Yay
Another storefront for PC
We really needed that
Steam,Origin,Gog Galaxy,Uplay,Bethesda Launcher,Windows store were not enough
I mean, let's think about this for a moment:
*Steam has everything Square Enix, be it Deus Ex, Nier: Automata, Final Fantasy, etc..
*It has everything Platinum Games...I think. I'm assuming they're still porting whatever they can.
*Every major fighting game franchise is still primarily on Steam.
*Every successful indie game is on Steam...though I would personally advise waiting for a Switch release since they're all the usual 16/32-bit nostalgiafests.
*Steam still has a lot of Bandai-Namco games.
*Steam is still where Capcom sells everything, and outside of Monster Hunter World's PC port and their fighting games, they've been on a sort of redemption arc as of late.
*Warner Bros. is still on Steam.
*Steam is pushing for you being able to play games on Linux in a way that Linux has needed for a LONG time.
Now, it's been a while since I used UPlay, as the only games that I have that use it are Far Cry 3 and that 80's nostalgiafest known as Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon and Assassin's Creed 2. Didn't they remove the UPlay requirement for some of, if not all of their games a few years back?
Origin is...Origin with all of the controversies that come with it.
GOG Galaxy really isn't necessary last I checked, and I'd prefer it stay that way given their mission statement (though, seeing as it's a corporation that needs money, I wouldn't put it past them to become all about greed at some point)
Bethesda is a dead horse that should've been beaten up and left for dead even back in the Morrowind days. Even then, those games had gamebreaking glitches and problems that, if people were aware of them, Bethesda would have to change their game-making strategy at some point. Too bad Doom Eternal and anything else id makes could be tied to this service in the future!
Windows Store is the reason for the final bullet point above. Microsoft essentially made a gaming PC with the Xbox One X, and they have said in news stories that, for all intents and purposes, they're wanting to move on from Windows. While I can't say Microsoft has locked everything down to where you can't install shit that's not from the Store, with how they are these days, I can safely say that, if the majority of my Steam library were to be compatible with Ubuntu via Steam Play's Proton once I get my desktop back up and running soon, I would jump over in a heart beat. Any college work or whatever that requires Windows would be what my laptop is for, as outside of 2D games, it's not good for anything requiring dedicated real-time 3D rendering for anything past 2010, most likely, and that's not even taking into account the processor's speed or lack thereof!
What I don't understand is people acting like, "hurr durr, Steam is just a bunch of Pewdiepie/Markiplier shovelware games, there's no AAA games here, what is this Steam Curator shit? I just want to play games on my $3000 Alienware PC with suboptimal performance compared to even some pre-builts because PC gaming is just like console gaming with graphic/framerate sliders, right?"
The thing is, I understand why this is happening, and it's not necessarily just a video game thing, either. Netflix used to be the top dog back in the day, but now, everyone seems to hate it, as Netflix can't seem to take all of their money and invest it into more servers to store the movies digitally that people want to watch. Nowadays, it's either Amazon Prime, Hulu, or some other service that people seem to be moving towards, if not just using Redbox. There's people looking to get their slice of the pizza that is the service market for either streaming movies, TV shows, anime, etc. and for those that want to make more money for the games they port to PC for games that could be cheaper to produce and market if they didn't just throw money at the wall and see what sticks, especially in terms of advertising. This mentality is why, IMO, this generation has been so...been there, done that compared to previous generations, mixed in with the fact that, IMO, the most impressive leap graphically has been from PS2 to PS3. That's not to say that the PS3-PS4 generation hasn't been impressive, and if anything, the PS4-PS5 generation could be looking really good if the rumors about some games (TLOU2, Death Stranding, Mortal Kombat XI, and others) turn out to be true.
But the fact of the matter is, when the only thing that's really getting better is controllers (the only thing I want at this point is essentially a PS controller with six face buttons as opposed to just four that isn't sacrificing anything like third party controllers) and graphics, I really have to ask: outside of some impressive gameplay improvements, why should I go and buy a whole new console to play Batman Arkham Knight when the majority of the games on the PS4 are either crossplatform, lazy 720p/30fps to 1080p/maybe 60fps ports of games, some of which are actually games originally released on PS2 (KH collection, though I guess you can't complain about not being able to keep up with whatever goes on in this series I missed out on growing up since I didn't have a PS2 until the PS3 came out and every handheld under the sun, Devil May Cry HD Collection, another Resident Evil 4 port), for crying out loud! When companies are getting that desperate and don't have that much in terms of games that are actually brand new for an entire console generation, I have to wonder why I should get a PS5 or a WindowsBox?
At the very least with Nintendo and the Switch, I can take it wherever I want and play games from the 7th generation that companies care to port over no problem, and it's much more convenient this way! If Ubisoft wanted to port over the 7th generation Assassin's Creed games, I might actually be more willing to play those since I can be out and about and play them while on the go, and actually stand a chance of beating them without having to sacrifice an entire month due to how big and long they tend to be. The Yakuza (though I'd love to play every game of the franchise, everything from the 7th gen is probably the best we're gonna get) games on the Switch? Sign me up, those would actually be good timesinks while I'm out and about!
Those of us with adult responsibilities and obligations just don't have time to sit in front of a TV, download a game, wait an eternity for it to install, download the GBs worth of updates, and then finally jump into the game, only to discover it's the same or very similar to what's come before it, try to put hours into it, have other things to attend to, ask yourself whether it's worth it to keep the systems that you don't play around, and the cycle continues until you eventually just do away with everything or just be happy and satisfied with what you got. Yes, the Switch is guilty of some of those things, but if it were a seventh generation console, it'd be the best in the interface regard, IMO. Adding having to look up whatever my password is for these gaming services to log-in really makes me not want to bother playing those games when there's plenty of other games to play that I never got the chance to play growing up for whatever reason.