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Microsoft Reboots Two Classic PC Games
An anonymous reader writes "Ever since it launched the Xbox, Microsoft has had a fickle relationship with Windows as a gaming platform. On one hand PC gaming is a major driver of hardware and operating system sales, but on the other hand the PC is inherently less secure than the Xbox console, with piracy much more likely to impact sales of a PC title than a console one. Games for Windows Live has been an attempt to bring some of the success of Xbox Live to the PC, and while many games have shipped with support for Games for Windows Live, it hasn't exactly been a favorite of PC gamers. After all these half-hearted efforts, the last thing anyone expected was for Microsoft to announce new PC-only reboots of two classic game franchises, Flight Simulator and Age of Empires. But yesterday it did just that, announcing a massively multiplayer version of Age of Empires and a new Flight Simulator called Flight. The big question is whether Microsoft can make Games For Windows Live relevant in a market where Steam has taken hold, or if it's too late."
As long as it's attached to GFWL, no thanks. GFWL is such a piece of shit I will not have anything to do with games that require it. If you want me to buy your game, do not tie it to GFWL. It is unstable and a huge pain in the ass to deal with. MS should fire the management that came up with it; it does not in any way help Windows as a game platform.
Am I insane or is the woman superimposed on the right hand side of the [weirdly purely flash] Flight site topless with propellers for nipples?
or both?
Ice Cream has no bones.
Actually Minesweeper has been part of Windows since it was released in 1990's "Microsoft Entertainment Pack" and Hearts was included in 1992's Windows for Workgroups 3.1 as a demonstration of the "for Workgroups" part of the name.
So that's 20 years for Minesweeper and 18 years for Hearts. I don't know when Freecell was first released. It was part of win32s, but I can't find out when the first version of that thing shipped.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
My understanding, based on an editorial in Edge earlier this year, is that GfW just plain flat-out doesn't work. Not in the sense that its limited user base makes for poor multiplayer or that it has insufficient publisher for its downloadable games service, but in the sense that it does not reliably allow you to download games or play online.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
A massively multiplayer online game (also called MMO) is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and feature at least one persistent world.
So that's 20 years for Minesweeper and 18 years for Hearts. I don't know when Freecell was first released. It was part of win32s, but I can't find out when the first version of that thing shipped.
A little bit of digging shows it was later included in the Entertainment Pack 2 which was released in 1991 according to Microsoft's support lifecycle pages. It could not have been earlier than 1990 since that's when Windows 3.0 came out so 19-20 years old. Since it missed EP1, probably 19. And I can't really believe I bothered to go looking.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
From what I've read, your capital city continues to grow while you're offline. Though unlike games like Travian, you can't be attacked, or otherwise penalised, while offline. So yes, it's persistent.
Which is why some PSone games loaded level data on the fly, as needed, as intended. Compare the Spyro games to Mario 64. Some PS2 games do the same thing, ever play EQOA, you'll never see a load screen past boot up unless you directly TP somewhere. You could walk/swim from Fayspires to the Kappa fortress on Odus and never see a single load screen.
According to the trailer it is persistent.