Live For Windows Coming in May

Several outlets are carrying the news that Live for Windows is coming in May to a PC near you. The announcement carried confirmation of a similar pricetag for Xbox Live, as well as details on some new titles. Halo 2 will be releasing right around the launch of the service (slated to go up May 8th), and Shadowrun will follow quickly sometime in June. Gamasutra has an interview with Xbox Live general manager JJ Richards on the subject, and 1up offers a bit of commentary with the news. Though when asked about it last week Microsoft reps seemed extremely confident, it still remains to be seen whether PC gamers will pay for what they've always gotten for free.

Comments

Aww :(

[voice_of_all_reason]

I thought this said "Live without windows for a day"

I got all excited. Maybe it was some kind of contest...

Croos-platform matchmaking?

[sugarman]

Could be cool if they allow PC v. Windows matchmaking. Watching how the console owners fare compare to their PC brethern would be quite interesting.

Re:Croos-platform matchmaking?

[Wilson_6500]

PC v. Windows matchmaking

Your idealism is showing.

Re:Croos-platform matchmaking?

[Rob T Firefly]

Final Fantasy XI has had console and PC players together for years. I don't play it myself, but from what I've heard the experience is pretty much the same so long as you get a USB keyboard for your console.

PB

[mastershake_phd]

Does it have Punkbuster or something similar?

The really hilarious thing is cross platform play

[2008]

Windows Live lets you play against Xbox 360 Live subscribers.
However, Windows Live is Windows Vista only, so you can't play against people using Windows XP. Well done, what an impressive cross platform system!

I know 10 or so people who I've occasionally played online with on Windows using XP/2k, and don't know a single Live subscriber. I don't have much incentive to get Windows Live, do I? YMMV, of course.

Cheating is why I use Consoles On-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure hope you can choose to NOT play with PC users. The WHOLE reason I don't play on-line with my PC anymore is half the people used super bots and/or tricked out keyboard/mice. Consoles level the playing field and make it about skill again. Just my 2 cents.

Re:Cheating is why I use Consoles On-Line

[stratjakt]

I dunno if you were into Halo 2, but the online experience quickly degraded into modem glitchers and snipers using a hacked mouse keyboard. Or people shutting off their madden games jsut before a loss so it wont affect their rank. On a "good day" you have a 12 year old calling you a faggot. Fuck online gaming.

Re:Cheating is why I use Consoles On-Line

[drinkypoo]

Or people shutting off their madden games jsut before a loss so it wont affect their rank.

The fact that the game doesn't penalize them for this is a failure of the game, not just the gamer. Why do people keep paying for this shit?

Re:So, if we get ripped off with Vista then

[HappySqurriel]

I was wondering whether an XBox Live Account was the same as a Windows Live Account (that is buying one gives you access to the other) ...

Personally, I think it would be cool to be able to have 1 identity on an Console and PC but I have no desire to spend $100+ to have 2 seperate identities.

Re:So, if we get ripped off with Vista then

[VertigoAce]

It's one account for both services (just like you can use an Xbox Live account/identity for the Zune Marketplace). I imagine relatively few people would consider paying for the Gold account on Windows, compared to Xbox 360 users who will use their existing account on Windows.

Excuse for Vista

[MobyDisk]

Microsoft is coming out with all kinds of excuses for force people to buy Vista. They are trying to make anything new they create artificially incompatible with XP. Xbox Live, DirectX 10, HDCP... There is no technical reason why these things can't work on XP, they just don't. It is very frustrating. Frankly, it is what makes the Mac look attractive. Apple goes out of their way to ensure compatibility. Microsoft goes out of their way to ensure INcompatibility. I wonder how long before somebody makes a hack that lets these things run on XP?

Re:Excuse for Vista

[drinkypoo]

Apple goes out of their way to ensure compatibility. Microsoft goes out of their way to ensure INcompatibility.

What?

Apple locks their OS to their hardware. That is the antithesis of ensuring compatibility.

