Ye, but that stands out as the biggest "Really? To change my name, which costs you nothing to do, you want money? Really? You've got to be kidding? No, you are serious aren't you? You are surprised people hate your service? I'm not." Other things worthy of note as to why Live is just flat awful: Any game that uses live for multilayer has to implement the live multilayer networking protocol, while not knowing too much about the technical details, it's just bad. An exampled explanation as to why it is bad and how it could have been better than steam, but why it isn't because they didn't: When hosting you still have to open ports like you would with any normal game. But some times when you are joining a hosted game, you still need to open the same port that really would should only be necessary for hosting a game. This is a pile of suck because with live it's never clear who is actually hosting the game if the session leader changes. Further to this, because live is just a client to the live service, there is no reason that opening ports is necessary in the first place, the infrastructure is in place to perform NAT and firewall traversal, they either just didn't think about it or didn't bother to implement it, yet, had they done it, it would have nullified nearly all firewall and router related networking problems. Steam could offer a similar system, however steam doesn't require developers to implement there networking code in any particulate way, so writing a NAT/firewall traversal API for every one in such a way that it would be useful would be quite difficult for a number of reasons. The next problem that winds me up quite badly: You stats are largely not stored with your account, but rather with the local copy of your account that is only present on the machine you are using at the time. WTF is this about seriously?! This is just awful, a service which appears to be all about 'online stuff, your profile is your profile, it keeps track of your stats' it does no such thing. it does store some stuff, like achievements but that's about it. Just to compare it to Steam, steam for the longest time didn't have any statistics tracking either, but it didn't give the appearance (at least to me) that it did, but now it does, and live still doesn't. This is always some thing that perplexed me about live: One thing that appear to be a rather epic fail as far as I can tell is that in order to run live you actually have to run a game. So, in order to arrange to play a game with someone you have to use other means to get them to launch the game, so what's the point of the invite/messaging system if it's only real purpose is to contact people to get them to play games if you have to first tell them to launch the game using another method of communication in the first place?
They can have a vision, I guess the reality of PC gaming is not for the faint hearted... (that's not my PC by the way!) *Edit* Actually I wouldn't mind a situation where I can use something on my PC where I can play cross-platform against both Xbox and PS3 people. I realise that these games will not utilise the full power of my PC, but I don't really care. Don't get me wrong I still want PC specific games to play (such as Arma 2 etc), but some cross platform stuff would be good too. When GFWL first came out I remember playing Shadowrun on my PC (which wasn't great I know) against some of my Xbox friends and it was a good experience. Oh, and Linux - Aaaaaarrrrrghhhhhh!!! Three sentances to send a chill down my spine when my clients ask... "Does it work on...." a. Linux b. my iPod c. my iPad Answers... a. No b. Never c. see answer to b.
I note that such a system wouldn't be the end of the world to me, but only if it met some criteria: 1. It didn't look like such absolute crap. 2. It didn't seem to rely on Facebook. 3. I could go all emo and paint something black if I got bored. That light-ui would eventually make my eyes hurt. 4. It was opt in ONLY. I do not want to buy a game and suddenly have this avatar that I doubt will fully reflect me. Then, and only then, would I consider it, and that's only consider, Microsoft. Elsewise it'd just make me stop buying games with such software integrated, I'd become a Steam-only person, because GFWL is bad enough in the games it's already part of. I know, full well, that they'd try and pass it off as a distribution platform though. The main reason Steam goes by is because it's good, as well as the fact it's needed to play some games because of how Valve built them. This would be burned alive if it tried such an act. And I sincerely hope whichever Marketing Exec thought this up sits down, looks at what he's doing and has a long, hard Epiphany, because this is kak.
When I get the ability to point at my monitor and make stuff happen, that is when I will play farmville. Until than, 14 year old girls can have it. I'm not missing out.
I have more complaints that can be contained in one post, but the biggest one: What is with the avatar obsession? Is it just something which is being pushed by nearly all online applications or is a reactionary feature to meet the demands of people who are actually quite desperate to describe themselves through a virtual character? As an owner of several different avatars and online personas I can't help but feel slightly guilty. It's admittedly convenient to keep actual personal information away from the public while also having a persistent persona which is easily recognizable as myself regardless of my current game/forum/application. For example, I can easily recognize boiled_elephant of Bit-Tech forums as one and the same with Duke Swarthington Blythe of Steam because of the shared account photo without having to know anything about the real person (had to pick on someone ). That is the exact opposite of how Microsoft seems to see avatars. It's specifically not the real person, it's an entirely fictional persona which is used by a real person. Where do MS and many other companies such as Nintendo (Mii is a great avatar example) get the idea that people want to represent themselves and live in some vicarious virtual fantasy? And for the record: "New games and media are easy to discover and play. I can quickly search, find, and play the games and view media that are of interest to me." Please shoot me if I ever say something like that.
oh. dear. Thanks for the headsup TCOZ. It's a scary future. I had high hopes that the old folks home of the future would somehow be like the gaming extension of Jedra's desk, except with false teeth and gin rather than luckystrike and vodka. But instead we're all going to be taken by the hand and force fed microtransactions, in a sickeningly sweet package paid for by our non-existent state pension. What a dark and depressing future this is. Can we have a new one please....
You know what gets me... Windows Gaming eXperience? why does everything have to use the x as the capital?.. whats wrong with the letter e?
Marketing "gurus" seem to think it's clever because when spoken the word starts with the sound "ecks", almost as though the letter "X" was being spoken and then followed by the rest of the word. Normally they spell it like "X-perience" though. Odd to keep the "e" in the front. In case you ever want to make your name plural: Knux.
Who in the he11 missed that headshot at the end of the video? The whole thing looked like a Kinect for PC ad. 160 MS points ($2.00) for a dress....are people really this stupid........nevermind, I already know the answer.
To me this hideous misrepresentation shows that MS have abolutley no idea who their gaming user base are... why havent they asked us???? Instead of just assuming apparently that were all young women and business men?
We're not their target audience. This video wasn't trying to accurately represent PC gaming, it was an attempt to appeal to a new emerging audience - the people who play farmville and the sims in their spare time and have bad PCs. It might be representatively ****ed, but it's a smart business move. (I mean, c'mon, they're not going to actually lose existing PC gamers through this video. Nothing would dissuade us, we're too heavily invested to jump ship and they know it.)
Listen to this guy I doubt this will work, farmville junkies won't jump ship. Once you are used to something, you stick to it, I doubt M$ will have much sucess with this
