Live For Vista dead on arrival?

[ZippyDSMlee]

A year ago this month, at the last really big E3 ever, Microsoft announced its Live Anywhere initiative, promising to rapidly extend Xbox Live to the PC and cell phones. Finally, your Xbox Live friends list, achievements, Live Arcade, and all that other good stuff would be accessible on those other platforms with over 100 million gamers. I was absolutely giddy. They didn't show the service off per se, but rather had a mock-up demonstration of what it would be like. You'd be sitting there on your PC and someone on the Xbox 360 would see you online, invite you into a cross-platform game, and away you'd go. They'd send you a message, and you'd get it on your phone, PC, 360—wherever you happen to be. You could edit your Forza Motorsport 2 car on your PC and then take it out on the 360 to drive. Sure it was just a mock-up, but the idea was to say, "This is what we're going for."

This month, the first two Live PC games hit the market, first Halo 2 and then Shadowrun, and boy did Microsoft ever drop the ball on this one. Microsoft has set everything in place for Live on the PC to be a failure, and what's more, they're continually showing that their PR-speak claiming "we really care about the PC as a gaming platform" is 180 degrees out of alignment with their actions.

Live on the PC is nothing like that mock-up demo a year ago. It's Vista-only, which I guess I can understand. They want to move Vista as the gaming platform, not just Windows PCs in general. Perhaps Vista's networking security stuff is actually necessary for Live, I dunno. Okay, fine…we need to buy your expensive new OS to use Live. Fair enough. I can still sit there browsing the web and get a game invite or a message over Live, right? Or set up a Live voice or video chat? Nope. Live on the PC only runs while you're actually playing a Live-enabled game. So in order for my friends to see me online on my PC, I have to actually have Halo 2 or Shadowrun running. This sort of defeats the point, and it's not the way the 360 has worked for the last 18 months. I can sit at the dashboard, watch a movie, listen to music, or do whatever other non-game stuff on the 360 and still be fully connected to Live. So from a very core level, you get a second-tier experience on the PC, even though Live is coming to it much later.

Press Home on your keyboard when you're in a Live PC game and it acts like the big silver Guide button on your 360 controller. It brings up the Live menu, which looks exactly like the Guide on the 360. In fact, it looks too much like it. It's a very controller-centric interface, down to using controller buttons and icons. You can use your mouse on it, but it has clearly been designed for, well, a console. Mistake number two.

[ZippyDSMlee]

The biggest mistake Microsoft is making with Live on the PC is the way they're treating the PC as if it's a console platform they can control. They're trying to lock out the rest of the world and to charge for features that PC gamers have had for free for ages. It's a shortsighted, greedy scheme that could only come from a product manager or VP who simply doesn't "get" PC gaming. The free Silver level of Xbox Live lets you log in on the PC and earn Achievements just like you do on the 360—but only single-player Achievements. Multiplayer Achievements are only for those $50-a-year Gold members. Player matchmaking is for Gold members only. Voice in games is for Gold members only. Cross-platform play between 360 and PC is for Gold members only. In fact, the only thing silver members can really do is view a server list and hop onto a specific server.

The problem is, PC gamers have had a lot of this stuff free for years. We've had integrated voice chat in games for nearly a decade, and it's been free in most games. You can go back to Unreal Tournament 2003 (released in 2002) for an example of an old game with free voice chat, or look at the new Lord of the Rings Online (a Games for Windows branded game) for a more recent example. Gamers use Ventrillo or Teamspeak for games that don't have integrated voice components. They use Skype or various IM services for free messaging and voice chat. XFire is free, and it gives you messaging, in-game text chat, in-game voice chat, one-click joining the same server as your friends, and manages patches and downloads for lots of games. In many ways, it's twice what Live is on the PC, and it's free.


Live is a platform, and as such, it requires support from developers and publishers to be successful. Thus far, the only publisher to support it is Microsoft. When was the last time Microsoft announced a software or hardware platform with no third party support at all? Of course no developer is going to support Live on the PC. By doing so, they have to tell their customers accessing features that are free in other PC games is going to cost them money (and it's money to Microsoft, not the third-party publisher or developer!). The developers at Epic Games sum it up nicely, and you should really go take a listen to Tim Sweeney and Mark Rein on the April 6th version of the 1up Show, to hear why they aren't supporting Live on the PC with Unreal Tournament 3, and what Microsoft needs to do to fix it.

