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."

Comments

GFWL, no thanks

[cbope]

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.

Re:GFWL, no thanks

[EvilIdler]

To pile up on the hatred: Live accounts will also occasionally expire. Accounts tied to purchases. Fuck MS.

Re:GFWL, no thanks

[Xian97]

The only game I have tried through Games for Windows Live is Warhammer 40K Dawn of War II and it has yet to ever be able to connect - it always returns error 0x81051911. The troubleshooting steps Microsoft has you go through include everything from port forwarding a half dozen ports to resetting your TCP/IP stack, yet I can play any other online game with no issues, including connecting to X-Box Live on my sons console. GFWL is a POS and I won't buy any other game that requires it.

Re:GFWL, no thanks

[Spad]

What's that? You want me to register for a GFWL account and sign in every time I load the game just so I can play in single player? Good luck with that.

Yes, I know, you can create offline accounts, but you still have to create them and sign in just to play single player and yes, I know Blizzard have done the same thing with Starcraft II & Battle.net and they're fuckers for doing it too.

Re:GFWL, no thanks

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Don't forget about all Steam games.
Or the recent Bioware games.

Re:GFWL, no thanks

[naz404]

The new version of GFWL can run in offline mode which is a welcome change for those with flaky internet connections. That being said, it's still irritating and its only use is to record GFWL achievements in single player games.

Re:GFWL, no thanks

[fprintf]

Your technical notion of troubleshooting is entirely much more complicated than the consumer/user version of troubleshooting. What you described as "choose a random item from a list" is exactly what MS and any other consumer company label as troubleshooting. Look in the back of many device manuals and you will see a section labeled "troubleshooting" where it gives a description of the problem and a list of things to do/try.

Re:GFWL, no thanks

[YojimboJango]

The only game I have tried through Games for Windows Live is Warhammer 40K Dawn of War II and it has yet to ever be able to connect - it always returns error 0x81051911. The troubleshooting steps Microsoft has you go through include everything from port forwarding a half dozen ports to resetting your TCP/IP stack, yet I can play any other online game with no issues, including connecting to X-Box Live on my sons console. GFWL is a POS and I won't buy any other game that requires it.

Believe it or not I bought Bioshock 2 through steam, and it still required GFWL. I had to go through all that and more just to be able to save my progress in the game. Included in this mess is having to type in a CD Key twice for a digitally downloaded game (once to install the game, and once to tie it to my GFWL account).

Never again. Ever. YMMV, but all two games I've ever purchased that required GFWL have required googling for a solution to their DRM hassles to get the single player up and running. Never ever again.

Re:GFWL, no thanks

[arth1]

Offline accounts is a nice idea, but the way GFWL has implemented it makes is worse than nothing.
1: You still need to sign up for a Windows Live account and Microsoft Passport to activate it.
2: If you save your progress in offline mode, and then log in to online mode, your save progress is unavailable. Even on the same machine.

I did the big mistake of buying a collection of games on Steam that looked nice: Dirt, Dirt2, Fuel and Grid. Then I discovered that I could play but not save my progress without signing up for an account I didn't want. And would get interrupted every few minutes by a notice saying the servers could not be reached. It turns out that the service doesn't appear to work through NAT if instead of a cheap cone NAT home router, you have full symmetric NAT. In short, the games were a waste of money.

It's getting ridiculous when in addition to the Steam DRM, you are subjected to Securom (or worse) AND have to enter a CD key to use online AND have to sign up for a Live account. The incentive to download a cracked copy has become rather large, and isn't caused by pirates, but by MBAs who don't seem to understand that making your paying customers jumping through hoops make it more likely that they'll go somewhere else for their fix.

Re:GFWL, no thanks

[wolrahnaes]

I don't want to run into problems where "Oh crap, I must have started that game while on my sister's account or xbox, looks like all that playtime gets reset if I want to play it on MY account/xbox"

1. There are no problems moving games between Xboxes.

2. Saves are locked to their associated gamertag. This is designed to solve the "Oh crap, my brother/sister/parent/dog played on my console and erased my f*cking save!" problem. Just create yourself an XBL Silver gamertag, it takes seconds and is completely free, then all your stuff will be safely partitioned away. The 360 can use a USB drive to save, so even if you don't own a 360 at all you can just put your account and gamertag on any cheap USB drive to easily take it between friends houses.

