The fixes are overdue, and nowhere near fully started, let alone complete. To make it worse, the culprit for the lag is Windows 10 Creators own update. The problem of lag, for those who don’t know, means that the play is slow. Frames Per Second (FPS) behave like a YouTube video that stutters and stops. If you’re in the middle of a game, that’s not exactly good news. So far, Microsoft have tried, and asked gamers to try out their new Creators fixes, but the statements are a long way short of “Fixed” overall.
It’s not good for Microsoft’s image in a gigantic and growing gaming industry, either. Gaming is huge audiences, big money, big merchandising, and any problems naturally affect its sales with the “forever gaming” crowd, i.e. about half the planet at any given moment.
One of the issues is the fact that gaming now uses what is basically a form of cinematography as its baseline imagery. That means FPS have to be about that good, and able to play well sequentially for games to be played.
If you’re thinking this means gigantic numbers of pixels being thrown around with every twitch of a gamer’s hands, you’re right. Lag is exactly what you don’t want when you’ve got a zillion things coming at you, shooting away furiously. If you get killed, you CAN blame Win 10, if you’re getting lag.
When does Microsoft get the basic message, “Just RUN!”?
Windows 10, however, is also the unlucky OS introduced in a hurry as a fix for the loathed Windows 8. Win 10 has taken its own sweet time getting out of the blocks. It’s been copping heaps of criticism as an operating system, let alone a high-end gaming system. People are still complaining about Win 10’s “phone home” service, with good reason. Everything from difficulties with Windows 10 Creators updates to 2 years’ worth of problems with gaming on Win 10 is easy to find online, and none of it looks good.
Let’s look at it from a consumer/gamer’s perspective:
1. Nobody gives a damn how wonderful the tech is, as long as whatever you’re running actually RUNS.
2. People pay good money for things which are supposed to work properly.
3. There’s no such thing as a forgiving gamer when play screws up, for whatever reason.
4. Video gaming is not exactly new. There shouldn’t BE any bugs in basic running.
5. It’s a reasonable expectation that gaming will improve in functionality over time, not trip over old news in terms of FPS.
The back story here is that even good reasons can’t be good enough for gamers or anyone using live streaming of anything. Microsoft lost a lot of goodwill with Win 8, and brand credibility is still staggering along. Accusations of being out of touch are endless.
There’s a reason for it, but it’s not much of a reason, let alone a good reason. The tech sector has a chronic bad habit of hyping products to literal death, and then dying again when the tech doesn’t live up to the hype. This situation is getting very old and stale, and less credible with every new game release.
Microsoft is also the natural target for every half-ass bit of new or semi-new tech around. Like Google and Apple, they’re the instant sell-to guys for just about anything. That includes expensive hardware and software costs which transfer direct to Microsoft customers, adding salt to the wounds.
When it comes to gaming tech, anything and everything is on the market, from VR to augmented reality and any other damn thing you can get on an app store. The inevitable results of this saturation level of basic crap on the market have been horrendous.
A better option for Microsoft with gaming software would be that they set the parameters, rather than try to fit things together according to whatever/any damn thing specs for running games.
Better still:
1. No compatibility issues for games, period. Should be able to run anything without mindlessly trying to match old (or new) software.
2. Over and above streaming capacity built in to cope with lag. (Like building foundations which can take more than the house load stresses. Games have finite loads, should be easy.)
3. Onboard FPS fix for gaming purposes. (Some systems use FPS defaults which must have been great 20 years ago; why do those defaults still exist now? This is another problem with building in limitations to OS which come back to bite later.)
4. Instant screen resolution adaption for games. Same issue as default FPS, some monitors are still using older, slower, speeds.
5. Industry-wide One Size Fits All streaming parameters so all stages of online play run on rails? Sorry, hardware guys, this is about gaming, and is therefore more important than technical realities.
6. Bring Steam onboard with any major system analysis and fixes. They’re the fulcrum for whatever anyone’s playing, might be able to contribute some useful ideas.
Nothing like ending a bitching session with some optimism. Beats crap out of the alternative, anyway.
