I was originally going to post this on gaf, but figured if I did I would be called a fanboy and possibly banned as the title I guess sounds extremely fanboyish. I have another post incoming for Sony / Playstation and possibly another for Nintendo.
I comes from a Linux background - I switched to Linux pre-2000 I think it was Debian Potato (Debian releases are named after toy story, hence why Unstable is called Sid) Back then I built my self a sick machine a dual cpu pentium with I forget how much ram (not a tonne but a lot for back then) and an ATI graphics card. Back then windows 98 or Me didn't support SMP (symmetric multi-processing) - this amazing pc ran like an absolute turd when running windows a couple of years before this my brother had introduced me to Linux he was an admin working for an isp and all of their systems ran linux he started showing me x11 and stuff like xeyes it was all so very different and so cool and you could literally get into the guts of the operating system, for me a guy that was technically minded this stuff just blew my mind. It's performance was amazing as well I would run various things on it and just constantly be blown away by what it was capable of. When windows 2K came out I dual booted to win2k to get my gaming fix and the win nt kernel did support smp although the performance was nowhere near as good.
I went off to uni did a degree in comp sci, my uni ran sun solaris (an amazing unix system that no longer exists - bought by oracle turned into a husk) they had SGI Irix computers (the company that built 3d, did most of the cgi work back then and I believe opengl was created by them) - most of my lecturers were from unix backgrounds. To get a lot of the work done I needed access to unix systems and Linux fit the bill perfectly.
So why this long back story - what many may not know is just how terrified Microsoft was of Linux, at the time I would go into forums / web sites to try and find out information to research and it was always filled with massive negativity towards Linux / Unix generally so many supposed users absolutely bashing every element of it, sometimes just outright lies. Looking into this further I found out this was essentially a Microsoft PR smear campaign (FUD) - designed to detract companies and individuals from leaving the confines of Windows and using Linux. On every level this surfaced and I just found the tactic nauseating as it detracted from getting actual work done into this bickering bullshit where you would have people paid money to actively antagonise so instead of raising real issues and fixing real problems you would be faced with noise and actively trying to defend. I think the most perfect example of this backfiring is this:
Microsoft built a .net platform called trade-elect literally threw engineers and money at it. Along with a get the facts campaign highlighting the London Stock Exchange as choosing windows for its reliability and stability - anyone that had used Windows server back then knew it was anything but reliable. Anyway a few years later and we had this:
https://www.computerworld.com/artic...hange-to-abandon-failed-windows-platform.html
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2480407/extra--london-stock-exchange--blame-microsoft-.html
Every linux forum every news / resource avenue for Linux would be filled with astro-turfers that would point to the get the facts campaign, to the London Stock Exchange campaign and extol the virtues of windows and .net.
Here is the funny part FUD originally started by IBM was a sales tactic where they would go to businesses and sell IBM machines and the tag line was no one ever got fired for buying an IBM machine. Microsoft embraced and extended this strategy to stratospheric heights only for it to backfire. The CEO of LSE got fired for bringing the Microsoft mess and the Linux based platform that eventually replaced it absolutely slaughtered it in terms of stability and performance.
This is just 1 example there were the Halloween documents that got leaked that highlighted just how afraid Microsoft was of Linux, The whole patent lawsuit with SCO Unix against Linux it turned out Microsoft was funding the whole thing and it took Novell and IBM stepping in to destroy the case and in the process SCO, again designed to produce fear about possibly getting hit with patent fines for using Linux. The android patent scams where they said the Linux kernel infringed on MS patents (turns out the only valid patent was fat64 which is a shitty file system to begin with and only used to keep support between android phones and windows desktop users - Linux has far better file systems). You have to remember this isn't 1 mega corporation against another this is literally 1 mega corporation which writes pretty shit software against a bunch of university students and people that write code for fun or because they want something cool and want to share it out in the world - the open source world is pretty amazing. Linux is a bit of a strange beast nowadays as it has the best developed features from IBM AIX, Novell Unix, SGI, HP Unix integrated in, this is why it kicks so much ass in the enterprise / server world (for all of the mentioned companies it makes sense as they don't have to maintain the software individually themselves as they primarily sell hardware) You also have the genius students and professors that come up with ideas and Linux is the perfect system for them to build out their experiments (Xen literally was started in Cambridge University, by a Cambridge Professor - revolutionised virtualisation imho)
Then windows phone, where the planted a mole (ELOP) stopped the development of Meego OS (I think something like that) which was linux based and moved to windows only for Microsoft to buy nokia and absolutely destroy the company and for the whole thing to backfire. We could have actually had a third amazing mobile platform to compete against Android and iPhone, if it wasn't for the idiots at Redmond.
