Microsoft Lets You Gift Digital PC Games Now

DooKey

DooKey

[H]F Junkie
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Microsoft has finally caught up to the likes of Steam and Origin in the PC game gifting arena. You can now go to the Microsoft Store and gift any PC or Xbox One game. However, there are some limits on sale games and you can't gift a pre-order or free game. Also, games can only be redeemed in the region purchased. Anyway, these are reasonable limits and its a good thing that Microsoft is finally getting their heads on right about PC gaming. We'll just have to wait and see how this translates into new PC game development by Microsoft. Thanks cagey.

It’s heartening to see Microsoft add the ability to gift PC games, but it’s befuddling that it’s taken so long to get here. Steam started letting users trade games and in-game items all the way back in 2011, and Origin added the ability in 2016. (Sadly, Uplay still lacks it.)
 
for games, its 99% steam, and 1% GOG.com for me

i will not buy a game from any of the other "stores"


MS store?? LOL no.
 
MTDEW said:
And they need a way to backup/verify game files like steam so you don't have to re-download the entire game! :mad:
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Yikes, like I needed another reason to not use their store. Verify has saved me several times most recently with the latest KSP update. Wouldn't load, verify fixed it without having to download more than a few small files (i.e. the .exe).
 
ThatsAgood1jay said:
Why?
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why?


ease of use. one stop shopping. Also dont care to make accounts for every publisher. I just want to buy the product.. i dont want a "personal" relationship with them.

pretty much the same reasons why amazon.com is my GO TO place for shopping as well.
 
They have been doing it on the Xbox for a while, it is about time the caught up on PC side.
 
One small problem, who are you going to gift it to when you're the only one using the ms store?
 
Krenum said:
I've been wishing for years that the Microsoft store would implode. It doesn't seem to be working. :(
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Then let it implode. There's nothing unique or proprietary there that couldn't be replicated by 3rd parties. I don't really give a shit about the Microsoft Store, but I'd better damned well have a Netflix app that supports 4k and 5.1.
 
[21CW]killerofall said:
I guess you don't remember the Battlefield series before BF3. Battlefield mods were the bomb, until EA (in their infinite wisdom) killed them. Fuck you EA, fuck you.
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Just saying that mods for MP games these days, not the fond memories you're recounting.
 
Krenum said:
I've been wishing for years that the Microsoft store would implode. It doesn't seem to be working. :(
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Nothing to implode when it barely exists. And what does exist is being self sabotaged by MS.

Nadella's already moved on from consumers and Windows. What exists now is just echoes and momentum. But it's a big ship so it takes a long time for the slowdown to be undeniable - like how it was obvious to anyone kool-aid free that windows mobile was dead two years before MS finally stopped pretending.
 
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odditory said:
Nothing to implode when it barely exists.
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Define barely. If one is using Windows 10 there's probably a reason to grab something from the Microsoft Store. Not that the Microsoft Store is great, hell I'll admit it's bad, but there are folks here who are arguing against a Netflix app, the only way to get 4k and 5.1 sound on a PC? Just so much nonsense around this.
 
heatlesssun said:
Which is fine for single player games, not so much for multiplayer.
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I don't know, I seem to remember the Quake Series, Unreal Tournament series, Counter Strike series, Team Fortress series, Starcraft & Warcraft RTS series, Minecraft, and a bunch of other foundational multiplayer games of PC gaming making heavy use of modding. This isn't rocket science. If you want to cut down on cheating, you run vanilla servers that don't allow for modding and have more stringent anticheat checks. You can ALSO allow private servers where modding is allowed to foster long term growth of the game instead of flavor of the month cash grabs that will be deserted in a year.
 
ThatsAgood1jay said:
Why?
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For me, because Microsoft has an awful track-record with its distribution services (GFWL) and because UWP is something to be avoided, IMO, for multiple reasons including that it limits trouble-shooting avenues and tweaks / modding.

Microsoft just shut down GFWL when MS decided it wasn't something MS wanted to do anymore - no warning and no recourse for GFWL customers. Microsoft brought the GFWL servers back a while ago, enabling people to access their GFWL products again, to try to curry some potential customer goodwill ahead of the launch of the Microsoft Store, but that's just MS being manipulative and doing it because it became MS' interest to once again have a digital storefront. Once Microsoft again gets bored of hosting old games, they'll probably just shut things down again.

Also, Microsoft has a lengthy history of lying, disregarding customers, and of acting non-predictably. I wouldn't trust them with my money, my games, or my data in general.
 
Delicieuxz said:
For me, because Microsoft has an awful track-record with its distribution services (GFWL) and because UWP is something to be avoided, IMO, for multiple reasons including that it limits trouble-shooting avenues and tweaks / modding.

