PC Gaming For Windows 8

Despite numerous claims to the contrary, it's not true that PC gaming is dead. But Microsoft's support of the platform has largely been dead for many years now; other than the Games for Windows Live initiative (which many would say pales in comparison to Valve's offering with Steam), Microsoft hasn't done much in the space of PC games -- although, to its credit, it did announce that Age of Empires Online,Microsoft Flight, and Fable III would be coming to the platform.

Now a source has told TechRadar (via CVG) that "Windows 8 will represent a real new push into PC gaming" for Microsoft. The source also claimed, "Gaming will be a key component for the whole OS."

While that certainly sounds nice, we've heard things like this before; gaming was supposed to be much more central to Windows with the launch of Vista, and that never really quite worked out. We've also not seen PC versions of several big name games from Microsoft including Gears of War 2 and every Halo game released after Halo 2 -- including Halo Wars, which seemed like an absolute no-brainer as an RTS game developed byAge of Empires developer Ensemble Studios.

It'll be a difficult task to become a prominent player in the PC space with competitors like Steam, which has arguably become the de facto Xbox Live-style service for a large segment of the PC gaming audience. There's also an increasingly large group of people gaming on Macs, and there are those who might not upgrade their operating system if they're content with Windows 7 or whatever they're currently using, which would limit the number of people that any gaming-centric features in Windows 8 could be exposed to.

Microsoft will have an uphill battle to climb in order to make a significant impact in the PC gaming space. If the source is correct and that's something being planned for Windows 8 -- which wouldn't come as a complete surprise, as Microsoft has at least spoken about supporting PC gaming more -- we should begin to hear about it over the next few years.

Original Article: http://www.gametab.com/news/3547129/