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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.
microsoft thinking they own and can control the PC platform like it's a console? Is anyone really surprised by this? It's probably the number one reason to not support microsoft (even by running pirated copies) in any way. This is the same kind of crap they do in every business they try to force their way into and all it does is degrade the user experience AND cost more.
Maybe I'll start up an XBL-like service for Linux that actually works and is open. So I'll finally be able to tell if my friends are playing Tux Racer or Tux Kart!
The Farewell Tour II
Hmm. As for Creative, an alternative driver does exist, the latest beta (3538m, find it in the forum) of which does support Vista on all SoundBlaster Live! and other unsupported cards. They work great.
I'm aware that there are other devices that don't work with Vista, but I've got all of mine (some of which are quite old) to work, either with Vista-supplied drivers, or with Windows XP drivers. The situation is hardly as bad as it is sometimes made out to be.
Actually, according to all the speed testing thats been done, framerates are actually better on XP because it doesnt clog up a system as much as vista does. The only reason gamers want DX 10 is because they'll be forced to get it if they want to play the new shiney game at all, because it absolutely won't work on older machines. I can't see any developers wanting to cut out 90% of their market for a 0-5% performance gain.
Device drivers had to be rewritten going from 98 to XP. Some device drivers had to be rewritten going from 95 to 98. The obsolescence you are describing has been going on for a decade. History has shown it will be no obstacle to Vista's acceptance.
How is this a problem? If the free Silver account allows you to freely view and join servers, just the same as most PC games do now, how are you losing anything? Are you bitching that adding extras like matchmaking and voice chat, not to mention a mechanism to ban known cheaters, will cost you less than 5 bucks a month?
The vast majority of current PC games supporting free multiplayer seem to provide the same thing that the free Silver account will. Also keep in mind that the Account is the same for your Xbox 360 and original XBox. Personally, having one consistant identity, with the same reputation and buddy list, across 3 different platforms is pretty much worth the money to me already.
The arguement in the article seems to be "Some PC games provide some of this functionality for free, therefore any system bringing it all together should be free too!"
No they don't. Stardock and Steam don't try to charge you a monthly or annual fee for the right to play their games online. All they do is offer standardized online play. The live thing isn't about standardizing (it's just easier to do it all out of one thing for them) but about taking an FPS or a sports game or some other game and charging for online like companies do for MMOs. Except they aren't MMOs.
Microsoft have decided to put a "Windows Live" icon on the Mac version of MSN Messenger. It doesn't do anything, it's not clickable or selectable in any way as far as I can tell.
It was added in one of the annoyingly regular 'you must upgrade NOW or you'll never be allowed on MSN again' updates that Microsoft like to do for no clear reason (as opposed to the spurious 'upgrade to the latest version' messages that you get when someone tries to send you an animated gif that tries to get you to install the PC version).
Does anyone know why it's there?
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I thought Windows Live Gold was free to anyone who already had XBox Live Gold? Isn't that sort of the whole point? You already have an XBox, but maybe you want the PC version of Oblivion versus the Console version? While I understand that there are people out there who don't own an XBox and might just want to be able to play Halo 3 with their buddies, most of the people that I know that want this already have an XBox and XBox Live...so I guess I just don't see the big deal on the price.
"Life's short and hard, like a body building elf." -- The Bloodhound Gang