From: philipla@microsoft.com (Phil Lafornara)
Subject: Re: Video games and NT
Date: 03 Oct 92 01:13:13 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

In article <1992Oct1.121944.5568@gw.wmich.edu> 925wardell@gw.wmich.edu writes:
>
>	I said this a bit in another post but video games are important
>to an OS.
>	Why?
>
>	Because the future of computers is going to be in the home world.
>Only within the past couple of years have computers gone down into the
>price range of running at home.  A year ago, about 40% of our customers
>were home usrs and 60% businesses/universities.  Now that amount has
>jumped to 70% being home users.  386 power can come to the user under
>$1000 now.  

      Who is the 'we' in your statement above?  I was under the
impression that the largest software market was still business.


>	But most home users spend a good deal of time playing video
>games.  One only has to look at any computer store to note that the
>video game business is booming.  But allthose video games run under
>DOS and that will continue to be the case.

      It is far from clear that DOS will continue to be the platform
of choice for computer games.  Would you elborate on your reasons
for this statement?


>	The heir to DOS is going to have to be the OS that home users
>run.

      This is also far from clear - it is quite possible that DOS
will continue to dominate the home market for years to come - it
works very well when dealing with lowest-common-denominator.  One
key difference between home and business computer use is that home
users don't upgrade their hardware as frequently.


>	That brings us to Windows NT.  It is pretty clear from what
>people have said, my own experiences, and MS's announcements that NT
>will scarcely run DOS video games.

      This is unclear.  Windows NT will not allow applications to
directly access the hardware - this does not necessarily preclude
running DOS games.


>	Who cares right?  The home user does and if you, like I, think
>that the next mainstream OS is going to be the one that runs all of
>people's existing software well, including video games.

      I think you may be overestimating the importance of the home
market, and the importance of video games in that market.  It is
true that games are what brought the computer into the home, originally.
At this time, though, people are beginning to use them for other
more productive things.


>	The Amiga ran video games but didn't have much else and it
>is obscure for that reason (and other technical reasons).  OS/2 on
>the other hand runs DOS and Windows apps.  Moreover, most OS/2 users
>can still run Wing Commander 2 on their machines and judging from
>the OS/2 conferences, a LOOOOT of OS/2 users run video games.  How
>manytimes have you heard someone asking how to play Falcon 3 or
>Wolfenstein 3d?  

      This is also poor evidence.  The majority of the people on
the net are college students.  College students are not average
users.


>	Video games will continue to be written under DOS (the good
>ones).

      Why?

				-Phil


-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Lafornara         				1 Microsoft Way         
philipla@microsoft.com				Redmond, WA 98052-6399 
Note:  Microsoft doesn't even _know_ that these are my opinions. So there.
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy