Vista 32 and The Witcher

[Vikendios]

The Witcher is currently one of the most avant garde and fabulous games. Vista is supposed to be the ultimate OS. And yet the two won't meet, leading to incessant crashes on saving, the most irritating of all times, since it means endless re-runs.

How can Microsoft allow this to happen in such a showcase environment ?

I'm an old gamer with the ultimate rig and every possible update, and I am disapointed.

 

[Mem]

The Witcher has problems with Vista period,its not Vista's fault but the developers of the game,I had to run it in Windows mode to get it to run stable,now when you have 43 games that run fine in Vista and only one(The Witcher ) that crashes it tells you a lot about where the blame lies.

The Witcher and Vista crashing thread (you are not alone).

FYI I have been playing Avencast and Painkiller-Overdose(my latest two new games and they don't crash in Vista x64,so why can't Atari get it right with The Witcher).

Btw The Witcher is a very good RPG ,I finished the game in Vista and really enjoyed the game ,regardless of the issues I had.

 

[Vikendios]

I am not looking at this from a technical point of view, but from a marketing one.

I of course know all about the work done to try and overcome the problems (reported in various forums that can be navigated to from the Witcher's official site).

My take is that I am not blaming a small brillant team of polish youngsters with obviously limited resources. I am blaming Microsoft from not sending asap a high powered team to Warsaw to get the problem fixed because of the huge backlash effect this has on influential power users.

In fact, instead of competing with games developers with dubious properties of their own (nothing interesting IMHO since Age of Empire), MS should subsidize inventive studios coming up with landmark games to make sure they come out reasonably free of Vista-related bugs, particularly on the most state of the art hardware configurations. (I run The Witcher, and Crysis, Oblivion, etc... at full resolution on the Dell 30 monitor.)

Intel and Nvidia make it possible with their latest hardware and drivers to run stunning pictures at 2680 x 1600 with high frame rates. There is no reason Vista 32 (I am told the problem does not obtain with XP and Vista 64) makes these efforts crash on most saves.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: Vikendios
I am not looking at this from a technical point of view, but from a marketing one.

I of course know all about the work done to try and overcome the problems (reported in various forums that can be navigated to from the Witcher's official site).

My take is that I am not blaming a small brillant team of polish youngsters with obviously limited resources. I am blaming Microsoft from not sending asap a high powered team to Warsaw to get the problem fixed because of the huge backlash effect this has on influential power users.

In fact, instead of competing with games developers with dubious properties of their own (nothing interesting IMHO since Age of Empire), MS should subsidize inventive studios coming up with landmark games to make sure they come out reasonably free of Vista-related bugs, particularly on the most state of the art hardware configurations. (I run The Witcher, and Crysis, Oblivion, etc... at full resolution on the Dell 30 monitor.)

Intel and Nvidia make it possible with their latest hardware and drivers to run stunning pictures at 2680 x 1600 with high frame rates. There is no reason Vista 32 (I am told the problem does not obtain with XP and Vista 64) makes these efforts crash on most saves.

I never had any save crashing issues,I had the open inventory,trade icon random crashing bug,running in windowed fixed the problem for me,you can't really expect Microsoft to send a team to fix problems the developers are having with their game,end of the day Microsoft responsibility is to their OS and not other companies that are making PC games with a free open license.

As I have already stated if other game companies both large and small can make working games for Vista why can''t Atari and their developers for The Witcher?

 

[Vikendios]

Mem, do not misunderstand me : I probably did not express my thoughts well. I am a fan of Microsoft and of Vista. As a retired marketing guy, I believe it is in Vista's self-interest that MS help landmark games makers. And I am sure they in fact do, as Nvidia and others do : witness the thanks you often see in the credits. The Witcher bears the "Games for Windows" inprint, and therefore reflects on MS : you can bet there are some legal and technical conditions attached.

I am a realist : I want my game to work fine, and I trust that exposing the issue on such an excellent site as Anandtech will hasten all parties to come up with the obviously necessary patch...

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: Vikendios
Mem, do not misunderstand me : I probably did not express my thoughts well. I am a fan of Microsoft and of Vista. As a retired marketing guy, I believe it is in Vista's self-interest that MS help landmark games makers. And I am sure they in fact do, as Nvidia and others do : witness the thanks you often see in the credits. The Witcher bears the "Games for Windows" inprint, and therefore reflects on MS : you can bet there are some legal and technical conditions attached.

I am a realist : I want my game to work fine, and I trust that exposing the issue on such an excellent site as Anandtech will hasten all parties to come up with the obviously necessary patch...

I believe Microsoft do have some technical support for game developers,its only a phone call away 😉 .