run from within steamapps folder and work without steam being on.

[nenjin]

It's a scarcity mindset applied to a not-scarce resource. It would have been nice if in the 60s people had gotten high enough to conceive of some global human understanding about how software could work for us as a species. Sadly we missed that boat. Gotta feed the tribe, you know how it is.

[Sensei]

Not exactly Windows Store related (still no news on the fixes Microsoft promised, but it's been less than two weeks still) but...

-Microsoft forces ads in a "Security Update"
According to this article which originally identified the patch notes and this one which confirms the behavior, a Security Update for Internet Explorer (KB 3139929) forcibly installs another update (KB 3146449) which cannot be removed seperately from the security update. The latter update causes Internet Explorer to open to a "Get Windows 10!" banner. This ad cannot be removed separately from the security update. This sets a really bad precedent, considering that on Windows 10 even admins cannot disable security updates. Apparently, ads are security now. The only thing in mitigation of this is that it only affects Internet Explorer, which you shouldn't use anyway, but still, security updates should NEVER be tied to ads.

[Aklyon]

Financial security, of course.
Which does not make it any less stupid for them to have done.

[Sensei]

Some good news on the Windows front:

-Phil Spencer: It's okay not to buy an Xbox
Yes, he acknowledges you might just want to play games on PC. That said though, Forza Apex is a gimped version of Forza and they're still greedily withholding Halo on the PC presumably either because they want to sell you an Xbox, they think that only F2P games are profitable on PC due to piracy, or both. So, probably another empty promise, but it's a big improvement over "We're supporting PC gamers: You can stream games from your Xbox to your PC!" I'll chalk

-AMD Drivers Improve Gears Ultimate
It's not coming from Microsoft, and it's not a total fix, but the Crimson 16.3 drivers seem to help a lot for the specific AMD cards that got it the worst. As best I can tell, the remaining issue has to do mainly with texture/audio streaming but progress is progress, and this isn't bad for less than two weeks turnaround time.

-Tomb Raider now supports DX12
DX12 support has been added to both the Steam and UWP versions of Tomb Raider. It sounds like a nice improvement- this is probably the first DX12 game a lot of people are likely to own, so I'm curious to hear user accounts of its performance. The developer gives the following frame of reference:

Using the same scene as a reference on a PC with a GeForce GTX 970, the game ran at 46 FPS in DirectX 11 mode and 60 FPS with DirectX 12.

However, this frustratingly doesn't say what CPU the game was running on at the time, which is especially relevant since DX12 considerably reduces CPU bottlenecks in graphics calls by more effectively using multi-core CPUs, and that's where a lot of its performance gains come from. I'm going to hazard a guess this was on an i3 or something, but I'm sure Tom's Hardware or somebody will have a more scholarly opinion before long.

So, two good news items and one empty promise to wave around when Microsoft next comes up with a way to screw PC users; not a bad week.

[Sensei]

-Windows 10 forcing itself on consumers for real:
Not much time to write this up, but read this. I can personally verify that the absurd claims in there are not false.

[Aklyon]

That links to this interesting tool in the article, Sounds like its worth a look.