Or maybe that's not the problem, I don't know, because everything gets so freaking out of whack if you don't play the games exactly as you were 'supposed' to play them as defined by the service.

What the fuck are you talking about? Log in to your account, play game any way you feel like.

I also love how it used to be that if I bought something and hooked it up to my television that it was a household purchase. Now? Looks like I'd have to buy every item for each person in my family if they want to enjoy the same game that I have.

And that hasn't changed at all. Purchases are tied both to the account and Xbox that they were bought with, so anyone playing on that Xbox can access the content regardless and that user can access it on any Xbox. It's very well implemented and there's an easy transfer tool to reassign the content to a different console in the event of a dead console or buying a new model.

So no, you're totally wrong if you think you need to buy content once for each person. One console, one purchase, everyone can use it.

Wow i must be tired

[Adambomb]

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?

Re:Wow i must be tired

[Anonymous Coward]

You just made thousands of Flash- and Microsoft-hating nerds knowingly enter a pure-Flash Microsoft site.

Truly well played!

Re:Wow i must be tired

[Anonymous Coward]

Not many people use screen resolutions that low

You'd be surprised.

Re:Wow i must be tired

[Spad]

Half the people I know still use 1024 on 19"+ monitors because otherwise "the screen is too small" for them to read.

Re:What about Hearts, Freecell and Minesweeper?

[dingen]

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.

AOE MMO

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it's persistent (which it isn't), how can they claim that it's a "massively multiplayer"? You might as well call any online game a "massive multiplayer" if:

a. It has a game lobby
b. Many people can play online at once.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go play my favorite MMO, Counter-Strike.

Re:AOE MMO

[lowlymarine]

Wikipedia, apparently:

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.

That's something they are good at

[Cigaes]

At least, reboots are something Microsoft are very good at.

Games for Windows

[Sockatume]

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.

Reboot is such a poor word

[cronius]

The term "reboot" is used to describe something "done again", but I think it's a pretty stupid word to use as it's not descriptive at all. Does my OS or hardware somehow radically change whenever I reboot it? Maybe Windows users experience this, I don't know.

When I first heard the term years ago I immediately disliked it. It feels like someone that don't work with computers as a profession thought that it was "cool" or "trendy" to use "pc terms" outside their original context, so "reboot" was the victim of the day.

< /rant >

Re:Reboot is such a poor word

[srothroc]

The way I see it is that "reboot" and "restart" are pretty much synonymous, so outside of the computer context, people say that they're "rebooting" a show or series. The difference in that area, for me, is that "restarting" implies that there's some kind of continuity -- for example, the modern Doctor Who show builds off of the old one and shares continuity. A "reboot," on the other hand, is a ground-up revamping. It still probably annoys you though.

Re:What about Hearts, Freecell and Minesweeper?

[dingen]

And I can't really believe I bothered to go looking.

I win.

Their own fault in the first place.

[ledow]

I never stopped playing AOE (specifically AOE2:Conquerors). I *DID* stop playing it online because MS just sucked the life out of the multiplayer aspect by locking it to a single vendor for online matchmaking and then destroying that facility when they got bored of AOE.

So, what's here for *me*, someone that wants to play AOE but was forced by Microsoft's enforced-obsolescence to stop playing it online unless I wanted to faff about with third-party software or entering IP addresses? I won't believe it won't happen again, and I don't believe that a new MMO "reboot" will be anywhere near as good as the AOE2:Conq. And are we talking about a monthly subscription model or can I actually *OWN* the game (or at least my copy of it) forever?

In the meantime, playing the classic version over a private VPN it is.

In Soviet Russia,

[smitty97]

You reboot Microsoft! Wait, that happens all over the world, not just Russia

Marketing is exempt from dog food

[Cornelius the Great]

You notice when Microsoft is trying to reach out to a large audience and advertise one of their own products, they don't force Silverlight down our throats?