Microsoft Woos Wary Game Developers Software Giant Goes All Out To Urge Firms To Make Games For Windows 95
What will persuade home computer users to shell out roughly $100 for Microsoft Corp.’s much anticipated and much delayed Windows 95 operating system?
Microsoft is betting one of the big lures for Windows 95, due in late August, could be really cool computer games with sharper graphics, faster action and more realistic three-dimensional special effects.
To get these eye-popping attractions, Microsoft must first sell the virtues of Windows 95 to the artists, writers, musicians and engineers who create computer games, one of the software industry’s fastestgrowing categories. That’s why Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., spared no expense at last week’s Computer Game Developers Conference in Santa Clara.
On Monday, Microsoft announced the first public release of its Windows 95 Game Software Developers Kit, or SDK, a set of software tools for creating games.
Tuesday night, the last day of the conference, the company reserved the Great America theme park from 6 p.m. to midnight for a barbecue and unlimited free rides. The event was not open to the public.
And on Wednesday, between 800 and 1,000 of the conference’s 2,300 attendees stayed around for a daylong Microsoft seminar providing details on the new SDK.
“We’ve made it as easy as possible (for developers) to switch over from DOS,” said David Britton, a Microsoft marketing manager, on Monday. “I’m not predicting the end of the DOS market for games these things don’t happen overnight … But we’re expecting a lot of support for holiday ‘95 and going into ‘96.”
In typical Microsoft fashion, the company orchestrated a blizzard of news releases from hardware and software companies promising to support Windows 95 gaming. Silicon Valley companies taking the pledge include Accolade Inc., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Cirrus Logic, Creative Labs Inc., S3 Inc. and Yamaha Systems Technology.
Game developers are the only significant part of the PC software industry that didn’t join the original stampede toward Windows in 1992 and 1993. Windows was designed to display static images such as wordprocessing documents and spreadsheet files, and it does a poor job with the fastpaced animation essential for everything from singing cartoon characters in children’s games to ear-shattering interplanetary battles in spaceship simulators.
DOS games will run under Windows 95, but Microsoft says games designed specifically for Windows 95 will have fewer installation problems and - thanks to the SDK tools will be easier to put together.
Most game developers, however, appear to be approaching Windows 95 cautiously, especially since they haven’t yet worked with the new software tools.
Fred Ford, a senior software engineer for Crystal Dynamics Inc., a game developer in Palo Alto, Calif., said the ability of Windows 95 to process 3-D images means “Windows won’t be in the way anymore, so more and more games will be done for Windows in the future.”
But Ted Gruber, president of a Las Vegas company that provides software tools to game developers, said many of his customers are waiting to see what Windows 95 looks like when it finally ships and how quickly consumers make the switch.
“The general consensus among developers is they are skeptical about writing for Windows 95 because its (introduction date and precise features) are so vague,” he said.