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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.
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.
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.
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!!
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.
how does shit like this get moderated interesting? yeah, open source the game and see how much money you DONT MAKE on the port developed by the community. that's obviously the best way for a game development company to make money
TIAEAE!
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!!
They could open source the code but not open source the graphics. That's what Id does. That way you still have to buy the game for the graphics.
No, BSoD is a free, bundled feature of Windows.
Look at the bright side: there's always seppuku.
They probably had a brain, unlike you.
"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!
Apparently you haven't seen the press releases for Windows 7.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
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!
Yes I think I saw Id recently open sourcing Hexen 2 or something.
Id does not "open source the code" unless you are stretching "open sourcing the code when its ten bloody years old and throwaway value anyway".
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
"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.
While I agree with you post and think the original poster is a bit slow in the head, it's not quite that bad. Q3's source code was release about 5/6 years after its release. Some games had taken longer but I think generally Id does try to get the code out as soon as it can without causing harm to themselves or anyone else involved in the game development.
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.
No, I must have missed that. Damn. It goes a long way to explaining all the DRM stuff, though. Piracy of BSoD could be a serious problem in Redmond's view, considering how integral fatal errors are to the whole Windows experience.
Look at the bright side: there's always seppuku.
True. Id makes a significant amount of money from licensing the engine.
I think it does make more sense if you wait 5 years or so though, as with Quake 3. By that time you aren't really giving your competitors an advantage, since the engine technology would be 5 years old.
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
Unfortunately, good 3D engines are still a valuable commodity in itself that other companies will license for real cash. Don't expect to see it until it looks dated.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
i didn't say open source the game, dingleberry, rather open source the integration from console to pc. That's all M$ is doing here. They're not developing gta IV they're making the online version between consoles and pcs "seamless".
They could put the engine under the GPL or similar? That way they gets lots of fan mods, but companies would still have to pay to use the engine for a proprietary game.
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
What the hell? Is there something wrong with your brain? Also, I guess you think you're being creative and cool by using that $.
All your base are belong to Wii.
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.
Yeah 5ish years on a 3d engine is a more sane period than 20-year patents or 4950 year copyrights (or whatever they are up to now).
Its good to see they "care", or at least aren't so up themselves looking for "IP" to protect that they recognise the lack of value a 5 year old codebase has in that industry.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.