Nobody's ever going to call it that Microsoft continues terrible naming streak with XBox Series X, and the memes are already starting

From Kotaku:

That didn’t take long! The next-generation Xbox was announced last night, and people online already have nicknames for it.

In the English-speaking world, it’s either being called “Xbox Sex” or simply “Sex,” a shortening of “Series X.”

Of course, it's always possible that someone at Mircosoft saw this coming, and figured that it wouldn't be entirely negative for their new console to be called "The Sex," but given their long tradition of terrible console names, I somehow doubt it. And so "The Sex" will become the most awkward product name ever to be put on a child's Christmas wish list to Santa, right after the XBone. 

Hell, at least the XBox One X acronymized to XBOX; Series X is just a bizarre choice. And I don't want to hear about how they have multiple consoles planned for this generation, which is why they're all going to share that "Series" monniker. It's still confusing and weird, and can only serve to confuse consumers... and, occasionally, amuse them.

Yes, I forsee a lot of very strained birds and bees conversations between clueless videogame-seeking pre-teens and their suddenly-very-concerned parents, as to why their children are requesting "The Sex" for XMas. Another solid job done, Microsoft! GG!

Well, that answers that question

Gamers are just about the only group of Windows PC users who've mostly switched to Windows 10, with only a little grumbling. I suspected that this was mainly because gamers are used to being shit on by the big corporations in their lives, and just sort of rolled with it when Microsoft did the same. They weren't jazzed about Windows 10, and they weren't planning to switch from Steam to the Windows Store for their gaming purchases -- they were just convinced that Microsoft was going to find a way to force Windows 10 on them anyway, so they got the switch over with.

Well, today, we got a pretty clear demonstration of that being exactly what's happened. Our case study: Activision's Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.

From Motherboard:

Every year, Activision releases another Call of Duty and gamers across the world scramble to get their hands on the new shooter. Fans love the single player campaign, but the game’s polished, fun, and fast-paced multiplayer mode is the real draw.

Of course, it only works if you have other people to play with. A few gamers who bought Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare through the digital storefront built into Windows 10 have discovered they can only play with other gamers who also bought the game from Microsoft. Xbox One players can only play with other Xbox One players, and PlayStation 4 players can only play with other PlayStation 4 players. This has always been the case. The trouble is that this time not all PC players can play with other PC players. For unknown reasons, Windows 10 Store customers are segregated from customers who bought the game from Steam, which is by far the most popular platform on PC.

That’s like buying a game from Target and learning you can’t play with people who bought it from Best Buy. Call of Duty fans who made the unfortunate of mistake of giving Microsoft their cash are left sitting in lonely multiplayer lobbies waiting for games that’ll never start.

However, it appears that Microsoft is giving out refunds.

Microsoft is doing everything they can to promote the idea of cross-play between different Windows 10 platforms, so this is mostly likely a decision by Activision, but even so, it means that implementing cross-play between different Windows PC versions was so problematic that a developer with Activision's resources didn't bother doing it for something as important to them as this year's CoD.

That's not a good sign for the Universal Windows Platform initiative. The fact that not enough Windows 10 users bought the game from the Windows 10 store to make a multiplayer mode viable, in spite of the fact that there are at least 60 million of them (they're over half of Steam's 125M user base, remember), is also not a good sign for UWP.

Good on Redmond for giving refunds for this, but still, it has to be a double-plus un-good sign of something when the most "enthusiastic" (I use the term very lightly, here) Windows 10 users are avoiding the Windows 10 as if it's leprous, or something. Microsoft really needs to give this strategy a sober second look.

UPDATE: CoD's Infinite Warfare fiasco isn't doing Activision any good, either.

It's currently being outsold by Farming Simulator 17. Ouch.

From Destructoid:

Is this the end for Call of Duty?

That's right, Farming Simulator 17, a game about being a modern farmer and driving expensive tractors is currently destroying the just-released Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare on Steam, at least numbers wise. According to Steam's own stats, Farming Simulator 17 is number 23 on the top 100 games list (at the time of writing) with 26,044 players today, while Infinite Warfare is number 36 with over 10,000 less at 15,436 players. Obviously not a terrible debut for most games, but pretty bad for one of the world's most popular series, at least on PC.

Farming Simulator 17 has been out for weeks, of course, and has a much lower price point, both of which will be helping its sales, but still... this is CoD we're talking about here. Up until Ghosts, Activision's flagship franchise reliably brought in a billion dollars of revenue for the company with every annual release, but now... 36th??? With performance like that, Activision may well stop making CoD games, or at least scale back to bi-annual releases the way Ubisoft is doing with Assassin's Creed.

Microsoft's crisis of confusion

While writing my previous blog post, I found my way to another op/ed by John Brandon at Computer World, which is also well worth a read:

Microsoft is a gargantuan company.

They have 114,000 employees. They make a popular gaming console, the only viable operating system used by more people than anyone by far, and have their toes dipped in every conceivable market segment, from consumer chatbots to social media for business. There’s no question the company competes easily with Apple and Google for the top crown of all technology, assuming you can forgive them for Windows 8.

