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GTA IV On PC Goes Exclusive With 'Games For Windows Live'
Erik J writes "Microsoft has announced that the PC version of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV will exclusively use Games for Windows Live for its multiplayer mode when it hits shelves November 18th. Rockstar founder Sam Houser explained the decision: 'As we work toward the release of the PC version, Games for Windows Live affords us the opportunity to seamlessly translate the multiplayer console experience for PC gamers, the service is a natural fit for the platform and we strongly believe it will help in building a strong online community around GTA IV PC.'"
Wired is running a story suggesting that this release could save the rather unpopular Microsoft PC gaming platform.
Wired is running a story suggesting that this release could save the rather unpopular Microsoft PC gaming platform.
Motherfuckers.
"Games for Windows Live affords us the opportunity to seamlessly translate the multiplayer console experience for PC gamers" (Microsoft paid us like, a lot of money to do this, if you want to play it without errors get a console.)
It's just not a drawcard. I doubt many people think too much about its concept when purchasing the game. They buy the game on the virtues of the actual title.
I record my sleeptalking
Games for Windows - LIVE is free as it should of been at first and also run on XP.
If this was payed for LIVE + vista only then that would of KILLED the game.
Fuck that. Sale lost, I don't care how good the game is. Build a server browser into the game and don't require me to install a bunch of MS crap. No doubt it will require the installation of IE 7, Media Player, MS Messenger, and a host of other Microsoft bullshit I simply don't want or need.
There's not much sense in providing support for multiple online gaming lobbies. This way you'll know which one to use to get the most people to play GTA with. I'm sure 'Games for Windows Live' is just as good as any of the others, all you need it to do is launch the game and set up the connections.
I don't really have a big problem with the Games for Windows label. It helped developers get their acts together for 64-bit windows versions, and games now all save in the same area, so saves are separated among users. What I don't really like, however, is GFW LIVE. It seems really dumbed down from other PC gaming services. Whoever thought that PC gamers would pay a subscription fee for it is also insane. I think they dropped the subscriptions recently, but it still has the stigma of being Xbox LIVE, for Windows.
Instead of facing the fact that the economy of the entire world is swirling down the drain you, you fucking hypocrite, are here on Slashdot...
Bad. It's just so desperate and very locked down as well.
They want the pc to be an xbox extension.
Fuck you rockstar.
Because it's a shit platform, and no one bother developing anything for it. I'm sure you'll never even see a shitty knockoff of GTA IV, hell it wouldn't surprise me if 'Mac Gamers' refuse to accept this fact. Let's be serious, Gaming on Mac is an oxymoron.
How cute, someone is feeling impotent about the problems in the world so they are turning to an internet forum to soothe their ego by berating others for not doing enough to alleviate their discomfort.
Who the fuck cares about some tiny country in a tiny planet orbiting a tiny sun in a not-very-significant galaxy? get off your fat ass and start working on the means to reverse entropy, or the universe itself shall cease to exist as we know it.
Douglas Adams said it best, that the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Rockstar founder Sam Houser explained the decision: 'They paid us. Cash. A big green pile of the stuff. We had our own code for it, but nobody was paying us to use it. They said we have to spew some bullshit about how great it is without making it sound like it's about the money. Whatever. I can do that.'
There. Fixed that for him.
Moron. You have to run the game on Windows, so you fail to meet your stringent requirement of 'no Microsoft bullshit' when you install it.
Yes, Mac games are crap. They only have:
World of Warcraft: Biggest MMORPG in the world.
Spore: The most hyped game in many years.
Football Manager: The top selling game in Europe every year.
No recent releases or big games there, no siree...
don't blame the platform for dev house laziness/corruption.
Dev houses refuse to develop for anything but MS proprietary Direct X.
Never mind the fact XGL and OpenGL are just as viable, if not more so, than the oh so resource-efficient MS implementations.
There are two possible and equally likely reasons for this:
microsoft bribery
pure unmitigated laziness
Apple in particular outsells PC on many major college campuses. There is no "disparity" between the two platforms among the demographics they are trying to target.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
It probably would have been the best move for a video game ever. Let the kiddies develop it for you. I have a feeling M$ needed this. They probably told the rockstar reps that "only M$ could handle the scope" or some bs. Whatever, I'm not buying it.
Should HAVE* been. Idiot.
Never mind the fact XGL and OpenGL are just as viable, if not more so, than the oh so resource-efficient MS implementations.
