Microsoft Pushes Game Development Forward at Gamefest - ' Microsoft Gets It '
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Gamefest, as a combination of the previous Meltdown and Xfest conferences, is really not for end users in any way. Even the Game Developers Conference has tracks about game design and the like. Gamefest is primarily for the kind of guys who write code or do quality assurance. It doesn't generate pretty pictures—not unless you really like looking at the inside of a convention center or staring at a guy standing in front of rows of chairs with a PowerPoint full of bullet lists up on the screen. But it does offer up some interesting tidbits of info from behind the game-development curtain.

This year, it's clear that Microsoft is on the right track with nearly all things game-related. They're enabling amateur development on their console (and making PC amateur game development easier), and doing it at an affordable price. They're pushing for a rebirth of PC gaming with Vista and putting their money where their mouth is, with a big push into retail, lots of cross-promotional marketing dollars, and certification programs to take some of the rough edges off PC games (we hope), while not forcing anyone to do anything. They've got a game plan to move their console into new emerging markets like India and Brazil. They're on top of the copy protection and digital distribution thing. They're bringing Xbox Live to the PC and cell phones.

Click here to find out whether Vista will run your games.

In fact, Microsoft is doing so much to try to make games bigger and better as an industry, and so many of those things are big and complicated, that it makes you wonder how much of it they can pull off, and how soon. Homebrew Xbox 360 games, Live Anywhere, Windows Vista, better-behaving PC games with a big retail presence, less annoying game copy protection—they're all things we want now, but will probably take Microsoft months or years to pull off. This certainly gets an "A" for gaming effort, though.

This article was originally published on extremetech.com.

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