Earlier this week, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney had some rather harsh things to say about Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform. The harshest of all was when he said that the UWP, “can, should, must, and will die.” It appears that Sweeney believes that the UWP is something that is actually a kind of move against the entire PC gaming industry in particular. He also wants the company to open the platform up for all developers and it’s this comment that seemed to spur Microsoft’s Phil Spencer to action.
The Xbox One chief posted his response on Twitter saying, “Windows has always been an open ecosystem welcoming the contributions of hardware and software partners, and will always continue to be. UWP is a fully open ecosystem, available to every developer, and can be supported by any store. Broad range of tools. We will discuss our next steps with the Universal Windows Platform at //build later this month.”
When Spencer was asked specifically how he felt about the comments Sweeney made, he seemed to be looking to be reconciliatory. He started the response by saying that Tim Sweeney is a friend and “he pushes for what he believes. I agree UWP has to be open and that’s what we are doing.”
However, since then, Sweeney ‘s overall fears and concerns have seemingly been based off of incomplete information. Firstly, Sweeney admitted on a podcast with Polygon that there’s no proof that Microsoft has an evil plan of sorts with UWP. “Microsoft is a black box. I know a lot of people there who are really awesome, smart people who want to do the right thing, but then there are other people there who appear not to be because some of the bad decisions they’re making on Windows 10. There is not proof of an evil plan to do this, but just the fear.”
It was on Twitter where the responses started coming in. When told that Windows 10 has been able to side-load apps since November 2015, Sweeney said, “Yes, am using Windows 10. Will need a couple days to document the win32 vs UWP develop/deploy/install differences in openness.”
Which is kind of weird when you consider his fears about Win32 applications being left out to dry while also stating that he needed time to really analyze the differences between the openness Win32 and UWP.
Furthermore, Sweeney said that he and Microsoft had been speaking privately about UWP for 18 months prior to this…and yet he liked Xbox boss Phil Spencer’s response on the openness of UWP. “I like the sound of this, and look forward to thorough technical details on UWP’s planned openness at //build.”
Something doesn’t quite fit in the midst of all this. What are your thoughts on Sweeney’s views? Let us know in the comments.
Note: GamingBolt’s Oliver VanderVoot also contributed to this article.