Live For Windows Coming in May

Several outlets are carrying the news that Live for Windows is coming in May to a PC near you. The announcement carried confirmation of a similar pricetag for Xbox Live, as well as details on some new titles. Halo 2 will be releasing right around the launch of the service (slated to go up May 8th), and Shadowrun will follow quickly sometime in June. Gamasutra has an interview with Xbox Live general manager JJ Richards on the subject, and 1up offers a bit of commentary with the news. Though when asked about it last week Microsoft reps seemed extremely confident, it still remains to be seen whether PC gamers will pay for what they've always gotten for free.

The really hilarious thing is cross platform play

[2008]

Windows Live lets you play against Xbox 360 Live subscribers.
However, Windows Live is Windows Vista only, so you can't play against people using Windows XP. Well done, what an impressive cross platform system!

I know 10 or so people who I've occasionally played online with on Windows using XP/2k, and don't know a single Live subscriber. I don't have much incentive to get Windows Live, do I? YMMV, of course.

pay full price + $50 a year to fully play m$ games

[Joe The Dragon]

so now we have to pay m$ $50 a year unlock all things in there new games. To get stuff that in the past you just need to buy the game to get.
M$ better not do the same thing to a MMORPG game I don't thing that people will want to pay for vista + $60 for the game + $15 a month + $50 a year + pay for points to get some in game content.

Re:Cheating is why I use Consoles On-Line

[stratjakt]

I dunno if you were into Halo 2, but the online experience quickly degraded into modem glitchers and snipers using a hacked mouse keyboard. Or people shutting off their madden games jsut before a loss so it wont affect their rank. On a "good day" you have a 12 year old calling you a faggot. Fuck online gaming.

Re:So, if we get ripped off with Vista then

[VertigoAce]

It's one account for both services (just like you can use an Xbox Live account/identity for the Zune Marketplace). I imagine relatively few people would consider paying for the Gold account on Windows, compared to Xbox 360 users who will use their existing account on Windows.

Excuse for Vista

[MobyDisk]

Microsoft is coming out with all kinds of excuses for force people to buy Vista. They are trying to make anything new they create artificially incompatible with XP. Xbox Live, DirectX 10, HDCP... There is no technical reason why these things can't work on XP, they just don't. It is very frustrating. Frankly, it is what makes the Mac look attractive. Apple goes out of their way to ensure compatibility. Microsoft goes out of their way to ensure INcompatibility. I wonder how long before somebody makes a hack that lets these things run on XP?

Re:Excuse for Vista

[drinkypoo]

Apple goes out of their way to ensure compatibility. Microsoft goes out of their way to ensure INcompatibility.

What?

Apple locks their OS to their hardware. That is the antithesis of ensuring compatibility.

I'm not trying to defend Microsoft's actions regarding Vista. Vista is crap and forcing people to go to Vista is crappier. But to hold up Apple as a paragon of compatibility is simply wrong.

Re:Xbox Live has features you don't get for free n

[miscz]

For instance, voice across the entire system (not just in-game chat) without having to worry whether the person is using TeamSpeak, Ventrillo, or Skype.

Would be more like:

For instance, voice across the entire system (not just in-game chat) without having to worry whether the person is using TeamSpeak, Ventrillo, Skype or Live.

Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly like on their console. They may be offering something slightly better but with such a price and already developed and estabilished alternative solutions they'll have a hard time getting marketshare.

Re:Excuse for Vista

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Microsoft is coming out with all kinds of excuses for force people to buy Vista. They are trying to make anything new they create artificially incompatible with XP.

Is that why Office 2007, PowerShell, Orcas, .NET 3.0, etc all work on XP?

The double-standards around here are tiring. Apple could've release Spotlight for OSX 10.3. There's "no technical reason" preventing that. Yet they didn't, and Spotlight was heralded as *the* reason to pay to upgrade to 10.4. Yet I heard no talk of Apple "forcing" upgrades by releasing features for 10.4 that could've been made available for 10.3.

On the other hand, Microsoft is bashed regardless of what they do. They make DirectX 10 specific to Vista, and are bashed for not backporting it to XP. They backport .NET 3.0 to XP and are bashed/mocked for reducing incentive to upgrade to Vista (I recall the many slashdot posts mocking Microsoft for backporting .NET 3.0 to XP, "HAHA, Yet another reason not to upgrade to Vista!! MS sucks!!".

Re:Excuse for Vista

[MobyDisk]

Is that why Office 2007, PowerShell, Orcas, .NET 3.0, etc all work on XP?

Because those are examples of applications that either came out before Vista, or appliccations that were not crippled. Which is why they have nothing to do with my point.

My point is that now that Vista has come-out, Microsoft is intentionally crippling things so that they don't work on XP. This is not a double-standard. Name one example of Apple selling a product where they made it artificially not work on a previous version of the system to force people to upgrade. Splotlight is not an example of that - it is an OS 10.4 feature. It isn't a program you can buy and install that pretends that it requires OS 10.4 and refuses to work.

And you are confused on .NET 3.0: It was never "backported" to XP. It was designed for XP, and pre-bundled with Vista. That's the entire point I'm making: Microsoft has convinced people that they must "backport" applications for "compatibility" with XP when it is the opposite - they are specifically disabling them from working on XP to pretend that Vista is required.