Yet, they have a major problem in the age of immediate access from anywhere. Bowing out of the smartphone market is not as troubling as a much more serious issue related to usability: Microsoft has a crisis of confusion.

Here’s a good example. Let’s say you want to play the game Gears of War 4 on your PC. Anyone who pre-ordered the game for Xbox One can play starting today, and Play Anywhere means you can download the game on Windows for free. But where do you find it? You can search using the Xbox app, but that doesn’t work. You can try going to Microsoft.com or Xbox.com and checking there, but that doesn’t work, either. In fact, the only way to find the game is through a rat’s nest. You have to go to the Windows store app, login with your Xbox account (not your Windows account), and then click a tiny avatar icon. (By the way, this icon is for Windows, not for Xbox.) There’s an option called My Library in that menu, but it’s not a tab on the main screen. Then, you have to select all apps, because only a few are listed. Finally, you find the game.

[...]

This maze of confusion is just as startling if you try to figure out how to use a new app like Microsoft MyAnalytics, which is designed for personal productivity data. Hashtag irony. It doesn’t help at all that the name used to be Delve Analytics. How do you get the app? Don’t ask me, I have no idea. It’s included for free in something called the Office 365 E5 plan and in the Office 365 enterprise suite. I’m pretty sure Office 365 is an estimate on the number of days you need to allocate to figuring this all out.

[...]

It makes me wonder if anyone at Microsoft ever thinks about making the ecosystem work better. In other words, more like the one for Apple and Google. If I own Gears of War 4, and if the price includes dual platform support on Windows and Xbox, I shouldn’t have to figure out which icons to click. For a massive, iconic company like Microsoft to stay massive and iconic in the coming age of immediate mobile access, they will have to figure out how to make this work smoother. On a desktop, you click around until you find the right option. On a mobile device while you’re waiting for an Uber to show up, you don’t have time. Things either work right away or you move on.

Microsoft, are you listening?

No, John Brandon, I don't think they are. In fact, I think that all of Microsoft's problems in the last year can be explained up by Microsoft not listening: not to users' privacy concerns about Windows 10; nor to users' clearly and often-expressed wishes to not upgrade to Windows 10 in the first place; nor to users' desires to control their PCs' privacy settings and update cycle; nor to users' desire to install updates individually, rather than in a single, monthly, inadequately-tested and bug-ridden lump.

Microsoft is a gargantuan company, and they clearly think that being that large means that they can do whatever the fuck they want, regardless of what their customers want or need. Only time will tell whether or not they're right about that; whether or not they really are too big to actually fail. As someone who's been actively rooting for them to fail for months, now, I'm hoping that Microsoft are wrong about this; I'm hoping that their cavalier attitude towards what their customers are clearly telling them results in more lost market share for their flagship product. Either way, we'll know in a few weeks.

I do need to correct Mr. Brandon on one point: Microsoft may make the most viable desktop (and laptop) OS, but they don't make the OS "used by more people than anyone by far." Since 2015, Google's Android has had the largest installed base of all operating systems (OS) of any kind; it's been the best selling OS on tablets since 2013, and it's dominant by every metric on smartphones. As Brandon himself notes, the mobile market counts, and Microsoft isn't even a player there, let alone the dominant player.

Brandon's entire piece is still well worth reading, though, so go give the man some clicks.

Quantum Break is coming to Steam...and Windows 7

From Hayden Dingman at PC World:

Quantum Break, Remedy’s time-traveling action game and/or lengthy TV show, is coming to Steam.

It’s a pretty straightforward story, insofar as the facts are concerned. You’ll be able to buy it there starting September 14, and unlike the Windows Store version, the Steam version will run on any PC with Windows 7 (64 bit) or higher—no restriction to Windows 10 or DirectX 12, in other words.

Them’s the facts. But Quantum Break’s movement to Steam is quite a bit more interesting because of the implications.

Microsoft's bringing pretty much all of its “Xbox exclusive” games (barring a future announcement about Halo) to Windows 10 PCs at this point, under an initiative called Xbox Play Anywhere. And no doubt, these games will end up in the Windows Store. It’s Microsoft-owned. It allows them almost console-esque control over games that wind up on the PC. And the universal Windows app design is what enables the underlying Play Anywhere features in the first place.

Will they hit Steam too though? Earlier in the year Microsoft’s Phil Spencer said the company would eventually “ship games on Steam again,” but I still had my doubts it would occur for top-tier games—until Quantum Break. Now, it seems more likely.

Dingman goes on to list a few caveats:

• Quantum Break was technically just an Xbox “exclusive” that made it to PC, not an actual Play Anywhere title; 
• Remedy is not owned by Microsoft, so a Steam release could have been negotiated as part of Quantum Break’s (timed) exclusivity;
• Microsoft still might keep first-party games like Forza Horizon 3 or Gears of War 4 off Steam, for branding reasons.

He also notes that PC sales of games like Quantum Break are bound to be better on Steam than the Windows Store, and also that Quantum Break suffered from performance issues that stemmed directly from the Universal Windows Platform:

Hopefully the unfettered Steam version runs better.

