Microsoft has decided to take ownership of the PC as a game platform. Just as MS "owns" the Xbox and is in charge of promoting the platform as a whole, they're going to do the same for the PC. It only makes sense, seeing as how Windows is the operating system on while the vast majority of computer games are played. When a PC sells, it's hard to know who gets the money for that—was it an AMD or an Intel system? ATI or Nvidia graphics? What brand of hard drive is in there? The one common denominator is that, if it runs Windows (and for games, it does), Microsoft gets money for that. Microsoft did research as it was developing Vista and found that, in terms of numbers of minutes spent in front of the computer, playing games comes in second. The only thing people spend more time doing on their computers is surfing the web. Seriously, it's above email, music, you name it. So what is MS doing about it?

First there's the core changes to Vista. There are low-level things like driver changes and DirectX 10, and those are good and all, but it's not like we haven't seen these kinds of improvements in the past, and they don't equate to huge upturns in PC game sales. The more important thing is the new ideological space games occupy. Games are right there off the start menu now, with a nifty games explorer showing box art and ratings and stuff. It's not a big deal for hardcore PC gamers, but those aren't the people that need convincing—they already buy PC games. In this respect, "Vista" won't save PC games. There's nothing really in the system itself that is going to convince people who don't buy PC games now to start doing so all of a sudden. It's a combination of the new OS together with some other efforts, such as…

Games for Windows, Microsoft's new brand for PC gaming. The PC's greatest strength is that it is not lorded over by a single platform holder that tells all the game makers what it can and can't do. But that's also its greatest weakness. So GFW is now the platform branding for PC games, and Microsoft is trying to bring some of the good parts of console hegemony over to the PC. GFW has its own official magazine, unified branding and box design for the store shelves, and a set of technical requirements that makes sure games that come in those Games for Windows boxes deliver a minimum baseline—the game has to support widescreen resolutions, support the 360 controller on Windows if it supports controllers at all, has to meet certain install/uninstall requirements for ease of use, has to show up in the Games Explorer and work with parental controls and such, stuff like that.

Most importantly, Microsoft is kicking in the kind of marketing money that has an influence on the greater market at large. Prominent store placement is not reserved for good games, it's reserved for publishers that pay to have their products prominently displayed. Microsoft is shelling out the money to put a Games for Windows rack, branded and with shiny front-facing game boxes, in prominent store locations. It's paying to have thousands of "try it in the store" kiosks installed. It's paying for magazine and in-store ads. In short, it's doing the same thing for PC games that it does for Xbox 360, that Sony does for PlayStation and PSP, which Nintendo does for the Wii and DS.

Last but not least, Microsoft is bringing Xbox Live to Windows Vista (and eventually cell phones). Online gaming on the PC is great now, but anyone who owns an Xbox 360 can tell you, Live is pretty impressive. It unifies online identity, lets you invite and message friends across different games, enables voice chat in every title, and then there are those Achievements that everyone on the 360 is addicted to. All of that is coming to the PC…sort of. Eventually. Continued...

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