We have said before that in the “PC” market gamers and enthusiasts have a rather large impact on sales. This is because many people look to these high-end users for advice. If you are a gamer, overclocker, modder or IT tech you know what I am talking about. How many times have you had someone ask you for advice on their next software or hardware purchase? Microsoft seems to have forgotten this with their new push for Windows 8, but that has not stopped them from trying to make the PR and Marketing rounds. What we find funny is that this is the same team that failed to successfully market the Kin, the Zune (and ZuneHD), One Live, and many other Microsoft product failures. What makes Microsoft think they are going to work now?
Still they are persistent and have now enlisted the help of a former Microsoft employee who happens to work at EA Games; EA COO Peter Moore. According to some articles this new collaboration will give Windows 8 “Gaming Credentials”. For those of us in the gaming community you might better remember EA as the company that created the Origin distribution system that stated EA could give or sell your information top third parties. EA would also be the company that has one of the most restrictive DRM systems limiting the number of times you can install a given game as well as one of the companies that started putting ads in their games with no way to remove them…
Still Moore is making the rounds to drum up support for Windows 8 and also EA (who strangely enough has a big presence in Xbox Live). Moore seems to feel that Windows is central to mobile gaming with comments like; “Anything that allows more platforms to be adopted quickly that have a gaming element is good for Electronic Arts”.
What we see here is EA looking to buddy up with Microsoft’s new closed platform in order to make some more money. Many companies are moving to a digital format to save on the costs of packaging and media. The Microsoft Store is a good place to piggy back in on top of their own distribution channels. Many also have noted that for Windows RT you can only get games from the Microsoft Store so they will need that entry point since applications like Steam and Origin may not work on the RT platform. Even outside Windows RT Microsoft is looking to lock things down as much as they can. Although the classic desktop will still be available in Windows 8 you will not be able to install “metro” applications from any source other than the Microsoft Store. This limitation exists for both Windows 8 and RT as Microsoft wants to create a walled garden for these apps.
When testing Windows 8 so far we have found that while Steam and other distribution applications do work many of the games fail to launch because they need Games for Windows Live or fail to play properly because the audio subsystems do not work and in one case the screen simply went blank because the render engine did not load. These issues are a very common occurrence from speaking with multiple gamers. While many of these issues might be fixed in future patches and updates the fact is that Windows 8 and Windows RT are not looking to provide what the gamer or enthusiast wants on their desktop. Bringing in EA, a company that is not all that liked in the gaming community, is not going to suddenly give the new operating system some magical acceptance in the market. In fact, it might have the opposite effect and alienate an even larger portion of the gamer market than the closed ecosystem that Microsoft wants has already.
We are not sure what Microsoft and Steve Ballmer are really thinking with their next generation operating system, but it has raised concerns from multiple market segments and Microsoft’s own partners. We have been a big supporter of Microsoft and even defended Windows Vista (which we thought was a decent OS). However, it is clear that Microsoft is working very hard to lock people into Windows 8. Their new Secure UEFI boot that requires a digital certificate is in place with many OEMS and if the information we have is correct will prevent people from installing their own copies of Windows 7 on any system with this enabled as older copies of Windows 7, Vista and XP will not have the proper certificates to get past the locks. For those keeping score at home Apple uses a similar system for their hardware to prevent you from installing any OS other than OSX. More and more it looks like Microsoft under the guidance of Steve Ballmer is trying to be Apple.
We know that Ballmer hates to hear this, but one of the big reasons people buy Windows is that it is NOT Apple.
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