For years now, Microsoft has been diligently working on a strategy to converge its gaming ecosystems on Xbox and Windows. Though we’ve seen bits and pieces of these efforts show up, it won’t be until the launch of Xbox Scorpio next year, when the company’s vision fully comes to life.
The company’s struggles and strategy to bring together Xbox and Windows gaming are bundled together in a single strand, codenamed Project Helix. Originally publicized by Kotaku earlier this year, Project Helix involves creating one platform, that allows easy access and performant tools for developers to craft games, while giving varied choices and mobility to the player base to move around in the ecosystem.
If this sounds familiar to you, it’s because you might be thinking of the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). That’s the runtime that Microsoft developed for all of its Windows ecosystems, which has largely the same mission statement as Project Helix. And that’s by no means an accident, seeing as the UWP is an integral part of the company’s gaming ambitions.
Yes, it looks like Helix = UWP 2.0. The fact that UWP already needs a 2.0 should tell you just how badly it's failing. So far, UWP is Games for Windows Live all over again; Microsoft seems to be banking on Helix, and the Scorpio console that will be the de facto standard for XBox going forward, to turn this trend around, but I have my doubts.
Or, as neowin put it:
The unified ecosystem will all be based around the UWP platform and run through the Windows Store, though XDK will still be highly important. As this comes to pass, Microsoft will finally have a unified, integrated ecosystem, capable of sustaining its users across all platforms.
Whether this succeeds in any meaningful way in the market remains to be seen. Steam is still the dominant platform on PC, and for good reason. Microsoft’s recent missteps with the launch of the latest Call of Duty as a Universal app, have highlighted the nascent platform’s weakness. If users continue to ignore the Windows Store and Microsoft fails to entice them, Project Helix may be little more than an technical achievement. But you don’t get any Gs for trying.
With Steam now working hard to improve their service, and thus retain their customers' trust and loyalty, Microsoft's hill just got tougher to climb, and the steady drip of UWP failures like CoD will only make that harder. The fact that Microsoft is doubling down on a strategy that isn't working now is probably a solid sign of them not having a plan B, either.
Microsoft keep trying to "integrate" everything inside of their walled garden, with them as gatekeepers and sole arbiters of what will (and won't) be allowed on users' PCs, but it's becoming increasingly clear that PC users mostly don't want that, just like they didn't want it in Windows 8. Unless Microsoft stop trying to be Apple, and stop trying to make Windows 10 into iOS, they're going to continue to struggle with this.