PC gamers, what are your thoughts to on Microsoft nowadays?

PC gamers tend to have negative views on Microsoft for two reasons: (1) Not enough support for PC gaming, and (2) Windows dominating the OS market. Let’s look at these two points and see if Microsoft have improved over the years:

(1) Not enough support for PC gaming. PC gamers used to complain how Microsoft focuses too much on Xbox gamers and not enough for PC gamers. However, Microsoft has been paying lots of attention to PC gamers over the years by allowing their first party titles on Steam, and having PC Game Pass which is good value for money, effectively merging the PC community and Xbox community together. Plus there’s Xbox Cloud streaming which can be used on any device, making Microsoft completely hardware-neutral rather than Xbox-centric.

(2) Windows dominating the OS market. PC gamers have often disliked Microsoft for dominating the market and making it hard to play games on Linux instead. However, Valve has created Proton compatibility layer so Windows game can be played on Linux (SteamOS for Steam Deck uses Proton). If you are a PC gamer still using Windows, you are doing it from your own free will, not because Microsoft is forcing you. Your are free to game on Linux nowadays.

So, do PC gamers believe Microsoft has improved over the years? What are your thoughts?

They are ok. Microsoft is PC after all since the majority use Windows OS…

I honestly think they’ve remained stagnant. They haven’t improved, they’ve slightly gone backwards. I mainly use GOG and Steam platforms, though I’d like to see Microsoft become more aware with compatibility.

Windows is PC.

Game Pass is OK. Day one releases is pretty generous relative to other companies, plus they have a big catalog of games from all different genres.

They brought back MS Flight Simulator, I mean who saw that coming? Talk about a niche genre. It also happens to be a technically impressive game--not just visually, but what they did with terrain and mapping and airports and such--and a lot of fun.

With that said, Microsoft is still a giant corporation, and as a devil-worshiping socialist-anarchist I view pretty much any corporation or any entity of significant worth as evil, and for good reason. They've also gobbled up all manner of studios and while Game Pass has brought a lot of games to market, I'm not really seeing that much coming from MS-owned studios that is any good. It has me worried about Arkane, Bethesda, Id, and so on and so forth.

Windows as an OS is OK; if I wanted my hand held I'd use a Mac OS, but otherwise if you turn off a lot of features Windows is pretty OK. Plus I think it is free these days isn't it? That's not bad at all.

Actually no. "PC" is actually a family of hardware that began with IBM in the early 1980s. It competed with devices like the Apple II, Commodore, etc, but eventually the PC family of hardware won out. Windows is just one of several operating systems available to run on that hardware. Windows is not PC. PC is not Windows. One is the hardware, the other is software, and the two are not necessarily married to eachother.

MS is somewhat ok in my books...but they still lack if not more PC support.

Out of the 3 MS is the most PC friendly.

It's one reason why I chose the series X over a ps5.

Game pass and play everywhere, I like carrying my progress from the living room to my office. Picked up MK11 ultimate on sale on my Xbox and guess what, I now own MK11 on PC without paying twice for it and it carries all progress between both platforms.

They are good in my books now. I really like how Phil Spencer and crew have pushed for Play Anywhere and Game Pass. These are 2 great initiatives. However, the switch to DX12 has not been smooth. There are so many DX12 games these days that suffer from stuttering or shader compilation issues. Many developers are not quite sure how to tackle this and release unoptimized games. It is way too prevalent and needs to be addressed.

They transformed their flagship title into an unfinished f2p game. This should tell you the state of MS nowadays.

I notice that while playing Dying Light 2. The game has a memory leak. If you turn DX12 ultimate and while using raytracing, performance will degrade within an hour or two. And I've seen no announcement they plan to fix it.

If anything, I don't expect seeing DX13 anytime soon not while DX12 Ultimate is becoming a thing.

I haven't played DL2 yet, but I have that issue with Watch Dogs Legion. The performance goes to shit after about an hour. It starts to hitch and stutter like it is trying to access virtual memory or something. I checked both the VRAM and system RAM and they are fine though. So, I am not sure wtf is causing it.

Legion just doesn't seem optimised correctly. Seems to be fine when you're on foot, but as soon as you try to drive around the city it has horrible micro-stutters that just don't go away.

Did they even bother on the PC? It's funny because if you run the game at 30fps, it doesn't stutter anymore.

@Bond007uk: It runs well on my rig until the performance issues start later in the play session. It's like the engine runs out of stamina and can't keep up. It is a known issue, but never got fixed. No fucks given by Ubisoft. LOL

We used to wait years for Halos and Forzas to release on PC. Now we get them day one.

Also exclusives like Age of Empires and Gears Tactics are nice.

Yeah the shader compilation issue is going to need some work. It's on the linux side also with Vulkan but valve have put some steps in to mitigate it somewhat (it has it's limits though). This is only for steam though: its not OS wide.