What does this have to do with gaming ? I hear you ask (or you probably have looked at this wall of text and thought nah cant be bother to read the rantings of this lunatic)
Well this exact same tactic I saw being copied verbatim with the xbox platform. I have seen astroturfers wreck absolute havoc in comment sections of gaming sites, I have seen journalists basically behaving like paid advertisers. It came directly from the same playbook if you've seen the signs before it becomes so absolutely evident. It got to the point where I started looking for sources of news from other places and came across gaf back in the day. I saw a resurgence of this sort of behaviour on the launch of the xbox series consoles as well, I actually noticed gaf getting infected with a few astro-turfers as well. Luckily this place looks to be the one for me to get actual information and raise actual issues and thoughts.
Since Microsoft has entered, what actual amazing things have they added to the gaming space ?
During the xbox 360 period they introduced a pay wall to gaming online. Then astroturfers started writing about how amazing xbox live is, for the normal kids / people that know absolutely nothing to think they needed to pay to get good online connection for gaming. Absolute bullshit - so many who had absolutely no idea where pointing to peer 2 peer based games and claiming its because of the xbox network - peer 2 peer literally using your own connection no centralised servers at all and believing its because they paid for the service that the service was better. In that same time frame Sony released MAG which was 64 player client / server based. Third party publishers almost always provided their own service infrastructure for client / server based gaming. Literally Microsoft nickel and diming its consumer base. I hate the fact that Sony and Nintendo both do this now as well.
GamePass ? I don't even want to open up that can of worms - its garnered a lot of positive press.
Buying out publishers ? Is that really a good thing for the industry. I hate the fact that id sold itself to Zenimax and I absolutely hate the fact that my favourite games developer / engine developer is in the hands of Microsoft - so much I could say they were the only developers that I knew of that actively developed in purely opengl and Vulkan something the PC space really badly needs is to get away from proprietary standards like direct-x and to instead embrace open well documented very good standards like Vulkan, anyway I digress (I think this is why Microsoft bought them - they fear Google, Amazon and Apple the most and they are all Linux / Unix based systems where Vulkan is a first class citizen)
The ending note I would add is that Microsoft has changed for the better Since Satya Nadella took over - He originally worked for SUN Microsystems (Sun Solaris absolutely amazing tech I mentioned them earlier) He is a real genuine engineer and I think he must detest these old archaic FUD campaigns as much as me and I like the direction he has been steering Microsoft, but I will never truly be able to trust the company because of the truly evil shit it used to do, under Balmer it was the worst, what happens when the CEO changes again ?
I will happily support Sony, Nintendo, Apple, Samsung, Amazon, Google any other company that gets into gaming and values engineering excellence that doesn't resort to flinging shit at its competitors. Until Microsoft can show it can be trusted I wont support them and buying big publishers, especially publishers supporting open standards like vulkan does not evoke trust in me.
I comes from a Linux background - I switched to Linux pre-2000 I think it was Debian Potato (Debian releases are named after toy story, hence why Unstable is called Sid) Back then I built my self a sick machine a dual cpu pentium with I forget how much ram (not a tonne but a lot for back then) and an ATI graphics card. Back then windows 98 or Me didn't support SMP (symmetric multi-processing) - this amazing pc ran like an absolute turd when running windows a couple of years before this my brother had introduced me to Linux he was an admin working for an isp and all of their systems ran linux he started showing me x11 and stuff like xeyes it was all so very different and so cool and you could literally get into the guts of the operating system, for me a guy that was technically minded this stuff just blew my mind. It's performance was amazing as well I would run various things on it and just constantly be blown away by what it was capable of. When windows 2K came out I dual booted to win2k to get my gaming fix and the win nt kernel did support smp although the performance was nowhere near as good.
I went off to uni did a degree in comp sci, my uni ran sun solaris (an amazing unix system that no longer exists - bought by oracle turned into a husk) they had SGI Irix computers (the company that built 3d, did most of the cgi work back then and I believe opengl was created by them) - most of my lecturers were from unix backgrounds. To get a lot of the work done I needed access to unix systems and Linux fit the bill perfectly.
So why this long back story - what many may not know is just how terrified Microsoft was of Linux, at the time I would go into forums / web sites to try and find out information to research and it was always filled with massive negativity towards Linux / Unix generally so many supposed users absolutely bashing every element of it, sometimes just outright lies. Looking into this further I found out this was essentially a Microsoft PR smear campaign (FUD) - designed to detract companies and individuals from leaving the confines of Windows and using Linux. On every level this surfaced and I just found the tactic nauseating as it detracted from getting actual work done into this bickering bullshit where you would have people paid money to actively antagonise so instead of raising real issues and fixing real problems you would be faced with noise and actively trying to defend. I think the most perfect example of this backfiring is this:
Microsoft built a .net platform called trade-elect literally threw engineers and money at it. Along with a get the facts campaign highlighting the London Stock Exchange as choosing windows for its reliability and stability - anyone that had used Windows server back then knew it was anything but reliable. Anyway a few years later and we had this:
https://www.computerworld.com/artic...hange-to-abandon-failed-windows-platform.html
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2480407/extra--london-stock-exchange--blame-microsoft-.html
Every linux forum every news / resource avenue for Linux would be filled with astro-turfers that would point to the get the facts campaign, to the London Stock Exchange campaign and extol the virtues of windows and .net.
