Micrososft talks up Windows 8 as gaming platform (more bullshit)

Eurogamer are reporting that Microsoft is planning to use its forthcoming Windows 8 OS to relaunch its beleaguered PC gaming service, according to a source close to the platform holder.

An insider told TechRadar that, “Windows 8 will represent a real new push into PC gaming. Gaming will be a key component for the whole OS.”

This proposed new dawn could be a long way off though. The new OS isn’t expected to see the light of day until at least 2012, and little information has been shared as to what it will actually offer.

Still, news that Microsoft has hired former Hewlett-Packard VP founder Rahul Sood should come as a further sign that it’s getting serious about the platform again.

The Voodoo PC founder, former Microsoft critic and longtime desktop gaming devotee will start soon as “general manager for system experience in the interactive entertainment business”.

Nope, we’ve no idea what that entails either, but according to his blog, Sood “will be working on some really… really… really cool stuff come January 2011″.

Well Rahul, we’d say it’ll need be really… really… really… really cool. You’ll have a mammoth task catching up with Valve’s hugely successful Steam portal and winning gamers back to Microsoft’s unloved Games for Windows set-up.

Too right MS really dropped the ball with the Windows live gaming service on the Windows platform, it was a lazy disgrace, only time will tell if they get anywhere close to steam.

History of Windows

In 1983, Microsoft announced the development of Windows, a graphical user interface (GUI) for its own operating system (MS-DOS), which had shipped for IBM PC and compatible computers since 1981. The product line has changed from a GUI product to a modern operating system over two families of design, each with its own codebase and default file system.

The 3.x and 4.x family includes Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me. The DOS-based Windows for Workgroups 3.11 achieved the breakthrough from 16- to 32-bit networking and 32-bit disk access. The notable change with Windows 95 was from Program Manager to Explorer, but several os-components were rewritten and/or recompiled into 32-bit code for Windows 95.

Windows NT family started with NT 3.1 in 1993. Modern Windows operating system versions are based on the newer Windows NT kernel that was originally intended for OS/2. Windows runs on IA-32, x86-64, and Itanium processors. Earlier versions also ran on the Alpha, MIPS, Fairchild Clipper, and PowerPC architectures. Some work was done to port it to the SPARC architecture. The NT kernel borrows many techniques from VMS. With NT4.0 in 1996 the shell changed from Program Manager to Explorer. CPU support included PowerPC, MIPS, and DEC Alpha for earlier versions of NT, but focuses on Itanium, 386, 486, and x64 today.

Windows 95 was the big breakthrough

After Windows 3.11, Microsoft began to develop a new consumer oriented version of the operating system code-named Chicago. Chicago was designed to have support for 32-bit preemptive multitasking like OS/2 and Windows NT, although a 16-bit kernel would remain for the sake of backward compatibility. The Win32 API first introduced with Windows NT was adopted as the standard 32-bit programming interface, with Win16 compatibility being preserved through a technique known as “thunking“. A new GUI was not originally planned as part of the release, although elements of the Cairo user interface were borrowed and added as other aspects of the release (notably Plug and Play) slipped.

Microsoft did not change all of the Windows code to 32-bit; parts of it remained 16-bit (albeit not directly using real mode) for reasons of compatibility, performance, and development time. Additionally it was necessary to carry over design decisions from earlier versions of Windows for reasons of backwards compatibility, even if these design decisions no longer matched a more modern computing environment. These factors eventually began to impact the operating system’s efficiency and stability.

Microsoft marketing adopted Windows 95 as the product name for Chicago when it was released on August 24, 1995. Microsoft had a double gain from its release: first, it made it impossible for consumers to run Windows 95 on a cheaper, non-Microsoft DOS; secondly, although traces of DOS were never completely removed from the system and a version of DOS would be loaded briefly as a part of the booting process, Windows 95 applications ran solely in 386 Enhanced Mode, with a flat 32-bit address space and virtual memory. These features make it possible for Win32 applications to address up to 2 gigabytes of virtual RAM (with another 2GB reserved for the operating system), and in theory prevented them from inadvertently corrupting the memory space of other Win32 applications. In this respect the functionality of Windows 95 moved closer to Windows NT, although Windows 95/98/ME did not support more than 512 megabytes of physical RAM without obscure system tweaks.

IBM continued to market OS/2, producing later versions in OS/2 3.0 and 4.0 (also called Warp). Responding to complaints about OS/2 2.0′s high demands on computer hardware, version 3.0 was significantly optimized both for speed and size. Before Windows 95 was released, OS/2 Warp 3.0 was even shipped preinstalled with several large German hardware vendor chains. However, with the release of Windows 95, OS/2 began to lose market share.

It is probably impossible to choose one specific reason why OS/2 failed to gain much market share. While OS/2 continued to run Windows 3.1 applications, it lacked support for anything but theWin32s subset of Win32 API (see above). Unlike with Windows 3.1, IBM did not have access to the source code for Windows 95 and was unwilling to commit the time and resources to emulate the moving target of the Win32 API. IBM later introduced OS/2 into the United States v. Microsoft case, blaming unfair marketing tactics on Microsoft’s part.

Microsoft went on to release five different versions of Windows 95:

Windows 95 – original release
Windows 95 A – included Windows 95 OSR1 slipstreamed into the installation.
Windows 95 B – (OSR2) included several major enhancements, Internet Explorer (IE) 3.0 and full FAT32 file system support.
Windows 95 B USB – (OSR2.1) included basic USB support.
Windows 95 C – (OSR2.5) included all the above features, plus IE 4.0. This was the last 95 version produced.

OSR2, OSR2.1, and OSR2.5 were not released to the general public; rather, they were available only to OEMs that would preload the OS onto computers. Some companies sold new hard drives with OSR2 preinstalled (officially justifying this as needed due to the hard drive’s capacity).

Windows 8 is expected to be released in 2012 or later

About Games for Windows

Games for Windows – Live (trademarked as Games for Windows – LIVE^[3]) is an online gaming service for Games for Windows-branded PC titles. It enables Windows PCs to connect to the Live service, which will eventually include other devices including Windows Mobile and Zune. Users, each with a unique Gamertag, the Microsoft username service for gaming that began with the Xbox Live, are able to play online, keep track of their friends’ status, send and receive messages, gain and keep track of Achievements and associated Gamerscore, voice chat across platforms, and much more. Some games allow for cross-platform play, such as Shadowrun, putting Windows players against Xbox 360 players.

The features of the service will initially be limited, but will grow just as the features of Xbox Live have over the years. The service was shown in near-final form at CES 2007 during Bill Gates‘ keynote speech.

The service is open to 3rd-party developers, but they must be able to meet certain Technical Certification Requirements (TCRs), which include (but are not limited to): game ratings, total number of Gamerscore points, content, game profiles, and Live connectivity. Games for Windows – Live games must also meet standard Games for Windows (games that do not have Live support) TCRs. The same developer support infrastructure is available as with the Xbox 360. Assistance to developers is provided through the Microsoft XNA Developer Connection.^[4]

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