Tim Sweeney is at it again, this time calling out Microsoft on Twitter for its rumored upcoming Windows 10 Cloud SKU. The new OS will be similar to Windows RT, in that it will run UWP that are installed from the Store. Of course, these are still early reports, as it"s not entirely clear that Microsoft won"t allow users to sideload apps as well.
This certainly isn"t the first time that Sweeney has taken a swing at Microsoft, or even the second. Back in March, he called UWP a "walled garden", saying that UWP apps can only be installed from the Windows Store. He made similar statements in July, both times with Microsoft responding by saying that UWP is a completely open platform, and users can install these apps from anywhere that they want, as sideloading has been turned on by default in Windows 10 since November 2015.
Sweeney has also expressed concern with the idea that Microsoft might eventually kill off Win32 apps if the company can convince everyone to use UWP. Once that happens, he says it"s "small leap to forcing all apps and games to be distributed through the Windows store." Of course, something like that would be a very long way off, so that statement is nothing more than speculation.
His other bit of speculation in July was that Microsoft would update Windows over the next five years to break Steam. By his prediction, it will never be completely broken, but it will become so bad that customers will turn to the Windows Store.
Sweeney"s tweets today are not quite as conspiratorial as his earlier remarks, although they certainly are hyperbolic. It"s simply way too early to pass judgment on an operating system that Microsoft hasn"t announced yet, and we simply don"t know all the facts about it either.
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