Apocalypso's Atomic Arcade: Microsoft

Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts

2011/11/01

Random Madness: Micro Doom

This post marks the return of Random Madness here on AAA. I had some inspiration recently.

Windows XP has been around for a long time. I was just reading on Joystiq the other day in an article where it was said that it is in fact ten years old as of last month. After so many years of using Windows XP myself, I recently made the jump to using another version of Windows. On the laptop I acquired recently, I have installed on it Windows Vista. True, it’s not the latest Windows, or the best. Some call it the black sheep in the family.

Anyway, I had read about a feature that was first introduced in Vista that obviously wasn’t in any previous Windows that we know of: User Account Control, or UAC. Basically it ensures that programs run only when you want them to and that any sort of malware that attacks your system doesn’t have full control over what goes on, even if you’re running an administrator account.

Now the gamer in me instantly thought of something else when I read that acronym. The UAC is instrumental in the storyline of the Doom series. It stands for Union Aerospace Corporation. Now while the UAC’s background was only really expanded upon in Doom 3, it existed all ready in the original games in the early-mid 90’s.

Now knowing my inquisitive mind like I do, my thoughts started to wander if there was some sort of link or is it just coincidence? This wouldn’t be the only time there was a possible link between id Software’s Doom and Microsoft. More than a decade and a half ago, Bill Gates promoted Windows 95 by superimposing himself in to Doom and blasting some zombies. Doom was originally programmed to work in MS-DOS when released in 1993, but was still massively popular even years later.

Maybe this UAC feature was an homage of sorts to Doom. Windows UAC tries to limit malware attacks, much like Doom’s UAC tried in all Doom games to date to prevent the demonic invasion from hell – ultimately (get it? The Ultimate Doom?) it failed every time.

But seriously, don’t quote me on this. It’s all rubbish. Interesting to think of, though.

2010/05/27

Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project Arriving on XBLA Soon

Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project recently celebrated its eighth birthday last week – not that anyone really noticed.

Up until now the game was only ever released on the PC, but that’s set to change as Microsoft has officially announced, after months and months of speculation and hints, that the game will be arriving on Xbox Live Arcade soon. No date or price has been given, but it will likely be soon.

The original Manhattan Project for Windows was released back in 2002. It was a kind of spin-off title, not in the main universe of Duke Nukem games, developed by Sunstorm Interactive, which has since gone out of business. It was still good fun though, as you controlled the Dukester in a side-scrolling 3D adventure spanning several environments, in what was essentially a tribute to the first two Duke Nukem games from the 90’s, before Duke Nukem 3D.

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Sources:

http://www.xbox.com/
Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project Confirmed for XBLA [Shacknews]

2010/05/17

Fable III Could be Coming to PC as well as Xbox 360

I’ve never really cared much for Fable, one of Peter Molyneux’s and Lionhead’s biggest franchises, before. That is until it was said recently that Fable III, the latest game in the series, might well be coming to the PC.

Well, besides this, there is the man, the legend, John Cleese, who will take the part of Jasper the butler.

The first game was available on PC, Mac, and Xbox, and the previous title in the series, Fable II, was an Xbox 360 exclusive, and it was thought that Fable III would be the same, but the box art for the game claims that it will be arriving "Only on Xbox 360 & Windows”.

This box art could just be incorrect though, as earlier placeholder box art for the game claimed it was Xbox 360 only. Molyneux has said that he would like to see the franchise come to the PC before, and Lionhead some time ago was looking for someone to ‘convert and maintain the network code of the Xbox 360 version of Fable III to the PC and enable the Xbox 360 version and the PC version to play together’.

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Source: Fable 3 box art crowned with windows label [Joystiq]

2010/02/14

Alan Wake for the PC? No. For Real This Time.

“Alan Wake for PC! Where are you?!”

Alan Wake has been development for a hell of a long time, and years ago it was planned that it would make an appearance on the PC as well as the Xbox 360. Then it fell off the radar and seemingly into the abyss for a while before resurfacing a while later. Then last year the decision was left with Microsoft as to whether the game would see people playing it on the PC, seeing as Remedy didn't really seem to give a damn much.

