Your Opinions on Ubisoft?

[Rumblood]

Steam coming to consoles?

Probably.

The Video Game industry is the ONLY one with a no return policy. If there was a return policy and these companies had to start eating their money like regular industry did for messed up, shit games, you'd see the whole industry turn around.

And In reality, it's just PC games that suffer the no return policy.  Consoles have companies that act just like regular companies do and do returns and resales.(which is why xbox wants to go all digital and remove the ability to resale games. Fuking Money grubbing CEOs)

Steam's Big Picture mode is the first step towards moving to the Television and integrate the gaming experiences. Consoles games could be resold because you needed the physical media, on PC you don't. I can understand that. But now companies are moving to the "Cloud" because they have seen that it will allow them to charge more for less of a product. (Yes less because you have to be always online, which is bullshit for a standalone product). Google news "Photoshop" and see what I'm talking about.

Bottom line is, unless we want a future where you pay a subscription for every piece of software you own, oh excuse me, RENT, and must be online always in order to use it, we have got to boycott these companies and hit them in their stock price until more CEO's like EA's get laid off from their jobs. Oh for the FYI, after EA's CEO got canned, Sims 4 has been announced as a single player offline game for 2014 release. Surprise? No. Vote with your dollars people. Withhold them for the shit "Cloud enhancements" and make titles like Sims 4 with single player offline wildly successful. I'm going to buy it and not because I actually want it (though I'll give it to my kids), but because I want to send a message. Keep single players offline and make gobs of money, or suffer the loss of revenue when you don't.

[Lt_Anders]

Steam's Big Picture mode is the first step towards moving to the Television and integrate the gaming experiences. Consoles games could be resold because you needed the physical media, on PC you don't. I can understand that. But now companies are moving to the "Cloud" because they have seen that it will allow them to charge more for less of a product. (Yes less because you have to be always online, which is bullshit for a standalone product). Google news "Photoshop" and see what I'm talking about.

Bottom line is, unless we want a future where you pay a subscription for every piece of software you own, oh excuse me, RENT, and must be online always in order to use it, we have got to boycott these companies and hit them in their stock price until more CEO's like EA's get laid off from their jobs. Oh for the FYI, after EA's CEO got canned, Sims 4 has been announced as a single player offline game for 2014 release. Surprise? No. Vote with your dollars people. Withhold them for the shit "Cloud enhancements" and make titles like Sims 4 with single player offline wildly successful. I'm going to buy it and not because I actually want it (though I'll give it to my kids), but because I want to send a message. Keep single players offline and make gobs of money, or suffer the loss of revenue when you don't.

Exactly what I said, though much much more literate about it. These companies want to protect their games via DRM and all that fun shit. But, just like my first post, it's often the REAL customer who gets hurt most and not the pirates or otherwise.
Another thing killing the industry is that large game companies take control of good and popular game series(EA just took over Starwars rights, basically. Ubi has several classic series's under their control...) and try to make as MUCH MONEY AS POSSIBLE out of it.

[zagibu]

You might not be able to resell or return your games on Steam (though the latter is actually possible, although you have to fight for it), but does it really matter that much? Steam has done a lot for Gaming, by including the Mac and now Linux people, and by proving that you can actually make MORE money, if you sell games for lower prices. I haven't bought a game for full price in the last three years.

And then there are all those integrated community features...

[Rumblood]

You might not be able to resell or return your games on Steam (though the latter is actually possible, although you have to fight for it), but does it really matter that much? Steam has done a lot for Gaming, by including the Mac and now Linux people, and by proving that you can actually make MORE money, if you sell games for lower prices. I haven't bought a game for full price in the last three years.

And then there are all those integrated community features...

I'm an unabashed Steam fanboi and so are most of my gamer friends. If they ain't, they ain't no friend of mine! 

[Kafein]

Steam in coming years will probably acheive one of the best things for PC gaming ever, which is kicking Microsoft out of their monopoly on gaming OS. Other than that, the only reason they are not hated by everyone is their focus on customer satisfaction and indie games, because you still don't own anything when you buy a steam game.

