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Rich Wickham, director of the Windows games business at Microsoft, talks about the introduction of operating system Vista and what it means for PC gaming in the future...
Microsoft has been stressing that it will spearhead a "PC gaming renaissance", and Vista is the intended vehicle to bring that promise to fruition. Wickham says that the combination of new Vista features and an integrated effort with the company's console business will facilitate the PC segment's vision.
What is the most exciting aspect of Vista for the game industry?
Clearly, the big story for Vista is DirectX 10. In the past, we released DirectX versions when we were done with them, essentially. When a new version that was ready, we would release it and you'd essentially download it off the Web. Frankly, that's become a painful experience for our users because of the whole download process, and then you probably have to get a new driver for your video card and all kinds of other things.
We kind of realized that we have to make that process better for folks. It made sense to make DirectX 10 ship with Vista. That was a big user decision we made a few years ago, and I think it was the right thing to do, because installation problems won't be there for customers out of the box with Vista like they have been for previous versions of the operating system when there are new versions of DirectX available.
With DirectX 10, right out of the gate, we think frame rates are going to go up. We think the games that start to ship when Vista ships are going to truly blow the doors off of even games that you find on DirectX 9 right now.
Where do you see PC gaming going in the future?
Online is obviously a huge part of the story, and business models online are going to evolve and change over time. I don't think that the one-game monthly subscription model is going to be the only model that moves forward. You'll see the adoption of Asian business models, like digital objects and microtransaction-based games. I think you'll see larger publishers and developers aggregating content into services in a way that they haven't done in the past.
As for Windows, a lot of people call me and tell me the Windows business isn't going in the right direction, and I tell them it's going absolutely in the right direction, and that's without us supporting it. Just imagine what's going to happen once we get behind the platform in the way we intend to.
What took so long for Microsoft to get behind PC gaming with a system like Vista?
The answer to the question is, for one, we've really been focused on Xbox and Xbox 360 as the gaming platform and we wanted to enter the console gaming arena. That's not an easy undertaking. As you might imagine, starting from scratch and building a console business takes a lot of effort. So, there's been a lot of focus on that part of the business.
Having the kind of focus on the scenario for gaming was a hard thing to make happen. I can't tell you how many hours and presentations I made trying to get a little bit more focus on the platform. When we go out and talk about Vista, gaming is going to be one of the scenarios that we really focus on.
It might have taken longer than it should have, but frankly, Vista is the right time to go back and tell the story, and we haven't had an operating system story for almost six years now. When you launch a new operating system, it's a natural time to re-evaluate your core strengths, and then go out and really nail 'em. That's what we're trying to do with gaming on Vista.
I know there's a lot of pain in the industry, and a lot of people who say, "I can't believe that Microsoft hasn't nurtured that platform." I think it's done pretty well without the nurturing, and I think it's going to do really well with a lot of effort from us.
Will the Vista delay cause any problems?
I think from a gaming perspective, it's going to be a real advantage for us, because we can tell the story of the platform during a period when there will be hopefully a little bit less overall gaming noise. There's going to be a lot of talk about gaming this holiday, and I'm afraid we wouldn't have got that kind of pop for the platform that we'd like to have. And frankly, it's better for folks building DirectX 10 games; it's a little more time to polish the game and make sure they deliver a great experience for customers.
I also expect that retailers and OEMs are going to come up with ways to make sure that they have a good holiday season in the Windows space. It's very short term pain, and I think the long term gain is worth it.
What is the core Vista message at E3?
One of the core messages at E3 is going to be that we're here to support both platforms [Xbox 360 and Vista], and we're integrated [with the games division] . You'll see an integrated presence from us across the board at E3. You probably see that it hasn't been as integrated in the past. There was a separate section for the games for Windows. We often had the same games in two places, we maybe didn't have all the messaging aligned because we were two different organizations. Now we're much more aligned and we're now telling a story about how great both of our platforms are.
On the third-party side, you're going to hear a lot from us when get to E3. You've probably seen some rumblings out there about folks that are already developing for DirectX 10. I think you'll see a really good story in all of the core genres for Windows at E3. Not just great games that will ship this year on XP that will work on Vista, but games that will work on XP and Vista, but also take advantage of what goes on in Vista, including DirectX 10. next-gen.biz News
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