Microsoft’s ‘Future Of PC Gaming’ Is Terrifying

Microsoft probably has many ideas on what constitutes the future of gaming on the PC. It’s too big a company not to. But this particular one is so horrible you may not want to even see it.

Put together by the Windows Gaming Experience team, this video was originally made and released in 2010. So if the content looks a little out of date, that’s why. It’s only just been noticed publicly this week, however, and the entire principle of the thing is just so awful I don’t know where to start.

Get past the obvious stuff, like the use of “p0wned”, and you see something a lot more insidious: a desire to see the PC become Xbox Live. Which runs contrary to the very reason most people advocate the PC as a gaming platform in the first place.

It may seem incredible for Microsoft executives and research teams to be able to combine all that fancy commerce and integration in the one platform, ala Xbox Live, but PC users invested enough to be playing Battlefield don’t want that kind of hegemony. They want choices, open platforms, the ability to build an experience according to their own needs and desires.

Not something that seems designed expressly to control, and then nickel-and-dime the consumer, at every step of the way.

Now, before you get too worked up, this is a year old. And it’s an internal video, made as part of Microsoft’s ongoing research into the PC gaming market. It’s not an official statement of intent, nor is it a sign that this is something the company is definitely working on with an intent to release: remember, giant corporations like Microsoft are working on loads of different things at any one time.

But this particular idea? No thank you.

Internal Microsoft video shows plans for next-gen gaming experience [ZDNet]


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