UGH!!! Here we go again. "Microsoft vows to improve Games for Windows Live"

[sandorski]

It had more than "a few hiccups" when it was first released. The historical revisionism that some people are coming out with just so they can rage about GFWL is rather disconcerting.

They were hiccups.

 

[TheSlamma]

Something needs to come out to tie PC games together eventually

On the 360 it's mindlessly easy to join my friends in a game whether it's Black ops, Assassins creed brotherhood or Gears of war 2. But on PC, joining UT 3 is a complete bitch and remembering my gamespy password is more painful, then left for dead 2 is super easy but a different username and pass from UT3, then over to Company of heroes different password and interface then over to dawn of war 2 which is GFWL and a different user and password. No wonder people who are not tech heads don't buy PC games.

My vote is more for Steam then M$ just cause I like how simple Steam is an all in 1 interface.. Personally I think they could create a media PC that was a console.. base it on WinPE or something, make pals with Netflx streaming etc etc and beat out Sony and 360 with the superior sales and no physical media.

 

[greenhawk]

steam has been out over 100% longer. steam was shit when they first started it. i hated it. but valve put in enough time and now it's a fantastic system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(software)#Beginnings
steam inital release - 2004

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFWL
GFWL inital release - 2007

I would say steam has been "good/decent" for over 3 years*. So for similar time lines, GFWL should be at the "good" stage by now, not where it is (ie: realising it has issues).

In the end though, steam set the trend, MS is generally good at following and with the money MS has to through around, being 3 years behind the 8 ball is pretty poor in terms of software/technology.


*The update for the large display/small display is, personally, a step backwards when it came out. The option to remember being small was too long in comming.

 

[greenhawk]

Let's not lose sight of the fact that Valve's goal is to dominate PC sales.

If it is good for the PC / gamer, should we care they want to dominate?

A monopoly is not always a bad thing.

(only when it changes to a bad direction without notice does it become bad generally).

 

[Veliko]

If it is good for the PC / gamer, should we care they want to dominate?

A monopoly is not always a bad thing.

(only when it changes to a bad direction without notice does it become bad generally).

A monopoly is always a bad thing - name me a good one.

 

[Veliko]

Steam has competition, GFWL is not part of it though.

Steam doesn't have any meaningful competition at all and it seems that some people don't even want it to either.

 

[Ancalagon44]

Steam doesn't have any meaningful competition at all and it seems that some people don't even want it to either.

You seem to have a vested interest in this - something you care to disclose?

You seem to miss how for the past two pages, people have been saying we would like competition but Microsoft seems unable to bring it. Care to refute that instead of saying we all hate competition?

 

[Veliko]

You seem to have a vested interest in this - something you care to disclose?

You seem to miss how for the past two pages, people have been saying we would like competition but Microsoft seems unable to bring it. Care to refute that instead of saying we all hate competition?

I have a vested interest in seeing some decent competition for Steam, yes.

GFWL is utter guff at the moment, MS have admitted as much and say they are going to improve it. The past two pages have been full of people saying "omg gfwl sucks GO AWAY" - it's almost as if they just saw 'GfWL' in the subject line and didn't bother reading anything else...

 

[Maximilian]

Ugh... YUCK!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBPYdgy35KA&feature=player_embedded

Hate microsoft so much...

 

[HomerX]

A monopoly is always a bad thing - name me a good one.

Monopoly the board game... !

As much as I like Steam I don't want it to dominate the market - competition is good

Between Steam and GFWL there is no "real" competition...
you can choose between an intel or an AMD CPU and you can Play all games with both of them...
But some Games NEED GFWL and some Games NEED Steam... where is the competition?
If you could choose between Steam and GFWL for a specific Game, this would allow competiotion... but nobody would use GFWL... so Microsoft has to "buy" developers in order to bring them to GFWL....

i HATE it when i know a certain game i want to play needs GFWL...