Vista is crap for gaming, bloke reckons

MICROSOFT'S excessive security features could kill off its use for the PC gaming market, according to one game distributor.

Alex St. John who runs an outfit called WildTangent, publishes online games from the likes of Atari, Nickelodeon,PlayFirst, iWin, and Popcap.

Writing for GamaSutra, St John found many of the security changes planned for Vista alarming and likely to present sweeping challenges for PC gaming.

Online distributed games would be particularly hit because of Vista's use of Limited User Accounts. Although LUA's are used in Windows XP, no one uses them because of the onerous restrictions they place on usability. However Vista has made them compulsory, he said.

St. John said that it is like having to enter a username and password per song you wanted to try in Apple iTunes.

He also does not like Vista's "obstructive security" used in the new Vista Game Explorer which he thinks is a heavy handed implementation of parental controls.

He said Vista Game Explorer defines games using the ESRB rating service, which designed for multimillion dollar boxed titles and is too expensive for most small casual game developers. Vista's parental control system also cannot deal with web games which it will not protect users from anyway. µ