Microsoft Will Distribute More Xbox Titles Through Steam and Finally Support Win32 Games

Microsoft says it's committed to supporting competing PC game stores and it's announcing today that it will distribute more Xbox Game Studios titles through Valve's Steam marketplace. From a report: Typically, Microsoft has distributed its games through only Xbox Live on its game console platform and through its own Windows storefront on PC. Now, Microsoft says it wants to better support player choice and let customers buy games in more than one destination on PC. "Our intent is to make our Xbox Game Studios PC games available in multiple stores, including our own Microsoft Store on Windows, at their launch. We believe you should have choice in where you buy your PC games," writes Xbox chief Phil Spencer in a blog post announcing the shift in strategy. The move follows Microsoft's decision earlier this year to publish its upcoming PC port of Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Steam.

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[tepples]

Is ladder logic anything like Clickteam Fusion, MIT Scratch, Nintendo's WarioWare DIY, and other point-and-click game development environments?

Obviously

[war4peace]

...Microsoft realized that their coverage through their own store is shit.

Re:Obviously

[Bigjeff5]

I think they also see the beating the Epic launcher is currently taking as both a wake-call and an opportunity to garner some good will from their customers.

The important point for Microsoft, I'm sure, is that people are buying their products. Bonus if they're buying it from their own store, where they can get as much profit as possible, but that's just bonus. They still make money on sales through Steam, and Steam is hugely popular, so they should be selling through Steam too as long as their profit margins are reasonable.

I personally don't want a second games library, ever. I only want one. Steam got there first, and it does a great job. When I want to play a game, I don't even look at the icons on my desktop, I go to the Steam library to pick out what I want to play. I've never bought through the Windows Store or Epic, and I've never really considered it.

When I see a cool game go exclusive to Epic I don't think "That's going to be annoying to run a second launcher", instead I think "Guess I'm not playing that one." It's going to take a lot for me to add a second store, and so far nothing has given me a good enough reason to do so.

I'm not sure how many people out there are like me in that regard, unwilling to jump to different libraries and launchers, but I doubt I'm very strange. It's probably a sizable chunk of your audience you're cutting out by being exclusive to one store.

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[iampiti]

While I use more than one store (Mainly Steam and GOG) I'd really like to have everything on one place and not having to bother with several launchers and shops.
I don't care about multiplayer and neither about playing games the moment they're released and thus I won't really suffer much if Epic manage to keep some games exclusive to their shop. Anyway, I don't like what they're doing and so I refuse to use their plaform out of principle.

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[DRJlaw]

While I use more than one store (Mainly Steam and GOG) I'd really like to have everything on one place and not having to bother with several launchers and shops.
I don't care about multiplayer and neither about playing games the moment they're released and thus I won't really suffer much if Epic manage to keep some games exclusive to their shop. Anyway, I don't like what they're doing and so I refuse to use their plaform out of principle.

You can add non-Steam games to the Steam installed-games list and launc

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[locopuyo]

There are some people like you, but more people actually game on PC without using Steam than through Steam. The most popular PC games are not even on Steam. Fortnite and League of Legends have more active players than every Steam game combined. There are tons of hugely popular games that aren't on Steam. Every Blizzard game, Destiny 2, the new Call of Duty, all of the new EA games and many others. Then you have the mid sized games that have their own launchers, or start out on their own launchers and r

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[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

I'm fine without crap like LoL and Fortnite. I have Destiny 2 for free on one of my consoles, never bothered with it. Also fine without Call of Duty.

I'm seeing a lot of "competitive multiplayer" titles there, in which I have zero interest.

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[Opportunist]

I'm one of those some people like him.

What do I miss? Fortnite? Good. Destiny 2? Whatever it may be. Call of Duty? I have Arma, thank you very much. League of Legends? Lol.

And so on. Funny enough, none of the games you list are something I'd care about. Mostly because the people I play with don't either. We're old. Most of us are 30+, and quite a few 40+ years old. We do have a very different taste in games than the teenage crowd, it seems. Most games I own by now are from indie developers. And you won't fi

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[ShakaUVM]

Yep, that's my attitude as well. When Age of Empires 1 got re-released on the Windows store, I didn't buy it. Now that it's coming out for Steam, I will buy it. I don't think it's that uncommon a phenomenon, either. The sales on the Windows store have been terrible, which is probably why they decided to release on Steam - despite losing more money per sale, they will get far more sales.