Vulkan shaders can be downloaded if compatible ones for your GPU/Driver are detected. Steam on linux (not sure about windows) also has a service running that will compile shaders in the background without needing to run the game (this only applies to steam games though). Hopefully MS can do something similar on windows with DX12 shaders (and both OSs find a way to make it more system wide).

I'm not really sure what developers can do. They can't ship pre-compiled shaders for the PC as they are GPU and Driver version dependant (at least on linux though im pretty sure the same is true for windows). I think this is something that's going to have to be addressed at the OS/System service level.

As for MS: i see them more in a positive light now compared to the 360 days. Back in the 360 days MS wanted PC gaming dead. Sony used to offer better support to the PC back then (They made MMOs back then like everquest)...not good :S. They are also a lot less hostile to linux than back in the day.They don't seem to be taking extra steps to try and ban linux player playing their games and are not trying to stomp out proton/wine (whether they would win is highly debatable and complex but legalacide is a thing). They even gave the deck a thumbs up and that doesn't ship with windows.

my big concern with MS is they very much are a games as a service business. They really want to just have subscriptions and make access to games a continual expense rather than 1 off expense. i don't like that. yes they do sell their games at retail too but i suspect that will come with an * before the end of gen.

Microsoft, even if they were to leave gaming entirely. Would still be THE corporation that has the most influence and support for PC gaming.

DirectX, C#, the actual operative system most people game on. As well as VisualStudio, which most programmers learn programming on and then actually program with.

Not much when I think of PC gaming I think of Valve.

They put every game on PC now which is plus point.

MS should focus on fixing the ugly design and terrible bugs of their overpriced OS.

I don't mind the design and I have not encountered many bugs in recent years. Also, they do offer free upgrades these days. Last Win OS I bought was 8.1.. Win 10 and Win 11 were free upgrades. Besides, you can buy a Windows key for a few bucks off key sites. So, OS pricing is not an issue.

Back in the day just abandoned PC gaming seeing it as a place to dump free2play casual games and badly mimic Steam without really getting why it's so popular.

Which is also a problem Epic has. They have resoundingly had to resort to bribery as their main selling point of their service was sucking off game Publishers, wrongly assuming gamers like them and wish them well.

Nowdays they seem better. Not as good as back in the 90's, but certainly better than the early 2000's.

In this day and age, we have a big budget Age Of Empires titles and an honest to god Flight Simulator.

Regardless of issues have with them, applaud that. Many of the big companies would run a million miles from those now.

Well, if you don't think it's ugly, that's fine. It's your taste. There are tons of cases where DirectX causes problems for running video games on Windows. It doesn't mean they don't exist because you say you've not seen them.

It's normal for the upgrade to be free, as users have already paid for the OS. Also, just because you can buy it differently doesn't change the fact that MS sells the OS at a high price.

As a publisher/ collection of developers they have a lot to prove still on pc. Mediocre (in the truest sense - NOT bad, just... they sometimes get it right and sometimes don't).

I really appreciate the greater attention to PC releases and services in recent years

As for software q/a, their games experience on pc is hands down the worst I have played in decades. Literally. Their games, through their store, on their OS, are a minefield of fatal crashes, memory leaks, and myriad nonsense like some games not running right anywhere but C drive, redownloading the entire 100+ gb game each time it updates, refusing to launch without an update but refusing to update because the game wasn't installed on C, you name it. It's like they tried to do a "remake" of the bullshit you had to deal with in MSDOS for a modern audience.

No other stores or developers give me anything close to this incompetence ON THEIR OWN OS.

Windows makes it easy for me to launch progams not made by MS. Don't really care much about them other than that. Not a fan of their games, consoles or other hardware, services, etc.

If they'd make a good Halo, Banjo, Fable or whatever, make a better digital store with similar deals to Steam, I'd be more interested for sure.

Forgot W11 exists. Worth it to upgrade from 10?

I think the Xbox platform across console and PC is more modernized than Sony or Nintendo. That is a major understatement. I want the industry to move towards some of the QoL benefits for consumers that MS has introduced in the past 5 years.

Personally I am indifferent. I don't use Windows at home anymore either. Cancelled my Game Pass sub for now.

Have no other than that they are no longer hostile to PC gaming and supporting it but still not interested i their games apart from AOE, FS and whatever Arkane works on.

I prefer Linux over Windows for most things. And thankfully, the Linux gaming scene is blowing up. The Steam Deck is a big help, but it has also lead to a rapid increase of people gaming on desktop Linux on their home computers as well. Maybe the increase in new users will also help build up Linux even further since at present, it does have it's flaws. Windows development usually has a clear direction. There's not multiple package managers, sound systems, graphics frameworks, UIs, etc all competing with each other for the spotlight which often fragments software development because of it. Hopefully, we begin seeing more standards being taken with Linux development and can make the whole system a bit more streamlined.

My goal is to never use Windows again.