On the proverbial, "list of things that are bad," having developers and designers at some of the world's more popular and successful gaming companies trash your up-and-coming product is probably up there toward the top.
At least, that's how Microsoft probably felt a few days ago, when Valve co-founder and managing director Gabe Newell went on record to express his opinion about Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 operating system.
"We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It's a hedging strategy," Newell said, speaking at a video game conference in Seattle.
"I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we'll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that's true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality."
But when it rains for Microsoft's Windows 8, it pours for Microsoft's Windows 8.
Spurred on by Newell's statements, Blizzard's executive vice president of game design, Rob Pardo, went on Twitter to confirm that Windows 8 isn't presenting much of a wonderful experience for his company.
"Nice interview with Gabe Newell ? 'I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space' - not awesome for Blizzard either," Pardo wrote.
Just to put each of these comments into perspective, Valve's Steam digital distribution platform remains the service to beat on the PC gaming platform.
"Right now Steam is far and away the dominant distribution channel; no one else is even close," said DFC Intelligence's David Cole in an interview with VG 24/7 last year.
And Blizzard, of course, maintains a healthy subscriber base to its big massively multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft, which numbers close to around ten million players (the last time Blizzard released numbers, that is). Additionally, the company's responsible for the much-anticipated Diablo III title that just hit shelves this year ? which sold more than 3.5 million copies in its first 24 hours of life.
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For more tech tidbits from David Murphy, follow him on Facebook or Twitter (@thedavidmurphy).
Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407782,00.asp?kc=PCRSS05079TX1K0000993
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