About Ubisoft : some good games, still pretty much the third worst moneygrubbing videogame publisher (behind activision and EA). Worst DRMs of all time. Uplay is slightly less of a piece of shit than Origin, but still useless bloatware.

[cmp]

Steam in coming years will probably acheive one of the best things for PC gaming ever, which is kicking Microsoft out of their monopoly on gaming OS.

Nope, it doesn't work like that. If you want to break the monopoly you need to convince OEMs to sell PCs with Linux (can't, nowhere near ready) or Mac (can't, hardware bound and exclusive). If that doesn't happen, the vast majority of developers will just continue to target Windows only and ignore Valve's publicity stunts.

[Kafein]

Nope, it doesn't work like that. If you want to break the monopoly you need to convince OEMs to sell PCs with Linux (can't, nowhere near ready) or Mac (can't, hardware bound and exclusive). If that doesn't happen, the vast majority of developers will just continue to target Windows only and ignore Valve's publicity stunts.

You may be right about the really general public, but at least this opening will a give a chance to Linux gaming. Most gamers I know only have a windows partition for one reason : games. "Most gamers I know" is of course not a good sample of the entire gamer population, but still this includes anyone tech-savvy enough to buy pc parts separately and installing an OS. And let's not forget evidence that windows 8 has made a big hole in OEM pc sales. Those people that wanted to buy a pc didn't dissappear entirely (some chose tablets instead, sure).

[Leshma]

Nope, it doesn't work like that. If you want to break the monopoly you need to convince OEMs to sell PCs with Linux (can't, nowhere near ready) or Mac (can't, hardware bound and exclusive). If that doesn't happen, the vast majority of developers will just continue to target Windows only and ignore Valve's publicity stunts.

Few years ago Dell and couple of other smaller OEM tried that. But timing wasn't good. Right now, Canonical and Ubuntu are the only chance for that to happen. If they manage to make "unified" OS that works well, in few years many OEMs will choose Ubuntu instead of Windows. Android is popular but it isn't made for desktop.

Of course, there's "PC is dying" trend which could result in death of Windows just because there won't be enough desktop PCs on the market.

So far Linux is winning by a big margin. Servers, mobile devices are running Linux. Microsoft is still strong on desktop but we'll see how long that will last.

[zagibu]

The timing is never right. The problem of the Linux push some years ago was that people simply expected a free Windows. However, there is no Outlook on Linux, and no Photoshop. People are not ready to change the tools they have used for years. They'll never be.

[Kafein]

I think one of the reasons Microsoft is still dominant in the desktop market is to be found in businesses. They provide a much better integrated software suite for office work and system administration, all packaged together in a way that just works, and with minimum effort. The specific tools are usually not better than the equivalent open or linux compatible versions, but the convenience of only using proprietary stuff is that you don't have to care about messing with software not made to interact.

[cmp]

Windows having more applications available and Linux counterparts being pretty bad is a big factor, but what really holds back Linux is that its developer and user base is split between reasonable people and dumb OSS talibans (the foot eater above all), and it really needs the former to prevail before it can break through to a wider audience.

[Rumblood]

Of course, there's "PC is dying" trend which could result in death of Windows just because there won't be enough desktop PCs on the market.

This is just a myth propagated by people like writers at ZDnet who need more people to visit their site and argue to generate a revenue stream from site visits. I own a PC, 2 consoles, 2 tablets, 2 laptops and my Note II (smartphone). If I had to pare it down to 2 devices, I would keep my PC and my Note II and ditch the consoles, laptops, and tablets.

[Leshma]

You're tech-savvy user who's also working in IT industry. Most people aren't.

[Rumblood]

You're tech-savvy user who's also working in IT industry. Most people aren't.

Gamers and Porn made the PC industry. We aren't wandering off just because there is something shiny over there 

[Lt_Anders]

You guys lost me at the linux part.

 

And I hate MACs, cause of fuking apple's business policies.