I sense sarcasm where there shouldn't be any. Do some research on OpenGL, specifically how it manages resources compared to DirectX, and you'll see why so many developers pick the latter. I'll also quote John Carmack:
"Actually, DX9 is really quite a good API level. Even with the D3D side of things, where I know I have a long history of people thinking I'm antagonistic against it. Microsoft has done a very, very good job of sensibly evolving it at each step - they're not worried about breaking backwards compatibility - and it's a pretty clean API. I especially like the work I'm doing on the 360, and it's probably the best graphics API as far as a sensibly designed thing that I've worked with."
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Note: this is just my AU$0.02. Opinions stated herein are void where prohibited.
Actually, I think it's a little of both.
OpenGL is really lagging behind DirectX now. I know I was personally looking forward to OpenGL 3 bringing it back up to parity, but Khronos went and neutered that. If you want the best performance with the latest features, you pretty much have to use DirectX.
Also, DirectX provides a lot more than just graphics; it provides audio and input as well. Getting OpenGL, OpenAL and SDL all talking to each other is a pain in the butt by comparison.
There's also the issue of reach; there are way more Windows users than Mac users, period. Boot Camp is kinda shooting the "but some people have Macs" argument, too, since dev houses could just as easily argue that those Mac users can now boot into Windows.
At the end of the day, berating dev houses isn't going to break MS's stranglehold on the market. Making it easier to develop cross-platform would probably be a good start.
We're geeks... We're the sorcerers of the modern-day world. --
GTA IV already used XBox Live on the 360. Given that the PC port was most likely from the 360 codebase, it would have taken more effort to not use GFWL than to use it. Of course the PR spin won't mention this.
GameRanger - multiplayer gaming service for PC and Mac games
To make matters worse Spore for mac isn't exactly native application. It uses some sort of windows environment. I believe the term for this is "ciderized".
OpenGL is really lagging behind DirectX now.
Actually, its not. OpenGL is on par with Direct3D. It the API that sucks, because the core API no longer accurately reflects modern hardware, and everything thats nice is in new 2.1 features + extensions, which are progressing into an object model similar to Longs Peak. Therefore, right now OpenGL is a mixed bag - state machine style initialization for textures, object model style initialization for pixel/vertex/framebuffer objects & shaders.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
In round numbers, it's a trillion dollar bailout. That's about a 50% one year increase in the federal budget. In ten years or so, it'll probably be recompensed, maybe at a loss, maybe at a profit. Let's say it'll be at a 50% loss, so we'll get 500 billion back.
In scale, that's similar to a typical US household, earning $60,000, getting a loan for $30,000, buying a expensive car, then selling it for $15,000 ten years from now.
It's a bitch and a half, but it's not the ruin of the economy. Hell, if we simply instituted a freeze in government growth, we would be running a surplus in about four years, and would probably have made back the trillion dollars within ten years. Don't let the panic on the TV reports spook you. That's what they want.
Also, buying videogames, and other such pastimes, are absolutely necessarily to keep the economy growing.
We aren't Nero. If this story was headed "Penned by G.W. Bush" or "Written by John McCain" or "From the desk of Barack Obama", I might be worried. But we're not these people, are we now?
Umm, actually, you're a moron. The Great Depression was ample proof that the global market is, in fact, global. We continue to see that in shifts in stocks at various exchanges around the world as the react to each other. If the US economy collapses completely, the world WILL go into a severe depression. This is not a one way street. If a serious and total economic collapse happened in any number of other regions in the world, the US economy would also go down. In other words, we're all going down together. PS. The current standard for international trade is still the dollar. Its pretty obvious that until its no longer the dollar, anything that effects the value of the dollar (the strength US economy, for instance) will affect global trade/markets. Just wanted to throw this out there for you in case the paragraph above wasn't enough.
on Ubuntu :D
Furthermore both of the two men campaigning be the leader of the Free World...
ahh, you Americans and your inflated sense of self worth crack me up! leader of the free world? America!?! you have GOT to be kidding
Umm, actually, I'm a moron. The Great Depression was ample proof that the global market was, in fact, global.
fixed that for you
PC gaming (is supposedly) going down hill.
I'm rather disappointed with the lack of a steam release. I really like the steam platform. Maybe in a year or so...
I've pre-ordered every GTA for PC since I played GTA2 years ago. I even purchased them again over steam (So much easier then disc hunting) This one will be a wait and see approach. If I consider the hoops unreasonable (I have no interest in running two content management platforms for games thank-you-very-much) I'll just do what I did for spore.
where does it say that?
Microsoft: Exclusively beating up hookers to sell Windows since 2008.
So you develop a game in OpenGL rather than directX, package and distribute a Linux version and sales go up by 0.1%.
And it's not as good because Linux hasn't had a multi million dollar multinational working to improve games performance and working directly with the hardware manufacturers to maximise performance.