But now the decision is final: Alan Wake will not be released on the PC after all.

"Some games are more suited for the intimacy of the PC, and others are best played from the couch in front of a larger TV screen. We ultimately realized that the most compelling way to experience 'Alan Wake' was on the Xbox 360 platform, so we focused on making it an Xbox 360 exclusive. Both Microsoft and Remedy have long histories in PC game development. This decision was about matching this specific game to the right platform."

And I was just talking about it the other day to my brother, saying how good it looked. That it might just be the best horror game I’ve seen in quite a while. I personally think it’s rubbish – the whole explanation they gave. I’m sure Alan Wake would have fitted in quite nicely on the PC. It looks like nobody could really be bothered in the end.

Oh, well. Plenty of other non-exclusive titles that’ll hit the PC this year anyway.

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Source: Eurogamer

2009/11/03

It’s Your Birthday: Gabe Newell

Gabe Logan Newell was born today, the 3rd of November, in 1962. He turns 47 today.

Gabe Newell is the co-founder, along with Mike Harrington, and managing director of Valve Corporation (founded in 1996), the company responsible for many great game series, like Half-Life.

Interesting facts about Gabe:

He dropped out of Harvard University.
He worked for Microsoft for thirteen years.
Gabe and Mike funded the development of Half-Life out of their own pockets with money they earned at Microsoft.
He is married to Lisa Newell and has two sons.
Gabe hates the PS3.
Gabe likes the PC.
Gabe’s Wikipedia article is semi-protected because of vandalism.
There is a video game character with the same name as his: Gabriel "Gabe" Logan from Syphon Filter.
Gabe describes himself as the producer on the first three releases of Microsoft Windows.
People often make fun of his weight.
Gabe can't fold his arms.
Gabe was briefly in second place in a Victoria’s Secret competition this year, before his entry was disqualified.
There’s a fake Gabe on Twitter posing as Gabe Newell. The real Gabe doesn’t have a Twitter account, yet. Kotaku fell for this hoax.
Valve and Gabe Newell came under fire after announcing that Left 4 Dead 2 was under development at would be released this year. Even a boycott group was started, which has since been “disbanded” by the founders, who were flown to Valve HQ to see the game in action.
Recently, Gabe and Erik Johnson flew to Australia to see someone’s Left 4 Dead campaign, after the guy raised $ 3000 for his flight, although Gabe actually paid the amount himself, in the end.
Gabe said he might consider a Half-Life movie if there is ever a script worth directing. Quentin Tarantino was once rumoured to be interested in making a Half-Life movie after claiming that even though he disliked video games as a whole, he liked Half-Life 2.
Gabe wouldn’t ever consider Uwe Boll to direct a Half-Life movie (thank Christ).
Gabe plays PC games two hours a day.
Gabe owns a BMW 745i.
Gabe’s current PC: Unspecified Core i7 (overclocked), ATI Radeon HD 4800, 42" Panasonic Elite 1080p monitor, Razer mouse, MS ergonomic keyboard.
Gabe has very eclectic tastes when it comes to music.
Gabe collects knives as a hobby. I assume he means like combat knives and such, and not those little plastic knives you get at some take-away restaurants.
Gabe has expressed interest in having fans fund video game development.
Gabe is no stranger to hiring people who work on mods, especially for Valve games. He claims that half of Valve is made up of (former) mod-makers.

2009/08/07

Alan Wake for PC Petition

Speaking of petitions, it seems that Alan Wake fans at www.alan-wake.de have undertaken a petition to get Microsoft to release the game on PC. Currently the game is set to be released only on Xbox 360.

The fate of the PC version was in doubt for some time, and eventually it was revealed that work on it had been cancelled.

An account on Twitter, remedyalerts, highlighted the effort, but VG247 discovered that the account did not belong to Remedy, but in fact another fan community at www.brightfalls.net.