Microsoft just shut down GFWL when MS decided it wasn't something MS wanted to do anymore - no warning and no recourse for GFWL customers. Microsoft brought the GFWL servers back a while ago, enabling people to access their GFWL products again, to try to curry some potential customer goodwill ahead of the launch of the Microsoft Store, but that's just MS being manipulative and doing it because it became MS' interest to once again have a digital storefront. Once Microsoft again gets bored of hosting old games, they'll probably just shut things down again.

Also, Microsoft has a lengthy history of lying, disregarding customers, and of acting non-predictably. I wouldn't trust them with my money, my games, or my data in general.
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Everything you said + don't forget how they basically dumped PC gamers by the curb for maybe 15 years after the original Xbox came out. Even before GFWL, they went from publishing a lot of decent PC games to dropping almost all support and making Xbox exclusives instead. In the case of Alan Wake, the developer wanted to bring it to PC, but MS paid them to keep it off PC for 2 years after launch. I currently like how they have PC parity on their Xbox games now, but they have another decade or so before they regain any trust at all. Windows 10's invasiveness isn't helping.
 
Delicieuxz said:
For me, because Microsoft has an awful track-record with its distribution services (GFWL) and because UWP is something to be avoided, IMO, for multiple reasons including that it limits trouble-shooting avenues and tweaks / modding.
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You do realize that UWP is just a set of APIs and really has nothing to do with the Store? Anyone can write and distribute a UWP app. And UWP UI controls are going to be available to Win32 apps in the next Windows feature update release. And with the upcoming MSIX installer process, a developer will be able to take an MSIX package and deliver that one package as a stand along installer, if the code is just legacy Win32/.NET/WPF that same installer will work on Windows 7 and can be deployed to the Microsoft Store, Steam, whatever store.

Microsoft's path on this has taken turns with it starting out in Windows 8 and the messaging has been bad, but where this is headed now is actually pretty good.
 
tetris42 said:
Everything you said + don't forget how they basically dumped PC gamers by the curb for maybe 15 years after the original Xbox came out. Even before GFWL, they went from publishing a lot of decent PC games to dropping almost all support and making Xbox exclusives instead. In the case of Alan Wake, the developer wanted to bring it to PC, but MS paid them to keep it off PC for 2 years after launch. I currently like how they have PC parity on their Xbox games now, but they have another decade or so before they regain any trust at all. Windows 10's invasiveness isn't helping.
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That's another reason. Year after year, Microsoft pledged to make PC gaming a priority, yet MS' idea of making PC gaming a priority was only ever to screw around with PC gamers while trying to serve squarely itself. This is a behavioural mannerism that hasn't changed with Microsoft in recent years: MS simply throws words around detached from all their true meaning because MS thinks they sound good to whoever they're saying them to. Microsoft is like the guy in Idiocracy who says he can get the protagonist to a time machine in exchange for some money, when there really is no time machine. The protagonist asks that guy at the end 'but if there wasn't any time machine, you couldn't have gotten any money - so why did you say you would do it?'. The guy responds, "because I like money". That appears to me to have been Microsoft's own reasoning for lot of the things it has said over the years, including regarding PC gaming, and regarding Windows 10 benefits that aren't really Windows 10 benefits.


Another example of Microsoft's bad conduct towards PC gaming is that they shuttered Ensemble Studios, Lionhead, FASA, and some other high-class PC developers. Just out of the blue.

heatlesssun said:
You do realize that UWP is just a set of APIs and really has nothing to do with the Store? Anyone can write and distribute a UWP app.
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OK, but games from Microsoft Store seem to be UWP as a rule, whereas from Steam, Origin, Uplay, they seem to be Win32 as a rule. So, if I want to avoid UWP games, I'm going to avoid where they're sold from, such as Microsoft Store.

Other services and developers / publishers don't have reason to make UWP games, since it restricts game-sales to Windows 10 customers. Microsoft, who wants to get as many people plugged into Microsoft's data-harvesting farm, has an interest in getting people to use UWP, as people have to be using Windows 10 in order to run an UWP program. In my view, the whole purpose for MS to create UWP has been to create and artificial requirement for people to 1) use Windows 10, and 2) the MS store (where UWP originated).
 
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They need feature parity to even stand a chance. As someone else mentioned, backing up files so they don't have to be completely re-downloaded is a big deal (especially with ISPs and their 1TB/mo caps and just the fact of how long it takes). At this point, they need a better system in every way than Steam to have a chance of being significant. They also need to go hard on removing garbage apps that pollute the store. The few times I've looked in there I saw a lot of questionable apps.
 
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