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.

Comments

ob

[Bastard of Subhumani]

What, right now? Which channel is it on?

Videocast?

[u-bend]

When I first saw this, I thought it was a videocast: "Watch MS screw up LIVE!!"

Re:Videocast?

[Applekid]

My first glance at it: "Microsoft is Screwing Up Life with Vista" ;)

Re:standard?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

And how, exactly, is that going to happen with people actively turning back to XP in droves?

Get real, this is only temporary. Once Microsoft has patched Vista enough to make it vaguely palatable, and newer PCs ship with enough extra oomph to run the OS as fast as XP on today's hardware, people will just get used to it. Don't kid yourself, the forced upgrade scheme will be going as planned.

Bill Cosby

[MyOtherUIDis3digits]

A bit OT, I know, but every time I see a Vista story on Slashdot, I think of the line from Bill Cosby's act, "Let the beatings begin!"

And I smile...

Re:standard?

[interiot]

Get real, this is only temporary.

Device drivers for certain types of devices have to be completely rewritten for Vista, or the hardware won't work. Creative is one company that's stated that only the very newest hardware will be supported on Vista... all other hardware that's just a little older will never be supported on Vista... that's not temporary, that's a permanent loss of support for hardware. And if Creative (a larger, more well-off company) won't rewrite most of its recent drivers for Vista, how are smaller companies going to fare?

I hope this fails

[moderatorrater]

As a PC gamer, I sincerely hope it fails. Battle.net was the first example of free online play, but other games are following suit. Microsoft is pulling this shit right as it's become standard for RTS's (at least) to include a free online service. In addition to that, it'll create more lock-in for gamers. The upside is that it'll standardize things like in-game voice chat and online play, but it isn't enough.

Re:I hope this fails

[CogDissident]

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.

Re:I hope this fails

[powerlord]

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.

Yeah ... except:

1) Everyone knows who MS is, and anyone interested in gaming has probably heard about Live! (as well as anyone with even basic familiarity of an XBox 360). While Steam may have the same sort of recognition, Stardock doesn't (even though its a great system).

2) Vista will probably have the Live! starter pushed down as a required update (like IE7 was for XP), and/or require its inclusion and support for a "Games For Windows" logo. Next thing you know its the de-facto standard, and even Stardock and Steam will probably have to play "catch up", or support Live! in some way.

Its amazing what having a monopoly will let you do in a marketplace, and MS certainly has a monopoly in the desktop arena. Of course if I was Stardock and Steam, I would be pushing for court orders to require Live! to be optional based on illegal tie-ing. That won't actually STOP MS (unless a court officer decides they need to spin off the games division ... an interesting choice and one that could work), but it MIGHT slow them down a little.

Is it just matchmaking?

[PhoenixOne]

If it is just matchmaking and a score-board, yeah $50 is a bit much. But if Microsoft is hosting the games on their servers and checking to make sure nobody is cheating (as much as you can for PC games), then it might be worth the $4.25 a month they want.

I do agree however, that they *need* the Live interface to be part of Vista and not just something that you run from inside games. Being able to see if my friends are playing a certain game while I'm downloading porn...um, checking my email would be nice.

My bet is that Live Vista will suck for the first couple of months. In a year, it will be acceptable. And in 2 to 3 years it will become the standard. Being able to see that your friend is playing Shadowrun while you are playing WoW will be the killer app.

Re:Is it just matchmaking?

[fistfullast33l]

That's an incredibly expensive investment on Microsoft's end. Why host the servers yourself? Even Sony, who's launching Home for free, isn't hosting content on their server, it's P2P. As for detecting cheating, that would require access to source code that I'm sure most 3rd parties won't be willing to give up. I doubt they're doing game hosting and cheat detection.

Re:Is it just matchmaking?

[PhoenixOne]

Detecting cheating doesn't require access to source code.

Re:Is it just matchmaking?

[SScorpio]

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.

Re:Is it just matchmaking?

[cgenman]

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.

Re:standard?

[sid0]

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.

How is this a problem?

[ravyne]

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!"

Re:The OS X version is baffling too

[SuperMog2002]

www.adiumx.com. No need to mess with MSN for Mac. :)