I remember when Trolls were original. This is better than the cut and paste ones I guess but only slightly.
I was speaking about macs
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Do I have to pay an addiotnal fee for the BSOD?
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
And, "paid", not "payed".
Still, it's a Joe the Dragon post - what else did you expect?
"OMG, is the most important and crucial thing ever! Let's stop anything else we do and act like nothing else matters!".
That's why I hate hippies, not because I think Eric Cartman is cool, but because that's all you guys ever do, get obsessed with a few issues, act like it's the most important thing ever and not leave anyone alone until you made them care about it.
You just got troll'd!
I play the other three without windows.
I don't see any reason to throw 20gig away on a windows partition just to play this one.
If it requires all that crap to function it is effectively cripple-ware. There are plenty of other games in the marketplace.
In round numbers, it's a trillion dollar bailout. That's about a 50% one year increase in the federal budget.
So far...
In ten years or so, it'll probably be recompensed, maybe at a loss, maybe at a profit. Let's say it'll be at a 50% loss, so we'll get 500 billion back.
In scale, that's similar to a typical US household, earning $60,000, getting a loan for $30,000, buying a expensive car, then selling it for $15,000 ten years from now.
A typical US household can't afford to do that. A whole country of them doing it all together doesn't somehow magically make the fact that they can't afford it go away.
It's a bitch and a half, but it's not the ruin of the economy.
Not by itself. But its part of a larger spiral. It devalues the dollar, making imports more expensive in a country that relies HEAVILY on imports. Meanwhile local and foreign investors pull their money out of the USA because they are losing money hand over fist and the risk of losing it all is climbing, which exacerbates the credit crunch by removing capital, raising unemployment, and further devaluing the dollar.
Still, the trillion dollar bailout MAY soften the landing, or let it turn around faster with less acute pain than otherwise. I'm not against public intervention on this scale, but the plan they've got on the table right now is utterly idiotic.
Hell, if we simply instituted a freeze in government growth, we would be running a surplus in about four years, and would probably have made back the trillion dollars within ten years.
If the economy spirals into a depression there will be no 'running a surplus in about four years', assuming they could actually freeze spending (which is pretty unlikely).
Don't let the panic on the TV reports spook you. That's what they want.
Agreed. TV reporters are thoughtless ass hats.
Also, buying videogames, and other such pastimes, are absolutely necessarily to keep the economy growing.
In other words: "Set aside whats good for you and put whats good for the economy, for the country, ahead of your own interests."
I believe that's called "communism", one of the dirtiest words one can say in the U-S-of-A.(*)
Advocating to just hang in there is UTTERLY futile. Its only going to work if everyone does it. However, the people that pull out, convert their money to gold, foreign assets, whatever, etc hedging against US currency devaluation, bank failures, further stock market declines, etc start doing better than their peers who stick with the US economy. And that just motivates more and more people to pull out.
Globally the best course of action is to ride it out together, you are right. But individually the best strategy is to get yours out while you can. In a society founded on capitalism and everyone for himself... well... working for the global otpimum is about as likely as a functioning communist system spontaneously happening.
Its ironic because the people calling out for this sort of 'sacrifice whats best for you for whats best for the economy, and it will work out..." includes the staunch free-market libertarians. Yet 'just keep spending and carrying on as normal' is fundamentally a communist and anti-free-market strategy.
(*) Communism as defined by members of society allocating resources for the greater good rather than for their own personal benefit, in the beleif that by serving the greater good. Specifically communism DOESN'T require a state-run-dictatorship allocating resources centrally. Many small communes, for example, are entirely democratic, and the 'sacrifices' are voluntary instead of coerced. It just doesn't work on a larger scale for a variety of reasons. And it won't work to save the US economy for those same reasons.
To the uninitiated (read: you), OpenGL didn't seem to advance much with OpenGL. But what Khronos did was clean up the API and remove the old features that are no longer needed.
So, to the inexperienced (read: you), it may seem that they just "neutered" OpenGL. But in reality, they were "cutting the fat," so to speak.
There is nothing you can do in Direct3d that is not possible, in a similar fashion, from modern OpenGL. They do the same things on the same hardware.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
that should have been advanced much with "OpenGL 3"
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Please let this be sarcasm.
"Games for Windows Live affords us the opportunity to seamlessly translate the multiplayer console experience for PC gamers"
Exactly how seamlessly? As I understand it, "the multiplayer console experience" involves inviting a couple friends over to my house and playing Smash Bros. together on my 32" Vizio monitor. Does Games for Windows certification guarantee that PC games will let me and a friend play with one PC, one monitor, and two gamepads? Or will players still have to buy a separate PC per person?