Anyway, if you've got five minutes, go ahead and sign. I did. I always do- when it's for a good cause anyway. I really like the look of Alan Wake from what I've seen in the trailers.

Sources:

Remedy Community Highlights Petition to Save Alan Wake PC
http://twitter.com/remedyalerts
http://www.petitiononline.com/AlanWake/petition.html
Alan Wake PC Petition

2009/07/30

Bill Gates Says "Leave Me Alone!"

Bill Gates was on Facebook, but was apparently forced to give it up because there were too many people friending him.

Now this is news to me- people actually wanting to be friends with Bill Gates? I thought since the first Windows came out, they wanted to kill the guy?

And this notion might be confirmed by the amount of Microsoft "hatred" going around, which is nothing totally new, I'm sure.

Anyhow, Billy is only working part-time now, so he wants to be left alone so he can "read books" and count his money, no doubt. And no, friending him will not make him pop a generous donation into your bank account.

Sources:

Microsoft hatred is a disease
Gates forced to give up Facebook

2009/07/21

Gabe Newell Wants Your Money, and More Money

Maybe I took this the wrong way, but when I saw this headline over at several sites (I think it was GamePro first, as well Kotaku- originally Kotaku AU), I thought, "What the hell?"

Gabe Newell of Valve Corporation says he's interested in fan-funded games. He says that instead of going to fickle publishers for approval when it comes to games, he wants fans to give their money over to fund development.

One person over at Kotaku said that it wouldn't be practical with AAA games that cost tens of millions.

It's not usually how things work, but then again, Valve has brought new things to the table before. Think of Half-Life, and Half-Life 2, and how they both changed the way we looked at games. They became games that people aspired to- almost like measuring sticks of their respective eras, if you will.

Then there's Steam, the digital distribution platform, also by Valve, and DD is set to be the future of games.

But this...now fans have to fork out money for a game to be developed, and might even have to pay for the finished product as well.

I think this is going to be a controversial topic, and might even further alienate former and current Valve fans- the ones he's considering reaching out to. Remember L4D2, and how it was announced about five years too early?

All I want to know is, how did Gabe become so greedy, in addition to all ready being a fat b@stard?

He probably learned it from spending time working at Microsoft.

Sources:

Kotaku AU
Gabe Newell - Valve Software
Valve: Let Fans Fund Games Development [Valve]
Valve interested in fan funded projects

2009/01/28

Windows XP: The seven year itch is over

I read an article in the Techno Times supplement of the Cape Times recently, and apparently Windows XP is now being edged out slowly, and Vista's coming in. Microsoft allegedly gives each operating system about a ten year span. The first five years is for free guaranteed mainstream support, and that apparently comes to a close in April 2009. After this, it enters the extended support period which will last until 2014. If you add it up, it’s actually thirteen years since its release in 2001 to 2014, so XP has had quite a long run so far, and will continue for the next five years it seems, and software and hardware companies will have to continue supporting it for the duration.

If this is the case with every Operating System, then there’s little one can do. When Vista first came out, there were some very mixed reactions, with many judging that it did not differ so greatly from XP to merit it as a new OS. Even on performance benchmark tests, XP SP3 is on a level with and even outperforms Vista. Many have stuck with XP, and according to statistics, out of more than one billion computers worldwide, approximately 700 million of them have XP, with the remaining 300 million using Vista or another OS.

How desperate is Microsoft anyway? It’s a multi-billion dollar company; it’s not like they need the money.

It started off with Microsoft only letting Direct X 10 be compatible with Vista, boycotting XP users, and making them upgrade to Vista- and a new OS isn’t cheap. Then they come with this nonsense about now not having free support for us anymore.

I stuck with XP after I read and heard many arguments that Vista isn’t worth it, even one by John Carmack of id Software. In fact, I like playing classic games so much, and I’ve just got them working with XP, and I have everything the way I want it. I don’t need to switch right now, and most likely I won’t switch for the next five years until nothing supports it anymore, and I’m forced into it.