Another Step Towards World Domination

[nonchalance]

Microsoft wants to create an open standard for games - so in the same way DVDs are playable on any player, games would be playable on any hardware.

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=55585

"Handhelds, desktop PCs, laptop PCs, airport terminals, mobile phones, PDAs, the list goes on. It really does hurt the brain to think about how far reaching this whole plan is - it's essentially its Windows equivalent for games. An OS for gaming, if you will."

 

[Former]

Cool! But... how will I cram a 900MB game into my iPaq?

 

[Former]

But seriously, do you think they'd be talking about this if the Xbox was outselling PS2 by 10 to 1, instead of the other way around?

 

[nonchalance]

No.

I think they'd be talking about it unless they thought Xbox had a chance of being the monopoly, though.

If they handle it well, it'll be the best thing since sliced bread.
If they handle it badly, I don't want to think about what might happen.

 

[Mr Eagle]

So who decides what a standard console will be capable of running, processorwise? And what prevents game publishers constantly jacking up minimum reqs as they do with PC games currently?

It's still going to turn into a massive ****ing contest between hardware manufacturers, it just won't involve "range of games available" as a factor in your purchase, and the obsolence cycle will come around twice as fast...