If you want publishers and gamers to embrace Live on the PC, you have to give them everything they get for free now, only better, and still free. That's the way the world works: People don't pay more to get less. Microsoft needs to make voice chat and matchmaking free on the PC. Let the pay users access cross-platform play and multiplayer Achievements. Build in new features (like system-wide clan support) that gamers are clamoring for as a way to add value to the pay tier. And where's the cool stuff like Live Arcade and Video Marketplace on PC? We want that stuff, too!

Somewhere in the bowels of Microsoft's game group is a product manager who truly believes that he's invented the wheel with Xbox Live and doesn't realize PC gamers have had most of its features free for years. He's blowing smoke up the ass of Peter Moore or Robbie Bach, telling them that developers will support Live on the PC because it's such a lovely integrated experience and so on and so forth. I know quite a few people in the games division at Microsoft who know all this…they clearly "get it." Someone needs to screw their courage to the sticking-place, go over their boss's heads, and send a brutally honest letter to an executive up in the "signs their paychecks" level of Microsoft's corporate ladder. Something like that letter J Allard sent out that got Microsoft to take the Internet seriously ("Windows: The Next Killer Application on the Internet").

If you happen to be such a high-level executive and you're reading this, I'd like you to ask the leaders of the Live project on Windows why there isn't a solid line-up of third-party support for Live on the PC this year. And don't accept wishy-washy answers about "growing the platform," because you wouldn't accept that from the Xbox team. You wouldn't go on sale with the Xbox 360 with nothing but a handful of Microsoft games for the first year and no third-party support announced at all, even for the future.

Microsoft doesn't just need a wake-up call about Live on the PC, their whole PC gaming strategy needs a swift kick in the ass.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2128056,00.asp
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it goes on for another 2 pages and pretty much says what MS is up to forcing people to play their games on vista or the 360 and tryign to get them to pay for both at the same time.

[Rhaigun]

Well, at least they're trying. They could have just went on ignoring it like a lot of people have been over the years. How many times do we have to hear PC gaming is dead before people wake up and realise it's stronger now than ever?

I agree it's going to need some serious changes, but at least they're headed in the right direction. Besides, it's only a matter of time before XBL and Vista Live synch up. You can bet it will happen.

[ZippyDSMlee]

Well, at least they're trying. They could have just went on ignoring it like a lot of people have been over the years. How many times do we have to hear PC gaming is dead before people wake up and realise it's stronger now than ever?

I agree it's going to need some serious changes, but at least they're headed in the right direction. Besides, it's only a matter of time before XBL and Vista Live synch up. You can bet it will happen.

I suppose it always sucks for the early adopters *LoL*

DO you think Live will go free anytime soon or cling to a fee based system till the last minute?

as much as I would it free NAO I think MS has enough might/money to not do it.

if board band was really widely avalible at a cheap price even if its 60/20 KBPS at 20$ a month it would make Live and other such services much more appealing.

[Rhaigun]

I agree. MS shouldn't be charging for Live. Especially on PC. It's like a dev with EA said: "MS needs to offer everything PC users can get for free and then some."

[ZippyDSMlee]

I agree. MS shouldn't be charging for Live. Especially on PC. It's like a dev with EA said: "MS needs to offer everything PC users can get for free and then some."

ME is palyign around you can MP with the silver account but you get non of the stat ,point or voice features that are almost standard in online PC games.

[ichfeuer]

microsoft is like a really beautifull prostitute. shes very good looking and appears to be awesome at what she does. then you shell out the 400 dollars that was one months pay to get the night of your life. then you realize that she charges 10 for each article of clothing she takes off. then when you finally pay for all of that you figure out she was wearing a pushup water bra, doesnt have real hair and is so stretched out you dont even feel her. so you just grit your teeth get it over with and cry to yourself because you got herpes.

[ZippyDSMlee]

microsoft is like a really beautifull prostitute. shes very good looking and appears to be awesome at what she does. then you shell out the 400 dollars that was one months pay to get the night of your life. then you realize that she charges 10 for each article of clothing she takes off. then when you finally pay for all of that you figure out she was wearing a pushup water bra, doesnt have real hair and is so stretched out you dont even feel her. so you just grit your teeth get it over with and cry to yourself because you got herpes.

And lo ,trendwhores came being shallow and trendy to steal all your bases.

[IonD.]

Well, since she's so prone to get viruses, you'd better use some protection while you're playing with her. :-)