MS: Windows Live marketplace, GFW fees cut
Category: PC, Posted: 07/22/2008 at 03:15PM CDT by Billy Wang, Previews Editor
First discussed a few months back, Microsoft announced today that a Windows Live marketplace, similar to the Xbox Live marketplace, will launch this fall. In addition, all associated subscription fees for its Games for Windows Live Gold service have been permanently removed.
Once the Windows Live marketplace launches this fall, the Games for Windows Live service will be redesigned, namely the system's user interface to properly accomodate the PC crowd. Chris Satchell, Microsoft's Entertainment Business Division CTO, talked about why that change was necessary.
"The first UI was good but it was too console-centric. It wasn't really what Windows gamers wanted. We have a new UI that's consistent with the way Windows gamers want to interact. It's free to you as a developer, and we're reducing the technical requirements."
If you picked up that last part, game developers will be able to implement the Games for Windows Live service into their games for free. So far for one big developer, Relic Entertainment will be using the service for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II.
It's great to see these changes coming, but with other digital distribution services gaining (wait for it...) Steam, will this competition (finally) create some changes?
[Via Gamasutra]
- Mega Man 9 10/08/2008
- Mega Man 9 10/08/2008
- Mega Man 9 10/08/2008
- Rock Band 2 10/03/2008
- Rock Band 2 10/03/2008
- Tales of Vesperia 09/28/2008
- View More
- Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe ... 07/31/2008
- Hands-On: N+ 07/29/2008
- E3 2008: Resident Evil 5 hands... 07/25/2008
- E3 2008: Too Human hands-on 07/23/2008
- E3 2008: The Agency developer ... 07/22/2008
- E3 2008: Left 4 Dead direct fe... 07/21/2008
- View More
Kyle Stallock
Updated June 4th, 2008
Indie Games Journalism
Brendon Lindsey
Updated September 9, 2008
Blu-Ray Review: Trans...
Frank Ling
Updated: Aug. 1th, 2008 Are you a game snob?
Eddie Inzauto
Updated Wed, September 3
Too Human scribblings
GamerNode needs your help. Register
now and join thousands of gamers in a
crusade to spread the word of
GamerNode!
Join the Node Army!
- World's Longest Thread 10/10/2008
- Halo 3: Recon 10/10/2008
- You laugh, you lose. 10/10/2008
- 1cdkey.com/Battlefield 2 cd code... 10/10/2008
- 1cdkey.com/CnC 3 tiberium war cd... 10/10/2008
- What's your favorite grand theft... 10/10/2008
- What are you listening to? 10/10/2008
- What game did you play today? 10/10/2008
- Fun Fact... 10/10/2008
- 1cdkey.com /company of heroes d... 10/10/2008
- View More
Intresting.
Does anyone else sort of wish that PC users could download an "Windows Live" App? Windows Vs xbox 360 over live anyone?
...cool so the console gamers are going to be paying for the pc gamers subscription
P-thunder: I'm fairly against this. Console gamers would be at a disadvantage due to the mouse being more precise at aiming, and allowing for faster turning around. Being a primarily PC gamer I think this would make things to easy and really cheap, when playing against console gamers.
So, when does Xbox Live become completely free for console gamers M$? Gold on a PC only allowed cross-platform play, so there wouldn't be much point in paying the fee unless you already had a 360 and were likely paying it already.
I'm going to search petitiononline to see if there's a petition about this that won't make any difference anyway.
Yeah 3B, online petitions are about as useful as a condom machine in the Vatican.
Good to see that MS have made their GFW Live service free, but it does kinda make you wonder why they're still charging console users.
Because they can. We PC gamers have plenty of other online services with other games, so if we were charged we could just play other games. Xbox only has live, which means that MS has a monopoly over it.