Okay Microsoft, you give us the piece of junk that you call Games for Windows Live. We show great displeasure with this, and you claim you will fix it.....AND YOU GIVE US THIS ATROCITY?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBPYdgy35KA&feature=player_embedded
What you just saw my friends, is supposedly an internal video leaked from Microsoft that shows the future GFWL. And if you think that link is a prank, just check Pcgamer's website, they have the video on the front page.
It even misspells "pwned".


Someone, please tell me this is a hoax and I just didn't get the memo.

So.. wait. It was GFWL, they just recently renamed it GFWM, and now they're renaming it again, to WGX?

This sounds very similar to Outlook Express/Windows Mail/Windows Live Mail which are all the same toad with slightly different lipstick.

The chances of something that expensive looking not being official are pretty slim, unfortunately.

It looks like one hell of a casual gaming microtransaction-lubricated fuckfest.

"162 likes, 4,911 dislikes"

Microsoft does it again.

So this is Microsoft's new platform targeted at ... metrosexuals?

Oooh, Kinect-enabled Bejeweled.

As I said in the other thread, the idea is brilliant.

We'll just have to wait and see. I'd gladly use GfWL over Steam, if they a-freaking-llow me. Hopefully this will be it! Well, they surely scored high with WLM. ;)

The first part of that sentence baffled me. The second part clarified. Yes, clearly the only person left enthusiastic about GFWL is someone who has never used it.

Anyone read the first comment in the youtube video? They claimed that online gaming was great before. Now it sucks. Maybe that was the problem? Being too good, it provided the gamer with too much freedom and content, making it bad business-speaking. I remember online gaming in the late nineties was awesome. Before everything had to be "on the cloud".

Kind of. The main problem with the whole service is that the same Xbox team is running it (or a different team, but the Xbox guys are in charge).

Microsoft scored high with Windows 7, Windows Live, Windows Phone, Visual Studio (and the other development tools), I'm sure they have the people to make GfWL better.

They seem to just don't give a fuck. Hopefully this video is the start of a better future for GfWL.

The presentation, as in, using FarmVile and Bejeweled, might have been wrong, but the idea is great. We'll just have to wait and see.

I'm in no rush to be buying games anywhere other than on Battle.Net (Blizzard games, that is). :p

The latest WLM got a facelift, sure. It's still just the same thing with a ribbon interface however. I'm pretty sure the back-end has changed very little since OE6 beyond a line or two of code that doesn't let it execute all kinds of "funny" scripts as soon as it sees them. Detaching it from the OS was a good move, however. They see where the market lies, however. We, as in so-called "real" gamers (or whatever term you might want to use), are a very small speck compared to the loads of people primarily playing similar casual games.

Microsoft are really putting every effort into killing Windows as a gaming platform aren't they?

The problem with the causal market is that its longevity is in question. Yes, it will always be around now. But at the size it's at? There don't seem to be anywhere near as much in the way of repeat customers in the casual games market. It is being treated like a fad and like all fads they won't find much in the way of loyal customers by the end of it.

My point is that if Microsoft want this platform to last they're better off targeting an established repeat customer base rather than one that could have shrunk to a third of its current size a few years from now. There's no reason that this platform couldn't cater for both, but the video left me less than optimistic about it.

Of course MS could just ride the remainder of the casual game market peak and ditch the platform by the end of it - like they've done with so much else. The only problem with that is that they're maintaining a reputation for being unreliable when it comes to non-OS related ventures.
But despite being the creators of Windows they have little to no influence on the matter.

True. Direct X isn't the only capable API though. While OpenGL would, in an ideal world take up the reigns if Direct X fell behind, a lot of developers are loathe to use it and will plump for the easy option. Especially given how consoles are still retarding progress in graphical development anyway. Ultimately it would take a lot for that situation to change.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/john-Carmack-DirectX-OpenGL-API-Doom,12372.html

Here's Carmack now saying direct3d is better than opengl, but interestingly, he says he won't switch over to direct3d, when opengl is pretty much what they work with.