Tue, Mar 08, 2011 | 18:55 GMT
Microsoft: Games for Windows Live had a “rocky start,” but will “continue to get better”
Microsoft has promised that Games for Windows Live will “continue to get better,” despite its “rocky start,” once more developers adopt the platform.
Speaking in an interview with CVG, Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business Kevin Unangst said that the “rocky start,” was due to the service begin designed as “a partner to the console service more than the PC service.”
“The service started with the right intent, which was to bring Achievements, friends, multiplayer gaming and matchmaking in a really great way to PC,” he said. “”I think because it was designed originally as a partner to the console service more than the PC service, we had a rocky start.
“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.
“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. We’re also seeing developers get back to development. Epic did a great job of promoting Live with Bulletstorm. They’re pleased with the platform and the service is going to continue to get better over time.”
Unangst said the GFW Live service will continue to evolve thanks to input from developers such as Lionhead Gas Powered Games.
“The Age of Empire team has got a lot of great input and the same can be said for Lionhead, who said ‘we’re going to build Fable 3 on the PC’ and know what they want out of the service,” he said.
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Posted in: Development, Games for Windows, Microsoft, PC
Tags: kevin unangst
9 comments
#1
Hunam
08/03/11, 7:01 pm
The problem is the service was, and still is horrible. Matchmaking is slow and laggy, if you can’t get online it wont let you touch your save games, it sometimes just up and decides not to work causing me to reboot the game 4 times and the microphone settings barely work. It’s barely a shade of what it is on the 360 and it’s certainly far worse than steam.
#2
Stardog
08/03/11, 7:04 pm
Cancel it. It’s terrible, and ruining games on Windows.
I couldn’t even play the Age of Empires Online beta because of a ridiculous mismatch between my GFWL account/gamertag and my XBL account. Nothing works, and it never has.
#3
Stardog
08/03/11, 7:06 pm
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_other-gaming/every-time-i-log-into-games-for-windows-live-forum/6011b2ef-4897-47e2-b99c-f0b32fc14f15
I’ll post that here, since none of us can login to the official GFWL forums, or create new accounts to inform them of their terrible service.
#4
jacobvandy
08/03/11, 8:06 pm
Games for Windows as a branding and advertising scheme for PC games is fine, but we don’t need your shitty LIVE service, MS. Although, what happened to having kiosks in stores with playable games next to those for consoles? Another broken promise…
#5
loki
08/03/11, 8:08 pm
just lol
Games for windows sucks
#6
Kalain
08/03/11, 8:09 pm
GfWL live was a disaster from the start. Why force PC gamers to pay to play on a network with hardly anyone on?
Now, after seeing what Valve and steam have been doing all these years, they dripped updates and spewed the same old rubbish lines ‘we care about PC gaming’, whilst closing down PC developers and keeping their Xbox Studios (until recently).
Naa, I’ll stick with Steam and Impulse thank you very much.
#7
SamaT
08/03/11, 8:31 pm
“Games for Windows Live had a ‘rocky start’” Haha, kind of like psn.
#8
Ge0force
09/03/11, 9:03 am
GFWL sucks, please keep it on the x360 where people even pay for it.
#9
bpcgos
09/03/11, 9:18 am
Read John Walker investigation about the good and bad of GFWL and GFWL MarketPlace (its funny though, a lots of their promises were not yet been realised since 4 years ago!) here http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/09/on-the-rocks-games-for-windows-live/#more-53417