What if they did it on purpose?

As usual, it was one of Tycho's thought-provoking posts that provoked some thoughts in me which I in turn felt compelled to commit to the public record.  This time, it was the following statement in particular:

"More than anything else, I think it was installing Vista that made me hate PC gaming. The constant, system-level interruptions, the impaired compatibility, and most of all the savage kick to my framerate's exposed groin made me wonder what precisely in the fucking fuck I was doing screwing around with this onyx monolith."

And in the very instant that I read that sentence, the following (potential) conspiracy revealed itself to me:

What if..  just what if..  Microsoft is using Vista to screw up PC gaming on purpose?

Doesn't everything just immediately make sense?  Why else would they make Vista such a resolute impediment to gaming on the PC?  Sure, the lifelong MS haters will smirk and offer up the traditional explanation that MS is quite simply incapable of doing anything right.  And of course that's a plausible argument.  MS has a long and distinguished track record that makes it not terribly difficult to casually dismiss the nature of Vista's existence as just another stillborn fetus bred from the union of incompetence and hubris.

But MS isn't entirely incompetent, and arguably least so when it comes to their over-arching business vector.  Does it not seem equally plausible that instead of accidentally screwing up their flagship OS offering, the biggest milepost in their strategic navigation, they purposefully screwed it up?

In the minds of MS and Sony, the winds of war have been building for years now, and they're not blowing in the direction of the PC at everyone's desk, but rather in the direction of whatever shiny box is going to live under everyone's TV.  That's no revelation, any industry pundit will consider that obvious to the point of being silly.  But in that context, can not an argument be made that MS is making a very calculated move by handicapping the PC as a viable gaming platform? Wouldn't doing so have the effect of funneling the gaming economy more fully into the console arena?  And isn't MS now fully confident in its position in that arena?  Isn't this all about timing?  Sony is vulnerable.  They were unprepared for the schedule that MS imposed on the industry when they cut short the life of the XBox and foisted a hurriedly assembled 360 on the scene.  I imagine that MS is convinced that every gamer that can be herded away from the PC and into a console will more than likely end up with a 360 rather than a PS3.  Right now.  It's a limited window of opportunity.  The thing everyone seems to forget when they rail at how 'bad' Sony is currently doing in the 'next-gen' fight is just how many frickin' PS2s there are out there.  Eventually the majority of those PS2 owners will run out of reasons to avoid buying a new platform and will get up off the couch and walk into Best Buy.  That's where the war will be won, and I think just maybe MS is treating Vista like an early recruiting drive.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Vista completely 'fixed' in terms of gaming, once this window of opportunity has passed.  Or not.  There may be larger conspiracies being weaved in the cold dark conference rooms at Redmond, conspiracies whose end ambition is to see the PC reverted back into a pure business product used as a wedge for software-as-a-service, and the dedicated gaming console positioned as the one and only magnet for entertainment software sales.

Ah, these are glorious and heady times!  Unless you're a gamer.