Hard Case: Games for Windows Live versus PC Gaming

Posted 11/03/2009 at 9:45am | by Loyd Case

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Whenever I think about Games for Windows Live, I feel like Charlie Brown, trying to kick the football that Lucy is holding. Ever optimistic, Charlie runs at the ball, only to have it jerked away at the last second. Games for Windows Live is like that – heavy on of promises, light on delivery. Someone needs to wrestle Windows gaming from the gaming group at Microsoft and give it back to the Windows team.

In other words, give the Games for Windows task to someone at Microsoft who actually cares about the PC. Windows 7 has been an impressive success, and it would be great of the team that’s responsible for making a better Windows for the PC take on the chore of making a better gaming experience for Windows.

Right now PC gaming at Microsoft lives in the Entertainment and Devices division, those edgy folks who brought you the Xbox, Xbox 360, Zune, Windows Mobile and Windows Automotive. While the Xbox 360 is finally profitable, the system has certainly has had its issues – red ring of death, anyone?

The real issue is that Games for Windows Live feels clunky and just gets in the way. While it’s come a long ways since the fiasco that was the PC version of Shadowrun, it’s far from an elegant experience.

Steam and Impulse, as examples, usually offer day one downloads of tier one titles. New stuff appears on those services practically daily. There’s little new that ever appears fon GfW Live. Or maybe it does, and you can’t see it (more on that in a moment.) Games for Windows Live offers no games, but does offer downloadable content and an auto-patching mechanism. However, that autopatcher is intrusive and annoying, unlike the way Impulse updates its games.

There are other oddities. For example, it had been some time since I’d played Fallout 3. So I’d forgotten exactly which DLC I’d bought. So I logged into the Games for Windows Live client to see which packages were available. Imagine my surprise when I saw nothing for Fallout 3 at all.

As it turns out, I had to install the game, which wasn’t on my latest production PC. Once done, the Fallout 3 DLC list “automagically” appeared. That’s pretty dumb behavior, assuming that you’re always going to log into the client from your gaming system. I can install the Steam client and see what games I’ve bought, even if I don’t necessarily want to download them.

What’s really going on, of course, is that Games for Windows Live is the bastard stepbrother of Xbox Live. All the attention goes to Xbox Live and the Xbox 360, which is the big moneymaker. What’s worse, Microsoft seems intent on making Games for Windows Live become more like the console connectivity experience, and less like the PC. All those cool features on Steam, like the Steam Cloud? Nope.

Services like Steam and Impulse certainly have their own set of problems, but both services are updated on an ongoing basis, adding new features and new technologies.

I suggested, somewhat tongue in cheek, that Microsoft move Games for Windows Live over to the Windows group. In truth, I’m not sure that’s a good idea either – just take a look at the lack of functionality in the Games Explorer. Well, with Windows 7, you can now at least see your games in the Start menu.

What I really think Microsoft should do is become a tool provider for online gaming infrastructure, much the way they make tools available to applications developers in general. Instead of trying to manage a patching system, make the tools available for game developers to do it themselves, in a consistent, uniform way. Instead of game publishers relying on broken technology (I’m looking at you, Gamespy), offer a rational, uniform set of online connectivity APIs and tools.

Or maybe it’s just hopeless. Anyone remember DirectPlay? That was Microsoft’s attempt to supply wide area networking connectivity APIs inside of DirectX. It was abandoned after DirectX 8 in favor of – you got it – Games for Windows Live.