It's added yet another Launcher to the PC, but at least it shares most of its tech with the Windows Store, rather than duplicating updates/patching/etc.)

(The best hope right now might be Xbox Game Pass for PC proving the tech to maybe some publisher that's half-paying attention. None of the other publishers seems smart enough to use good tech for their launchers, and probably none of them have much reason to listen to Microsoft either. Valve and Epic both bitterly hate the Microsoft Store and seem increasingly hostile to sharing tech with it, despite MSIX being rather better than previous alternatives and Microsoft trying to encourage some sharing of such base level services. The raw platforms are there from Microsoft, just yes you'd never see most publishers actually use them. Things like Cloud Saves (and Gamer Profiles and Achievements), Microsoft also has available in the Xbox services, which aren't entirely free for just anyone to use. (If a publisher is already supporting the Microsoft Store as a purchase option today, they could also be using MSIX to install their app nearly everywhere else.) There's even an open source MSIX support kit for installing/updating MSIX installs on Windows 7-8.1 too, for those not ready to jump solely to Windows 10 yet. The MSIX standard that the Windows Store is built around has full, free sideloading support on Windows 10, including updating/patching whether or not you buy it from the Store or sideload a package. Microsoft's options for user authentication, downloading, patching, and launching already exist and are basically free for anyone to use. It's unfortunate, especially in the case of Shenmue III, but one game isn't enough for me to bother with a launcher. Each new game that requires another launcher is another game I won't play. Not that it'd probably play well on my Surface Studio, it's not exactly a beast.īut damn, I only have so much space and patience. GTA V was one of my favorite games when it finally hit PC, but I won't bother installing it to my new PC. Surprisingly, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. Though, it does seem to be at least friendly.

I still haven't and won't use GOG Galaxy. Thankfully Humble Bundle and GOG have been great. I haven't touched a single game that requires any kind of launcher outside of Steam itself. But as more and more stores pop up, I've been checking out. But at some point, you have to deal with them. I still don't like Steam as I don't like DRM schemes in any form. Mostly because college forced me to get a good laptop and Steam stopped sucking. I've been primarily a PC gamer since 2009. I've got a massive collection of games for every console from Atari to Xbox 360/ PS3.

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