Tim Sweeney’s claims about Microsoft’s plans for the Windows Store and Windows 10 generated quite some controversy earlier this year. His accusations ranged from planning to make other games impossible to develop for PC and shutting down Steam. Brad Wardell, who experimented with his own distribution mini-platform in Stardock’s Impulse, disagrees.
We spoke to Brad Wardell about many other topics in our recent interview.
“I have no idea why he would say that,” says Wardell of Sweeney’s latest claim that Windows 10 will become a closed platform. “There’s no way that could happen. There’s not even the tools built in to do it. If Microsoft could even make the store a viable alternative to Steam that would be really impressive, but they would need to have some pretty amazing games, and it would probably be good if there were other alternatives.”
That is a direction the store is currently heading in. Tomb Raider and Gears of War 4 jump out as recent examples of great games that were exclusive to the store, at least to begin with. Others are pushing that way too.
“There’s GOG, of course, but GOG has… our games are on GOG and we like GOG a lot so we want to support… and I think even Gabe Newell ironically would be the first to agree that there should be competition to keep everyone on their toes. I would be happy to just see Microsoft make Windows a viable option.”
That seems to be a ways off, however. Other than Microsoft-sponsored titles, very little ends up on the Windows store over Steam. Even those that do have exclusivity deals in that direction have moved over, like Rise of the Tomb Raider, which has since sold nearly a million copies on Steam, according to SteamSpy. We’re still some time off anyone providing real competition outside of self-contained services like Battle.net and Origin.