And hopefully it’s not the last “Xbox Exclusive” to hit Steam. We’ll keep you updated.

With Tim Sweeney accusing Microsoft of plotting to kill Steam completely, it's important to bear in mind just delicate a dance this is for Microsoft, and for their partners in PC gaming. With Universal Windows Apps performing worse than Steam releases in every case, so far, and Steam's customers remaining very loyal to Valve, who promoted PC gaming for years when Microsoft seemingly weren't interested, it'll be interesting to see how many of those first-party titles do end up on Steam, and how many of their other "exclusive" titles actually stay exclusive, rather than chasing the money to PC gaming's biggest sales market. It's also interesting that Quantum Break's Steam release includes both Windows 7 and Windows 10 versions, a clear recognition of the number of PC Gamers who didn't switch operating systems.

UPDATE:
It turns out that this is even more interesting than I'd first thought.

From PC Invasion:

Those who purchased Quantum Break through the Windows 10 store are “unlikely” to see another patch for the game, according to Remedy’s Head of Communications Thomas Puha. Puha was replying on twitter to players still unhappy with the game’s performance, even after a recent July patch, stating: “Sorry to hear you are having problems. Its unlikely we release another Win10 patch”.

It was announced yesterday that Quantum Break would be getting a Windows 7-compatible, DirectX 11 Steam release in mid-September. That move now appears to mark an end to support for the Windows 10, DirectX 12 version.

So, not only is Quantum Break coming to Windows7/DX11 and Steam, in a version that will outperform the Windows10/DX12 version, but they're not even going to try to fix the DX12 version anymore. Did I mention that the Steam release is $20 cheaper than the full-retail Windows Store release?

No word yet on whether Quantum Break's Windows Store customers will get free Steam keys, to compensate for the Windows Store version being a broken mess (Puha: “we dont make those business decisions”), but considering that Quantum Break was a very high-profile flop for Windows' new Store, I'd say that Microsoft's evil plan (according to Tim Sweeney, anyway) to steal Steam's customers away is off to a rough start, to put it mildly.

Not so new, and mostly static

One of the single biggest problems with Windows Phone was its lack of an app ecosystem. It was a classic chicken-and-egg problem: with no Windows Phone users, there was no market for apps, and thus nobody developing apps for the platform; with no apps for the platform, there was very little reason for anyone to want a Windows Phone, especially since most potential customers would be switching away from Android or iOS, both of which were app-rich.

This was one of the problems that Windows 10, and the Universal Windows Platform that sits at its core, were supposed to solve. UWP was supposed to make developing mobile apps for Windows easier than ever, leading to a flood of new, exciting apps for Windows 10 Mobile customers. Basically, the plan was that Microsoft would leverage the PC OS market share they already had, gaining mobile OS market share that they hadn't been able to earn.

So far, it doesn't seem to be going well. From NeoWin:

And today this issue was brought to the forefront once again, by author and Microsoft MVP Matt Lacey. He analyzed the way the Windows 10 Store charts different apps over time. Looking at a period of four months, from March 1st to June 30th, Lacey took a close look at the first page of results in the “New and Rising” category, a chart that should hold the interest of users and be a target for developers.

Unfortunately, his findings were by no means encouraging. According to his report, over 122 days, the chart only saw new entries on 100 days. During that time there were 202 new entries in the chart, though 65 of those were apps that were entered up to 3 or 4 times.

Over 4 months Lacey found there were a total of 209 different apps listed in the “New and Rising” chart, with those hitting the top of the chart staying there for an average of 40 days.

All in all, this means out of 72 apps that were there at the start of the period, 62 were still there at the end, after 122 days.

Ouch.

"Play Anywhere" not exactly as originally advertised

From MS Power User:

We reported recently that Microsoft has in a recent blog post claimed “Every new title published from Microsoft Studios will support Xbox Play Anywhere” and then soon after changed this to “Every new title published from Microsoft Studios that we showed onstage at E3 this year will support Xbox Play Anywhere.”

[...]

Now in a statement to PCGamesn.com Microsoft has issues a brief admission and apology, stating:

“When we unveiled Xbox Play Anywhere, we said that every new Microsoft Studios title shown at the Xbox E3 2016 Briefing will support Xbox Play Anywhere,” a Microsoft spokesperson tells us. “We understand that a recent blog post didn’t specify that the only Microsoft Studios titles we’ve confirmed to date as Xbox Play Anywhere were shown at the E3 2016 Xbox briefing.

“We’ve updated the blog post and apologise for any confusion.”

So, rather than making all new releases available on Windows 10, as Microsoft had clearly stated to build the hype, Play Anywhere will now only make selected titles available via the Windows Store. All you PC gamers who switched to Win10, hoping to get access to a constant stream of XBox One games that aren't getting PC ports... you've been had. Surprise!

At least they had decency to apologize, this time around. It will interesting to see if this has any impact on the popularity of Windows 10 and the Windows Store with PC gamers.