Here is the funny part FUD originally started by IBM was a sales tactic where they would go to businesses and sell IBM machines and the tag line was no one ever got fired for buying an IBM machine. Microsoft embraced and extended this strategy to stratospheric heights only for it to backfire. The CEO of LSE got fired for bringing the Microsoft mess and the Linux based platform that eventually replaced it absolutely slaughtered it in terms of stability and performance.
This is just 1 example there were the Halloween documents that got leaked that highlighted just how afraid Microsoft was of Linux, The whole patent lawsuit with SCO Unix against Linux it turned out Microsoft was funding the whole thing and it took Novell and IBM stepping in to destroy the case and in the process SCO, again designed to produce fear about possibly getting hit with patent fines for using Linux. The android patent scams where they said the Linux kernel infringed on MS patents (turns out the only valid patent was fat64 which is a shitty file system to begin with and only used to keep support between android phones and windows desktop users - Linux has far better file systems). You have to remember this isn't 1 mega corporation against another this is literally 1 mega corporation which writes pretty shit software against a bunch of university students and people that write code for fun or because they want something cool and want to share it out in the world - the open source world is pretty amazing. Linux is a bit of a strange beast nowadays as it has the best developed features from IBM AIX, Novell Unix, SGI, HP Unix integrated in, this is why it kicks so much ass in the enterprise / server world (for all of the mentioned companies it makes sense as they don't have to maintain the software individually themselves as they primarily sell hardware) You also have the genius students and professors that come up with ideas and Linux is the perfect system for them to build out their experiments (Xen literally was started in Cambridge University, by a Cambridge Professor - revolutionised virtualisation imho)
Then windows phone, where the planted a mole (ELOP) stopped the development of Meego OS (I think something like that) which was linux based and moved to windows only for Microsoft to buy nokia and absolutely destroy the company and for the whole thing to backfire. We could have actually had a third amazing mobile platform to compete against Android and iPhone, if it wasn't for the idiots at Redmond.
What does this have to do with gaming ? I hear you ask (or you probably have looked at this wall of text and thought nah cant be bother to read the rantings of this lunatic)
Well this exact same tactic I saw being copied verbatim with the xbox platform. I have seen astroturfers wreck absolute havoc in comment sections of gaming sites, I have seen journalists basically behaving like paid advertisers. It came directly from the same playbook if you've seen the signs before it becomes so absolutely evident. It got to the point where I started looking for sources of news from other places and came across gaf back in the day. I saw a resurgence of this sort of behaviour on the launch of the xbox series consoles as well, I actually noticed gaf getting infected with a few astro-turfers as well. Luckily this place looks to be the one for me to get actual information and raise actual issues and thoughts.
Since Microsoft has entered, what actual amazing things have they added to the gaming space ?
During the xbox 360 period they introduced a pay wall to gaming online. Then astroturfers started writing about how amazing xbox live is, for the normal kids / people that know absolutely nothing to think they needed to pay to get good online connection for gaming. Absolute bullshit - so many who had absolutely no idea where pointing to peer 2 peer based games and claiming its because of the xbox network - peer 2 peer literally using your own connection no centralised servers at all and believing its because they paid for the service that the service was better. In that same time frame Sony released MAG which was 64 player client / server based. Third party publishers almost always provided their own service infrastructure for client / server based gaming. Literally Microsoft nickel and diming its consumer base. I hate the fact that Sony and Nintendo both do this now as well.
GamePass ? I don't even want to open up that can of worms - its garnered a lot of positive press.
Buying out publishers ? Is that really a good thing for the industry. I hate the fact that id sold itself to Zenimax and I absolutely hate the fact that my favourite games developer / engine developer is in the hands of Microsoft - so much I could say they were the only developers that I knew of that actively developed in purely opengl and Vulkan something the PC space really badly needs is to get away from proprietary standards like direct-x and to instead embrace open well documented very good standards like Vulkan, anyway I digress (I think this is why Microsoft bought them - they fear Google, Amazon and Apple the most and they are all Linux / Unix based systems where Vulkan is a first class citizen)
The ending note I would add is that Microsoft has changed for the better Since Satya Nadella took over - He originally worked for SUN Microsystems (Sun Solaris absolutely amazing tech I mentioned them earlier) He is a real genuine engineer and I think he must detest these old archaic FUD campaigns as much as me and I like the direction he has been steering Microsoft, but I will never truly be able to trust the company because of the truly evil shit it used to do, under Balmer it was the worst, what happens when the CEO changes again ?
I will happily support Sony, Nintendo, Apple, Samsung, Amazon, Google any other company that gets into gaming and values engineering excellence that doesn't resort to flinging shit at its competitors. Until Microsoft can show it can be trusted I wont support them and buying big publishers, especially publishers supporting open standards like vulkan does not evoke trust in me.