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[Can'tNot]

Bonus if they're buying it from their own store ... but that's just bonus

No it's not, Microsoft has gone to extreme lengths to build its own walled garden outside of the Xbox. This is an acknowledgement that they have failed.

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[thereddaikon]

I think Microsoft realized some time ago that what software or platform you use isn't nearly as important as making sure people buy it from them. That's why Azure doesn't just host Windows Server, thats why WSL exists and that's why Xbox is becoming less of a platform and more of a games publisher. They have realized what people like Epic haven't. Consumers have made their choice in how they want to use their software. Console gamers and PC gamers are different groups and it doesn't matter how great the nex

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[Kaenneth]

Even just a few years ago, Microsoft was still rabidly anti-competitive.

They had fully developed Office for iPad within a year of the iPad's release, but kept it under wraps to sell more Windows/Surface units.

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[SYSS Mouse]

If you consider Xbox Live as DRM.

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[Kaenneth]

I have some game on Steam that depend on obsolete versions of "Games for Windows Live"

And different games depend on different versions! so In order to play them I have to uninstall version 3, install version 2, etc.

It's horrible.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[dstyle5]

Unless it has improved dramatically, the Windows 10 store is pants. It took me 5 or 6 tries to get Gears of 4 war to install around launch. It would download 70GB of the game, then delete it all and restart again. Or it would stall out during install and I would manually have to restart it.

The Xbox team is supposed to be taking over the store, probably so they can make large game installations actually work. Hopefully they can fix it, but AFAIK it is still hot garbage. I haven't tried installing any games

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[Calydor]

You complain about games looking exactly identical, yet point to Majora's Mask, which literally recycled so many assets from Ocarina of Time, as this shining beacon on the very pinnacle of gaming history.

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[_merlin]

Link to the Past is too linear. Link's Awakening (yes, another Zelda game without Zelda) is a better game. It has the best romance subplot of a Zelda game, and a really dark ending. Wind Waker is awesome, too. The remake for Wii U fixes the annoyances of the GameCube version, and adds "Hero Mode" that provides some actual challenge. Breath of the Wild is great, too.

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[rogoshen1]

Homework assignment: Play Witcher 3 and report back to us.

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[lgw]

If you want something new in video games, try PC games not made by major developers. AAA games are the "reality TV" of gaming, and console games in general are very same-y. I was quite amused when the God of War reboot was heralded as a AAA game that wasn't just the same as everything else - which was true, the gameplay was very standard oldschool gameplay, with modern graphic. Well done?

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[Opportunist]

Video games went to indie developers.

AAA-Studios can't risk anything with millions riding on every project. Games went down the same road movies did. All you see today in movies are reboots, rehashes and remakes. Because they want to play it safe (ignoring that this is anything but it, but this is not about movies).

Games are the same. Studios rely on franchises that used a formula that worked in the past, fiddle a bit with some gimmicks and repackage the same game with (sometimes) new graphics. EA took that

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[bn-7bc]

Evry game looks the same — right — let me disagree with you on that one, well iI guess it depends, as with everything else but let met me take 2 games thst are at least somewhat realed, ETS2 and MudRunner buth simulate to a degree truck driving but the look sn play rather differently. Shat kind of games are you mostly plaing?

Selling Arguement

[Gunthaar]

I've been gaming for as far as I remember (born 79, got my first console in 83)... My choices of consoles has always been based on exclusive titles... And the flaw of XBox is that none of the great exclusive titles remain exclusive for long. Most of them have been ported to PC at one time or another... I got the XBox one for Killer Instinct (played on Arcade, SNES and N64... alot) so the draw to this title was enough for me to spend money for the game, console and 2 joysticks (the XB1 d-pads are horrible

Steam on Xbox?

[unixisc]

So can Steam games, like Civ VI, be played on Xbox?

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[Opportunist]

May I be present when someone tries to port games like Arma to a console? I could need a good laugh.

Seriously, there are games that are good on console controllers and there are games that are good on mouse/keyboard setups. Don't mix them. RTS and FPS on a console is always an embarrassing nightmare.

If I'm reading this correctly

[mwn3d]

Fable 2: PC confirmed. Got it. No need to fact check that.

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[drinkypoo]

If there's a buck in it, then it will happen. I, for one, will pay little more than a buck to play Fable 2 again. I am however excited that this Halo compendium is coming to the PC, which I hadn't noticed earlier. Halo was a nice romp, and I always wanted to play it with my Trackman, and without auto-aim. I did play the original Halo on PC, and I had a good time with it. I sold my 360 a while back...