Does anyone know if this excludes the possibility of GTA IV being released on Steam? Can we expect a Steam release?
That save their games in a directory named after the game in the My Documents directory.
Another thing that the other replies didn't point out: Google lists a bunch of guides on how to move My Documents.
To make matters worse Spore for mac isn't exactly native application. It uses some sort of windows environment. I believe the term for this is "ciderized".
So what? Qt is a toolkit. GTK+ is a toolkit. SDL is a toolkit. Cider is a toolkit too; it just happens to resemble the Windows environment enough to get games to work. The game engine still runs natively on the Mac's Intel Core processor, not in emulation like, say, Virtual Console games from Wii Shop Channel. What feels non-native about a game that uses Cider once it starts running?
There are two possible and equally likely reasons for this:
A third:
As I understand it, Xbox 360's native graphics API is a version of DirectX similar to that included with Windows, not OpenGL. So unless an Xbox 360 licensee is planning to port its product to PS3 (which uses OpenGL ES) or Wii (which uses GX, Nintendo's variant of OpenGL), it can make a business case for targeting only DirectX.
Well done, sir. I guess these people are too young to remember this classic troll.
Not really. If the US went under then oil would be traded in Euros and banks wouldn't (as they have be doing this is started) lend out debt to the US banks. The world can cope without the US if it tanks and then other countries will replace whatever the US exported.
You're missing the parent's point! It doesn't matter that OpenGL can do everything D3D can do!
It needs to be better and it needs to work. That means when I write code I don't end up in hell trying to debug Nvidia and ATI driver bugs and yes that is why game companies don't use openGL.
getting a loan for $30,000, buying a expensive car, then selling it for $15,000 ten years from now.
There is no car, at all, that can be purchased for 30K and sold for 15K when it's 10 years old. You're off by an order of magnitude.
Actually, Nero watched people burn while fiddling. He felt it needed an epic soundtrack, just like GTA IV.
Disregard the above.
I made the mistake of buying a Games for Windows - LIVE game (Gears of War for PC). Hated it. It was just pathetic. Every time I would launch the damn game, I get nag screens saying "You can have cool features if you pay $50 and buy a Gold membership!!!". Laggy as hell. Reminded me to much of Xbox Live (Waste of money). It seemed like a dumbed down version of Xbox Live (how much dumber can it get)
My experience was so bad with GFWL that it made me vow never to buy another PC game with the "Games for Windows LIVE" logo on it. And I won't. Bought the PS3 version of GTA:IV months ago. Glad I did.
They only do this with game engines from last generation whos value has been ammortized to pretty much zero. Those engines have all been copied by other companies and don't offer Id Software a competitive edge to keep around.
GTA IV is a modern game engine that probably is still worth something all on its own. Even if they couldn't "license" the engine to other game companies (or if I was boss, simulator companies), the IP has value in that it would take a long time for the competition to "borrow" all the features.
You missed my point!
You already can do both, if you're at least a tiny bit competent.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
There are a million forums and threads dedicated to the financial situation, go to one of those. Christ.
Comment of the year
Exactly, they ONLY have this games, what about GTA IV, the game in the story?, HL2, Portal, supreme commander, oblivion, far cry, the list is really large. I can safely say that mac games ARE crap.
WOW: Don't play it.
Spore: Didn't buy it or play it.
Football Manager: Only ever heard of it 2 or 3 times.
Yep. It's got all my gaming covered!
It also might reduce sales numbers for GTA4.
I know here sits a customer they just lost. I'm sick and tired of tie-ins like that where for no good reason they try to force me into signing up for some unrelated service that I otherwise had no interest in.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I just got Universe at War, and Games for Windows Live is really pissing me off. I only want to play a LAN game with my roommate, and we can't without having GFWL accounts. Every time I log into GFWL, it says I need to patch. So I hit okay, and it tries to download, and fails. I downloaded the patches separately, applied them, launch the game, log into GFWL- and it says I need to patch. So I hit okay, and it tries to download, and fails... I just want to play multi-player on our network.
Well do something about it loser. Why the FUCK are YOU wasting your time on /. ?
My understanding was that they did not actually remove any features, they just marked some as 'deprecated' with an announcement that they would be removed in a later release. Of course, that they had claimed those features would be removed in this iteration is what has made users highly suspicious as to whether or not they will actually be removed next time. Meaning that a number of users have quite vocally questioned the claim that they 'cut the fat'.
The seriousness of the above post is not guaranteed.
Let people run their own servers. Take the middle man out. Keep it simple, stupids.