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

"letting you play previously purchased games."

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, thank you! Thank you so much! I feel so special, so lucky! Thank you so much again for letting me continue to play my previously purchased games!

Re:"letting you play previously purchased games."

[josephtd]

I believe the summary misspelled rented.

Re:"letting you play previously purchased games."

[TWX]

And people wonder why I don't get rid of my movie collection in favor of netflix or some other streaming service...

Re:"letting you play previously purchased games."

[mlk]

The two are not the same.
Netflix you are renting X files for the next 30 days. You know this. No expectations that you can stop playing the £Y and movies will still magic onto your tellybox.

"Buy" a game from Steam/Xbox/Origin/what evs and you pay just the once and expect it to continue working.

One you are getting a service, the other you are getting a product.

Re:"letting you play previously purchased games."

[0123456]

Until GoG closes and you have to reformat and can't actually download the game from them again.

There's thing thing called 'backups', dude. You see, Gog actually give you an installer file that installs the game, you don't have to download it from them every time you want to install it.

Re:"letting you play previously purchased games."

[0123456]

And this is the kind of crap people love having to deal with when they just want to play a game that's installed on their PC, on their PC.

GFWL is the DRM scheme that makes other DRM schemes look good.

I dont think they ever really wanted to until Win8

[Voyager529]

See, The Xbox PC marketplace, the once or twice I used it, was never really a desirable means of doing anything. Every time I tried something, it would only be available on Xbox...because apparently hiding things that can't be used on a PC was an insurmountable task. It didn't seem to do cool things like let you play PC versions of Xbox games you own or save my game of Batman Arkham Asylum that was a GFWL title such that I could pick up where I left off after a format...

It surprises me that Microsoft has traditionally done such a piss poor job of integrating ANYTHING involving gaming or software purchasing into the OS. Maybe now with Win8 they'll take it a bit more seriously, but I'm still shocked they didn't partner with EA years ago and make a windows-integrated service that precluded the necessity of Origin in the first place.

Re:"letting us play"

[Dins]

Simple. Just buy the game you want, then download a cracked version of it and play to your heart's content.

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:"letting us play"

[0123456]

I'm thankful I'm being permitted to play the game I bought. Fortunately I only bought one game with that "windows live" abomination strapped onto it.

I heard they're going to rename it 'GamesForSure'.

Don't worry...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they won't do this to the Windows 8 Marketplace.

Re:Always complainers

[Nyder]

The way I see it, MS could write everybody on /. a $10 000 cheque and slashdotters would turn around and say it wasn't done right. Just cause it's MS.

You must be new, oh yes, I can see by your 2.6 Million UID that you are. Let me give you a clue. MS has been making products and dropping support for those products for quite awhile. See, MS had ADHD. They can't pay attention, so they miss the trends until they are already happening. Then they try to play catch up, but since they can't focus worth shit, they lose interest again.

You know how many times they have had a PC Gaming Initiative? About every 5 years. How long do they last? One set of games being released, if that. And even that is to promote something else. Halo & Shadowrun? Remember those? Had to have Vista to run them because they required Direct X 10? MS was pushing Vista & Direct X 10, telling peeps they were there for PC gaming. And yet those 2 games, with a small hack, could run just fine on XP because they didn't use DX 10, they used DX 9.

I'm not even going to into the features that MS always promises for new OS's that never make it. Or how they will focus to take over a market, then let it sit (Web Browsers is a good example of this. They fought tooth and nail to beat Netscape, then once they did, sat on IE6 for years without updates.

No, I don't like MS. They have a history of being twats and most of us know it.