I'm not trying to defend Microsoft's actions regarding Vista. Vista is crap and forcing people to go to Vista is crappier. But to hold up Apple as a paragon of compatibility is simply wrong.

Re:Excuse for Vista

[Joe The Dragon]

Apple goes out of their way to ensure compatibility my a** look at how then dropped class form lintel systems and they don not want to help Sheep Shaver run os 9.2.2 as it only works up to 9.04 and that is only way to Classic on Intel Macs.
http://gwenole.beauchesne.info/en/projects/sheepsh aver
http://sheepshaver.cebix.net/

Re:Excuse for Vista

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Microsoft is coming out with all kinds of excuses for force people to buy Vista. They are trying to make anything new they create artificially incompatible with XP.

Is that why Office 2007, PowerShell, Orcas, .NET 3.0, etc all work on XP?

The double-standards around here are tiring. Apple could've release Spotlight for OSX 10.3. There's "no technical reason" preventing that. Yet they didn't, and Spotlight was heralded as *the* reason to pay to upgrade to 10.4. Yet I heard no talk of Apple "forcing" upgrades by releasing features for 10.4 that could've been made available for 10.3.

On the other hand, Microsoft is bashed regardless of what they do. They make DirectX 10 specific to Vista, and are bashed for not backporting it to XP. They backport .NET 3.0 to XP and are bashed/mocked for reducing incentive to upgrade to Vista (I recall the many slashdot posts mocking Microsoft for backporting .NET 3.0 to XP, "HAHA, Yet another reason not to upgrade to Vista!! MS sucks!!".

Re:Excuse for Vista

[Kalriath]

It does need APIs only available in Vista. DirectX 10. DirectX 10 is virtually a rewrite of DirectX according to the material I've read. DirectPlay is replaced with Live, DirectSound is replaced with XACT (I think that's it), and so on. And DirectX requires the new Vista driver model, which is so insanely different from WDDM that virtually no drivers work on it at this time.

Re:Excuse for Vista

[MobyDisk]

Is that why Office 2007, PowerShell, Orcas, .NET 3.0, etc all work on XP? Because those are examples of applications that either came out before Vista, or appliccations that were not crippled. Which is why they have nothing to do with my point.

My point is that now that Vista has come-out, Microsoft is intentionally crippling things so that they don't work on XP. This is not a double-standard. Name one example of Apple selling a product where they made it artificially not work on a previous version of the system to force people to upgrade. Splotlight is not an example of that - it is an OS 10.4 feature. It isn't a program you can buy and install that pretends that it requires OS 10.4 and refuses to work.

And you are confused on .NET 3.0: It was never "backported" to XP. It was designed for XP, and pre-bundled with Vista. That's the entire point I'm making: Microsoft has convinced people that they must "backport" applications for "compatibility" with XP when it is the opposite - they are specifically disabling them from working on XP to pretend that Vista is required.

Xbox Live has features you don't get for free now

[Blakey Rat]

For instance, voice across the entire system (not just in-game chat) without having to worry whether the person is using TeamSpeak, Ventrillo, or Skype.

A single username across the entire system, meaning you can be sure the "HappyGodzilla" you play in Halo 3 is the same "HappyGodzilla" you got teamed up with in Shadowrun. This also greatly assists with getting rid of griefers and jerks.

I'm not necessarily saying it's worth $50, but to say that Xbox Live offers nothing is disingenuous if not outright wrong.

Re:Xbox Live has features you don't get for free n

[miscz]

For instance, voice across the entire system (not just in-game chat) without having to worry whether the person is using TeamSpeak, Ventrillo, or Skype.

Would be more like:

For instance, voice across the entire system (not just in-game chat) without having to worry whether the person is using TeamSpeak, Ventrillo, Skype or Live.

Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly like on their console. They may be offering something slightly better but with such a price and already developed and estabilished alternative solutions they'll have a hard time getting marketshare.

Re:The Controller

[malraid]

Lame, no Linux drivers!