Play’s Republic

The NYTimes has an interesting article this afternoon about the return of vigor to the PC gaming sector. It is interesting to think about how this market segment will be served by Vista’s integration of a game-friendly menus and displays within the OS, as well as (soon) a transparent interface to Microsoft’s XBox Live online catalog of games. My guess is that, as commodities, PC games are kinda like porn: When porn (as VHS tapes and DVDs) were only available from a store with no windows, it had a small (if committed) purchasing base. But made available online, in the Privacy of Your Home, and suddenly it is a bijillion-dollar a year industry.

What the article doesn’t mention is that Microsoft has been, well, predictable in its implementation of games-oriented elements of its OS. DirectX10 is not backwards-compatible with DX9 (so until lots of folks have Vista boxes, no one is going to waste time developing software for a tiny market); OpenGL is a hassle and a half (a Vista feature allows you to translate OpenGL calls to a Direct3D API… which is fine, as long as you are programming Tetris or checkers). SecondLife didn’t work on either of my Vista betas (although I’m sure it works now).