YESTERDAY we cited some warnings about Microsoft's Vista 7, which is an artificially-hyped up operating system that is bad news for Windows gamers, based on Kotaku. PC World has just published this article which agrees with Kotaku. [thanks to an anonymous reader who brought it to our attention]
As for gaming, however, Windows 7's release feels almost funereal. Read the reviews and you'll learn all about the streamlined taskbar, the smarter security system that leaves you alone, the slick new touch-based input features, and the friendlier approach to media-hub device management.
What about gaming? Notwithstanding the handful of enthusiast sites no one in the mainstream follows trotting out reams of technical benchmarks spread across dozens of pages, the critics either aren't talking, or aren't bothering.
Neither, it seems, is Microsoft.
The company launched its Games for Windows certification and branding initiative in late 2006. The push was Microsoft's "contract with gamers," designed to validate PC gaming--with its broader international install base than all of console gaming combined--as the definitive platform for the medium. What it meant then--as now--was that GFW-branded games would "undergo extensive testing" to stamp out bugs, would be compatible with 32- and 64-bit versions of XP and Vista (and now, Windows 7), would support family-friendly parental controls, and finally--the most vague "guarantee"--the games would be "easy to play," meaning they'd show up in Vista and Windows 7's one-stop "Games Explorer." The initiative culminated in just seven games by the end of 2006, though it included majors like Company of Heroes and Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Embryonic, in other words, but promising.
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I use Windows for one thing: Gaming. When I'm not gaming, my bleeding-tech-laden desktop rests quietly beneath a wooden table, powered off as opposed to hibernating or sleeping. Without Windows games, no reason for me to use Windows at all.