Microsoft finally owned up to the fact that Games for Windows Live is absolute rubbish. Anyone that has been gaming on PC in the last decade knows that Valve’s Steam rules the roost for digital distribution and GFW rolled around a few years after Steam with the release of Vista. Both Vista and GFW received a rather underwhelming “meh” from gamers and the general public alike. However, like with the original Xbox, Windows Phone 7 and (dare I say) Windows OSes since XP, Microsoft is willing to back their vision with their deep pockets.
Kevin Unangst, Microsoft’s senior producer of interactive entertainment, shared with Computer and Video Games this month that Microsoft is vowing to change what has been a back burner endeavor: “We also didn’t back it up with the most important thing, which is doing fantastic games to take advantage of the service. A network by itself isn’t valuable – there needs to be great games to take advantage.”
What was intended to be a solid companion to the Xbox Live service was, instead, forgotten on the PC.
So, what’s the state of GFW today? It is still, unfortunately, lipstick on a pig. Though the interface has evolved over the last year, there are still only (only?!) 39 Live-enabled games in the catalog. That means fewer than 40 games from the mighty Microsoft and their partners to integrate with our precious Xbox identities. For everything that MS has tried to do with WP7 integration, perhaps they’ve finally decided to take a real, honest run at engaging the PC crowd.
To start, Microsoft is going to take input from developers to understand just what it is they are looking for in the service.
“I think the underpinnings are great, I think it’s going to continue to get better. We launched a new Marketplace which was great, we’re selling Live and non-Live enabled games.”
They’re also taking input from gamers themselves. For example, if you’re curious as to why Battlefield: Bad Company 2 shows up in the Marketplace as only being single player, you can click on Feedback and tell Microsoft how you feel about them misrepresenting game capabilities.
Yup, it’s going to be a while before GFW can touch Steam.
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