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Microsoft Hopes for Matchmaking in all 360 Games
1up reports on comments from Phil Spencer, the Head of Game Development for Microsoft Game Studios. Speaking with the news organization at DICE Spencer clarified that, ideally, all 360 games should have matchmaking services ala Halo 2. Why didn't Epic's Gears of War ship with the feature? "The Epic scenario and why we don't have that code in Gears of War is really more of a scheduling issue than a 'We weren't going to share the code with them, or help them add that feature to the game' because it's clearly a great feature in online shooting play. For us, it was just 'could we get this done on time in order to get the game to come out when it needed to come out.'" Spencer does say that they have no problems sharing Halo 2's matchmaking code, and that future first-party titles should definitely offer it. Gears may even offer it one day, via a patch to the game.
Am I the only one who sees this as an inappropriate attempt by Microsoft to extend their OS monopoly into the gaming market? Microsoft is already flexing this muscle by requiring that all games published under the "Games for Windows" brand are compatible with the X-Box 360 Controller. This seems to me like an attempt to force all PC Game publishers to make their games not only for Windows, but for the X-Box too. If you don't make your game X-Box compatible, well, you lose out on all that free "Games for Windows" marketing that Microsoft is paying for. I seem to remember Microsoft doing something similar with Internet Explorer a few years back that got them into a tad of legal trouble. Now, not only does Microsoft want all games to be X-Box compatible, but now they want all games to use their matchmaking service. It won't be long before Microsoft will be pushing for all PC Games to be compatible with X-Box live. I'm sure you X-Box fans would like this, but personally, I don't want Microsoft to be sticking their thumb into every single PC game that I play. It's bad enough that I have to play almost everything on Windows to begin with. If I were an anti-trust lawyer, I would have already sent Microsoft several warnings about where they're going with this. I think they're violating the spirit of their anti-trust settlement.