An Overview of the Games For Windows Initiative

Writing for the Escapist, author Sean Sands takes a hard look at Microsoft's Games for Windows project. The PC version of Xbox live, as well as the coherent branding they've handed out to publishers, doesn't appear to be having the kind of effect they were hoping for. Most especially, Sands points out, when players have the recently released Steam Community as an alternative: "Valve's latest community features, while they don't connect PC to console, have offered virtually every other meaningful feature in a free and functional package. Steam isn't only beating Microsoft at its own game, it's taking Microsoft's lunch money and leaving it tied to the tether-ball pole."

Comments

I for one

[Paden]

Welcome our new Steam powered overlords.

games for windows

[musikit]

i dont know how true it is but i see "games for windows" and i just assume its vista only and move onto the next game.

Microsoft charges to reduce griefing

[Blakey Rat]

If there is no cost to creating a new Xbox Live account, Microsoft would have a lot more trouble getting rid of griefers and cheaters from the system. As is, if you're booted from Xbox Live, you're out $50. That's basically the reason for the charge.

Besides, the number of free downloads you get during the course of a year of Xbox Live service is worth the charge, IMO. I think I have 6 free Xbox Live Arcade games on my console, and I've owned it less than a year. If you assume each Xbox Live Arcade game is worth $10, I've come out ahead already.

So...

[njfuzzy]

Am I right that they called it "Steam" just so journalists would have to keep using the phrases "Steam-powered" and "powered by steam" and "valve releases steam"? Think of the confusing sentences if they released a Castle Falkenstein game, and journos had to summarize that.

Did MS think of the players?

[RichPowers]

No. GFW's failure is a classic example of Redmond's hubris.

It reminds me of how Sony initially used the PS3 to push Blu-Ray adoption instead of videogames. Likewise, MS used GFW to promote Vista and DX10 instead PC games.

If GFW was about providing gamers with an enjoyable experience, there'd be a bigger focus on XP and no Live fees. Making several "flagship" GFW titles Vista-only was incredibly stupid as well.

GFW's greatest achievement is an obnoxious, totally redundant banner on new PC games. Thanks, MS, I had no clue I was purchasing a Windows game.

These other issues notwithstanding, MS also did a poor job of marketing GFW and explaining how it benefits PC gaming.

Without the baggage of promoting a new OS or some other crap, Valve can focus on what gamers care about: games!

Re:Did MS think of the players?

[nutshell42]

I absolutely agree with you.

It reminds me of how Sony initially used the PS3 to push Blu-Ray adoption instead of videogames. Likewise, MS used GFW to promote Vista and DX10 instead PC games.

It's even worse because GfW lacks any coherent strategy to address the PC's biggest problems for gaming which are on-board graphics and requirements stickers half the size of the box.

You don't need a $4000 PC to play games. My current PC cost about 1000 three years ago and it can still play just about all games (even though I have to dial the settings way down on e.g. Bioshock ). When you buy a new PC every few years you have to pay a premium of about $300 to get a PC that's good at playing games instead of just office stuff, but not enough people are ready to pay that price.

I think one of the biggest problems here is that all too many have simply no idea what they'd have to buy to be able to play games, whether that game they're looking at will play on their PC and what's wrong if it doesn't.

The Vista performance rating would have been the ideal way to address this problem but unfortunately a marginally bigger and faster hard drive will have a bigger impact on your score than a switch from a 6600 to a 8800.

The other problem is that MS and the graphics card corps are incapable of solving the driver mess. I installed the Bioshock demo. Then I needed new beta drivers for my nvidia card. Then I had to find a fix for the old 60Hz problem that's still around (iirc at some point nvidia allowed games to set their own refresh rate. All too many don't and you're stuck at 60Hz. That's fine if you got a LCD but sucks dick if you don't, meaning you need a 3rd party tool -nvtweak- to activate the hidden entry in nvidia's control panel to force refresh rate overrides. Now try explaining that to some non-geek). Even better ten years ago you could install games on a different partition without problems, nowadays suddenly there are quite a few games that will break if you don't install them on C:.

I mean wtf, this is 2007, nvidia makes boatloads of money by selling gaming hardware, games cost tens of millions to produce and MS needs the early adopters because we're the guys who buy overpriced retail editions of Windows. You should think they'd be able to fix all that small stuff. But nooooo...

If GFW was about providing gamers with an enjoyable experience, there'd be a bigger focus on XP and no Live fees. Making several "flagship" GFW titles Vista-only was incredibly stupid as well.

When GfW was announced originally there were some tin-foil hat theories that it was MS' new plan to kill off PC gaming. As the Xbox provides the most PC-like games generally, the idea was that by killing PC gaming MS could gain Xbox customers.

I dismissed it originally but now I'm not so sure.

Games for Windows. So which Games for Windows did MS release to launch its bold new initative? A crappy port of a two year old game with subpar graphics, crappy performance and loads of bugs. And a worse port of a overpriced game with crippled controls, crappy performance, and metric fucktons of bugs. IGN reported it wouldn't even run on half their PCs. Wow. WTF? This is the bold new world of MS enforced console-style QA for the PC? But hey, it supported the 360 gamepad.

You'd have thought MS would have been able to produce one game that wasn't a port and wasn't a B- title, or at least give us Mass Effect at the same time as the 360.

And then of course there's GfWL. If you pay them you get half the features other corps offer for free. Great.

Long story short:

Without the baggage of promoting a new OS or some other crap, Valve can focus on what gamers care about: games!

Even more important, Valve (and others, e.g. Stardock, who are catering to a more niche audience but offer less drm crap) care about gamers.

MS has lost about $*7* *billion* on the Xbox ($4bn being the accepted figure for the original Xbox, plus the losses of their games division since the launch of the 360 -less a safety margin-, plus the $1bn to fix their POS), if they have to piss off 10 PC people to gain 1 new 360 customer who cares?