YouGamers - Articles - Games for Windows Live - how to fall on your face at launch

Home

News

Reviews

Games

Hardware

Downloads

Games for Windows Live - how to fall on your face at launch

By: Jarno Kokko Jun 09, 2007

...now with Live

With Shadowrun and Halo 2 for Vista, Microsoft has unceremoniously launched their Games for Windows Live service. It's essentially a Vista-only version of the Xbox Live Gold. The two memberships are really one: They share the same subscription fee and you can play with other Live Gold subscribers online using it for peer-to-peer matchmaking. The problem is - that's where the similarities end.

Microsoft currently offers the following services in Games for Windows Live:

* PC to PC multiplayer including browsing a list of active PC games is free
* Experience cross-platform gameplay with Shadowrun now
* Play against other PC gamers online with Halo 2 for Windows Vista
* 1 gamertag, 1 friends list, 1 list of achievements for your Windows PC & Xbox 360
* Easily find and play supported cross-platform titles online with your friends across both your Windows PC & Xbox 360
* Games for Windows - LIVE is available in every country and region supported today by Xbox LIVE
* There are 2 levels of membership, Silver (free) & Gold ($49.95 U.S.)
source: www.gamesforwindows.com

There is a catch though - you need a Gold membership to play cross-platform, to earn multiplayer achievements for your gamerscore and to find games without browsing a list of dedicated servers. It appears that every effort has been made to make things difficult for Silver-level members to play online.

The problem with the Gold subscription at the launch of the Games for Windows Live is that it currently offers horrendously poor value for money. There are only two PC titles that use it - Halo 2 for Vista and Shadowrun - and neither has exactly set the world on fire. It's just hard to fork over $4 a month to play these games, as there are numerous other similar PC titles to choose from that do not require you to subscribe to Live. After all, Live is a peer-to-peer matchmaking system - a glorified Battle.net with achievements tacked on. And that $4 assumes you are paying for the full year's membership - you'll end up paying even more if you choose the six or three month subscription.

Far too common a greeting when trying to sign in.

Let's look at how the Live service is different on the two platforms. On the PC you actually have to be running a Live-enabled game for the service to work. To make things worse, the system has been far from hassle-free, with unexpected downtimes and odd incompatibilities with some networking hardware. It also suffers from the general problem of any centralized matchmaking system. Your network connection may work, your friend's network may work, but if Live servers are down or out of your reach, you can't play unless you are part of the same LAN and the game offers a LAN play option.

On Xbox 360 the system works because every online game expects you to subscribe to Gold, and Live on Xbox 360 also offers you access to hassle-free (for the most part) downloads of game demos, trailers and the Live Arcade games. There is also a solid universal friends list and invite system that Just Works for all games - no matter what you are doing on your Xbox 360, a friend can contact you over the Xbox Live and even voice chat just with the dashboard to set up some multiplayer gaming.

On the PC, Live is only a half-assed attempt to desperately fulfill what Microsoft promoted at E3 in 2006 - the perfect world of easy cross-platform gaming. The idea is good, but I guess it was announced before anyone actually had implemented much of anything. In the rush to get the great vision to the market along with the bumpy launch of Vista in general, things went horribly wrong. The current implementation should be burnt and the ashes scattered to four winds. It wouldn't exactly impress even if it were completely free at this point, and asking money for the current weak service offering is just misguided. It's like someone is trying really hard to make Games for Windows Live a flop.