Microsoft occasionally mentions its intentions to do better by PC gamers, but outside of the technical efforts of the DirectX team, has had very little to show for it in recent years, including a complete absence of PC gaming from its presentations at major trade events.

During the recent E3 2014 event, Polygon quizzed Xbox head Phil Spencer on why it is that Microsoft doesn't include any of its Windows PC or Windows Phone videogame undertakings, and here's what he had to say:

I'm head of gaming at Microsoft," Spencer said. "When we're doing gaming strategy, gaming focus inside the company, that's my job. I think in a lot of ways, you could argue gaming on Windows has never been more healthy in that the biggest of the big franchises, League of Legends, World of Tanks, those things dwarf a lot of what we're doing in this console space in terms of users and monetization. They're all on PC."

But that doesn't mean they're necessarily a good fit for E3, he said.

"E3's a retail show," he said. "It's a retail show, it's a console show, so it didn't really feel like the right place for us to talk about Windows, but Windows and gaming on Windows is critical to Microsoft's success."

Spencer went on to explain that esports events seem like a better fit, which is certainly proven correct by the likes of League of Legends and Star Craft 2, but none of Microsoft's self-published PC games have even attempted to cultivated such tournament potential since perhaps Age of Empires 3.