GTA IV On PC Goes Exclusive With 'Games For Windows Live' 132
Erik J writes "Microsoft has announced that the PC version of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV will exclusively use Games for Windows Live for its multiplayer mode when it hits shelves November 18th. Rockstar founder Sam Houser explained the decision: 'As we work toward the release of the PC version, Games for Windows Live affords us the opportunity to seamlessly translate the multiplayer console experience for PC gamers, the service is a natural fit for the platform and we strongly believe it will help in building a strong online community around GTA IV PC.'"
Wired is running a story suggesting that this release could save the rather unpopular Microsoft PC gaming platform.
Games for Windows - LIVE is free as it should of b (Score:1, Informative)
Games for Windows - LIVE is free as it should of been at first and also run on XP.
If this was payed for LIVE + vista only then that would of KILLED the game.
GFW - good GFW LIVE - bad (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Won't see 'Games for Mac' anytime soon (Score:5, Informative)
Never mind the fact XGL and OpenGL are just as viable, if not more so, than the oh so resource-efficient MS implementations.
I sense sarcasm where there shouldn't be any. Do some research on OpenGL, specifically how it manages resources compared to DirectX, and you'll see why so many developers pick the latter. I'll also quote John Carmack:
"Actually, DX9 is really quite a good API level. Even with the D3D side of things, where I know I have a long history of people thinking I'm antagonistic against it. Microsoft has done a very, very good job of sensibly evolving it at each step - they're not worried about breaking backwards compatibility - and it's a pretty clean API. I especially like the work I'm doing on the 360, and it's probably the best graphics API as far as a sensibly designed thing that I've worked with."
Path of least resistance (Score:5, Informative)
GTA IV already used XBox Live on the 360. Given that the PC port was most likely from the 360 codebase, it would have taken more effort to not use GFWL than to use it. Of course the PR spin won't mention this.
Re:GFW - good GFW LIVE - bad (Score:3, Informative)
Well, games that are writing to your user folder are doing the "correct" thing, according to Microsoft.
http://ati.amd.com/developer/SwedenTechDay/02_Preparing_Games_for_Windows_Vista.pdf [amd.com]
It's not just about sharing - it's about security practices as well. If you are not running with Administrator privileges (which normal users are *supposed* to be running at), then these user directories are the only legitimate places an application can freely write to. In Vista, writing to the program files directory will be virtualized and shunted to a user-specific location anyhow. Games today still can't ignore running well on XP, but neither can they ignore the requirements of Vista.
Unfortunately, Microsoft has been pretty inconsistent about the recommended location of these types of files in the past - it's a bit of a moving target - as the inconsistency of your game saves shows. And unfortunately, Windows users (your post illustrates this exactly) have been wrongly trained to expect user-specific data to simply be written to a subfolder under the program's install directory or something like that (because this mechanism just hasn't been used or enforced on the Windows platform previously).
I empathize with the "messiness" of it, though. Incidentally, are you aware that you can point your "My Documents" folder anywhere, even a separate partition, or a common folder on your C drive? That might help you to keep things organized a bit better.
Re:The multiplayer console experience (Score:3, Informative)
If the game supports xinput and you have two xbox controllers plugged in then it shouldn't be a problem.