Anacardo
January 2nd, 2009, 08:40 AM
A few thoughts I had in my mind for quite some time. I'll be brief.
1) Games have always been one of the differentiating factors of Windows when compared both to Macos and linux. To the general, uninformed user, Windows DO games (apart from a lot of other things) others do not. Games has also always been a good showcase for the platform running it. Games are important for a widespread adoption of any operating system. Period.
2) Microsoft screwed up, badly. It committed to the console market, negletting one of the most important windows selling points. Of course we might say that they merely followed the trend of the software houses which are basically doing the same, still the fact remains. Regardless of the direct X 10 and the new unified "experience" (Windows live, now needed by some games like GTAIV), windows VISTA SUCKS at playing games. And it does suck because unless you use a plain vanilla system, whenever you had a normally configured one the framerates simply begin to drop. And it's not only that, of course the interface is crewed as well, being cumbersome, overly complicated, and heavy. Add to this the fact that most games need patches and new drivers right from the start (happened to me with fallout 3 and farcry2) and you get the point.
3) the last generation of Consoles have somewhat been a slight disappointment. Surely they're doing strong in terms of sales and such (no big surprise here since there's basically no alternative), but there are a lot of videogamers complayining.
3) PC gaming needs a new approach. More streamlined and lightweight, with a dedicated and simpler interface that works on large monitors and TV screens, with a new system to deploy games and play them.
4) Microsoft will never develop such a thing. It's simply against their own interests. It's a very good time to do something like this.
What I am thinking:
A lightweight distro. Just for games. No frills attached.
Three ways of deployment:
a)Live, that sits in the game media. You insert the DVD/CD/USB key? whatever in you pc, boot, play and that's it. No installs.
b)Installed as a dualboot with whatever os you might want. Needed for buying/downloading/installing games from the net. Separate from your windows os or even your linux distro. Clean, small, secure and simple.
c)As a windows and Linux launcher. (slower than the native mode)
Streamlined:
Very few running services. Only the necessary things to run games (or even a single specific game). No clipboard, advanced Plug and play support, indexing, samba, or other fancy stuff. It has to be lightweight, fast and stable. The fewer things it does, the better.
Easy to use:
Very little configuration needed. No file manager, Nothing. Only a good looking interface to configure the most basic aspects of the environment, to launch games and, eventually, to download or update content from the net. The use of the mouse shouldn't be necessary. No windows nor icons. Think of a streamlined and cleaned PS3 or WMC interface.
Stable:
Self contained applications. Basically each game comes with all the files and it needs to run. Apart from the basic stuff, it will be the game developers to choose if they need to add more funcionality to the system or not. To some extent, they might even provide different versions of the same shared libs found in the main system, so that, provided that the core stuff hasn't changed, a game might continue working even if you've updated your system to a new, incompatible version. Installing and uninstalling games (in the non live versions) would become unpainful, easy and quick. No patches, no beta drivers to download that crash other games. Every game is by itself. To some extent, the ideal thing would be to have every game as a indipendent system within it's own, with just a shared centralized bootloader/agent that updates the single games when needed, provides the basic interface funcionality and manages keep the consistency across the system.
It would probably attract:
the hardcoregamers willing to get the latest frame rate in a particular game. By being really streamlined, it would mean that very little would get in the way.
The casual gamer (windows or linux user) who doesn't want to mess up with his system and install games that eat his own hd space, corrupt the system with securom stuff, rootkits or other bloatware. Update and patch things only to discover he just screwed his own Blueray player with a non-signed driver.
People with older systems and hardware. No more finding out that a game needs windows VISTA, direct xzy, 20GB of hd space and you're stuck with xp. The game COMES with the system and all the stuff that it needs.
What do you think?
1) Games have always been one of the differentiating factors of Windows when compared both to Macos and linux. To the general, uninformed user, Windows DO games (apart from a lot of other things) others do not. Games has also always been a good showcase for the platform running it. Games are important for a widespread adoption of any operating system. Period.
2) Microsoft screwed up, badly. It committed to the console market, negletting one of the most important windows selling points. Of course we might say that they merely followed the trend of the software houses which are basically doing the same, still the fact remains. Regardless of the direct X 10 and the new unified "experience" (Windows live, now needed by some games like GTAIV), windows VISTA SUCKS at playing games. And it does suck because unless you use a plain vanilla system, whenever you had a normally configured one the framerates simply begin to drop. And it's not only that, of course the interface is crewed as well, being cumbersome, overly complicated, and heavy. Add to this the fact that most games need patches and new drivers right from the start (happened to me with fallout 3 and farcry2) and you get the point.
3) the last generation of Consoles have somewhat been a slight disappointment. Surely they're doing strong in terms of sales and such (no big surprise here since there's basically no alternative), but there are a lot of videogamers complayining.
3) PC gaming needs a new approach. More streamlined and lightweight, with a dedicated and simpler interface that works on large monitors and TV screens, with a new system to deploy games and play them.
4) Microsoft will never develop such a thing. It's simply against their own interests. It's a very good time to do something like this.
What I am thinking:
A lightweight distro. Just for games. No frills attached.
Three ways of deployment:
a)Live, that sits in the game media. You insert the DVD/CD/USB key? whatever in you pc, boot, play and that's it. No installs.
b)Installed as a dualboot with whatever os you might want. Needed for buying/downloading/installing games from the net. Separate from your windows os or even your linux distro. Clean, small, secure and simple.
c)As a windows and Linux launcher. (slower than the native mode)
Streamlined:
Very few running services. Only the necessary things to run games (or even a single specific game). No clipboard, advanced Plug and play support, indexing, samba, or other fancy stuff. It has to be lightweight, fast and stable. The fewer things it does, the better.
Easy to use:
Very little configuration needed. No file manager, Nothing. Only a good looking interface to configure the most basic aspects of the environment, to launch games and, eventually, to download or update content from the net. The use of the mouse shouldn't be necessary. No windows nor icons. Think of a streamlined and cleaned PS3 or WMC interface.
Stable:
Self contained applications. Basically each game comes with all the files and it needs to run. Apart from the basic stuff, it will be the game developers to choose if they need to add more funcionality to the system or not. To some extent, they might even provide different versions of the same shared libs found in the main system, so that, provided that the core stuff hasn't changed, a game might continue working even if you've updated your system to a new, incompatible version. Installing and uninstalling games (in the non live versions) would become unpainful, easy and quick. No patches, no beta drivers to download that crash other games. Every game is by itself. To some extent, the ideal thing would be to have every game as a indipendent system within it's own, with just a shared centralized bootloader/agent that updates the single games when needed, provides the basic interface funcionality and manages keep the consistency across the system.
It would probably attract:
the hardcoregamers willing to get the latest frame rate in a particular game. By being really streamlined, it would mean that very little would get in the way.
The casual gamer (windows or linux user) who doesn't want to mess up with his system and install games that eat his own hd space, corrupt the system with securom stuff, rootkits or other bloatware. Update and patch things only to discover he just screwed his own Blueray player with a non-signed driver.
People with older systems and hardware. No more finding out that a game needs windows VISTA, direct xzy, 20GB of hd space and you're stuck with xp. The game COMES with the system and all the stuff that it needs.
What do you think?