Microsoft Closes Xbox.com PC Marketplace

SmartAboutThings writes "Microsoft is definitely changing things in its gaming department: it has now announced in a support note on the Xbox site that it will be shutting down the Xbox.com PC Marketplace on August 22nd. This comes shortly after news that Microsoft hired former Steam boss Jason Holtman, whose mission at Redmond is to 'make Windows great for gaming.' The Microsoft Points system will be retired on August 22nd as well. The Games for Windows Live client software will not be affected, at least initially, letting you play previously purchased games."

Comments

chasing ghosts.

[nimbius]

Redmonds day late and dollar short approach to rectifying its inevitable downfall in gaming is cure for the symptom and not for the cause. While Steam announced a radically new direction in gaming thats been clammoured about for ages, Microsoft basically fashioned the next generation console into a prison yard for publishers and a land mine for customers. Damage control be damned, the XBox likely will not play a huge part of 2014's next generation consoles seeing as Sony has not only achieved architectural parity but actually vocalized sympathy and support for gamers in the face of Redmond. Nintendo can make hardware mistakes but its hard to escape the notion that almost every game in their lineup is about fun and rewarding gameplay first.
If gabe is worried about the success of his shift to linux, all he has to do is utter the magic words, "Half Life 3." I'll gladly spend the next 2 days fervently compiling and patching to ensure Gentoo can run it.

Re:How to make windows great for gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry but linux still sucks for gaming, no other way to put it, not only does most of the new games still ONLY come out on microsoft windows, but you would have to flush most of your existing collection down the crapper, wine still only runs about 2 out of 5 games, i own a few hundred PC games, most of them are non-functional in wine and the few that work are very quirky and behave oddly.

The only thing i like about linux is XFCE (makes windows desktop look obsolete), otherwise it seems to be getting as slow as windows these days (more or less behaves like windows, now whether thats windows trying to be linux or linux trying to be windows idk)

Re:"letting us play"

[Hatta]

That only rewards their wacky DRM schemes. Pirate it and play it, or don't play it at all. Just don't pay for DRM. Ever.