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Microsoft is Screwing Up Live on Vista
Joe The Dragon wrote with a link to an ExtremeTech article lambasting Microsoft for its confusing rollout of the Live service on the PC. While the vision of achievements, a gamerscore, a consistent friends list, and one sprawling multiplayer network is tantalizing, the reality falls somewhat short of that goal. "The biggest mistake Microsoft is making with Live on the PC is the way they're treating the PC as if it's a console platform they can control. They're trying to lock out the rest of the world and to charge for features that PC gamers have had for free for ages. It's a shortsighted, greedy scheme that could only come from a product manager or VP who simply doesn't "get" PC gaming. The free Silver level of Xbox Live lets you log in on the PC and earn Achievements just like you do on the 360--but only single-player Achievements. Multiplayer Achievements are only for those $50-a-year Gold members. Player matchmaking is for Gold members only. Voice in games is for Gold members only. Cross-platform play between 360 and PC is for Gold members only. In fact, the only thing silver members can really do is view a server list and hop onto a specific server." Article author Jason Cross warns Microsoft at the end of the piece that it is 'not too late' to turn things around. Vista is still a young platform, and once driver issues are ironed out and Vista becomes the standard there are still opportunities for success.
Standardize online play, humm, lets think, what company has already done this?
Yeah, thats right, Steam and Stardock both have these features (well, ok, not voice chat, but the other things). Both are free, cross-platform, and supported by many, many developers.
Congrats M$, for entering a market where not only do you have two strong competetors, but you offer a clearly inferior service for vast amounts more money.
Dell has reintroduced PCs running Windows XP on its website due to customer demand.
Dell To Offer Win XP On Consumer PCs Again
Sure it's a test on some models, but imagine what Dell will do if these models (with XP) sell considerably better than the comparable other models (with Vista).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
What you're looking for exists. Its called XFire (http://www.xfire.com/). No reason to pay $$$ for something they can do on ad revenue.
That's funny because what you want is exactly what Xfire does: http://www.xfire.com/. It includes a IM client and voice chat. You can also join a server your friend's are playing on through the buddy list. It also includes a built in bittorrent client for downloading demos and patches. The only thing it doesn't offer is achievements so you won't be able to show off your e-penis. It's free through and offers a great system to keep in contact with your friends and meet new people with it's friends of friends feature.
www.adiumx.com. No need to mess with MSN for Mac. :)
Sunwalker Dezco for Warchief in 2016
Microsoft doesn't host live games. Microsoft serves as the lobby and matchmaking server for live games, similar to how gamespy works. And from what I've seen, they do some rudimentary but pretty effective cheat detection.
One big bit of all of this is who pays for the cost of maintaining game servers. Under the old model and Sony's model, the game developer pays for all RnD, development, deployment, and upkeep. Under Microsoft's model, the brunt of the costs are born by the player. Microsoft provides the developers libraries to interface with their game-agnostic voip, messaging, and game invitation systems. Rich Presence is as simple as sending an update command. Supporting voice chat can be done solidly in a day or two, rather than weeks of custom coding. Fast matchmaking is all handled by their servers, and leaderboards are as simple as making some API calls. Don't get me started on how much better it is to have a unified friends list.
The Original Xbox was a nightmare of unsupported requirements, which added weeks to any development schedule. This time around, however, they're actually doing things right enough that it seems to be cutting development time rather than adding to it.
Sony's stance has been, by and large, "The developer can do it." So if you want voice chat, you go to a middleware solution. If you want downloadable content, they'll implement that at some point. Really, they just haven't supported development in the substantial way they've needed to to be considered comparable. That's why you're seeing games like Oblivion showing up on the PS3 without downloadable content or other goodies.
And really, that's the distinction. Games being developed for Live, even Live Vista, get a greatly simplified development path and fire-and-forget hosting (until the next blizzard takes out washington). So you're far more likely to see all games, not just big hits, take advantage of the features.
So it's a tradeoff. I think a lot of game developers are a little peeved at Sony for promising the world, then making us develop it. Similarly, with the exception of Horse Armor pretty much everything on Xbox Live is something people have felt like games should be able to do for a long time now, but nobody has had the monopoly to do so. Paying 5 bucks a month? It's a lot, and I wonder how many developers will opt to go that route. To me, it's worth it, but I'm not what you'd call casual.
I can understand how people who are used to free online play would be annoyed by this, but the experience of a unified online gaming service is worth it. Too bad they didn't throw in some online play for the PC.
The ______ Agenda
Yup, an alternative driver exists that is of excellent interest to musicians and general use, but totally useless for gamers, as it has basically no EAX support, which is the only reason a gamer will get a Creative card anyway.
Not knocking on the kX project itself here, I think it's fantastic, but let's not mix apples and oranges.