From what I have read the carrot here is that PC owners will have to pay for this service ala Xbox Live Gold. Xbox360 games will still use the Xbox Live system so if you want to play online or gain those all important cheevos then you will need a Gold sub. Microsoft tried getting us to pay a sub with GFWL and it failed dismally. This time they are trying it again but dangling the carrot of being able to have all those Xbox exclusives like RDR run natively on Windows.

Cost. Making the extremely large assumption that this is true, the chances are it'd be in the form of an integrated emulator so developers would only have to code one version of the program to be compatible with 2 systems.

Of course even if it massively increased the PC game library with a huge shot of serious quality (also lots of crap sadly), PC gamers would still complain.

That's pretty much the one reason I see this as even remotely possible. Microsoft only sees PC gaming as two things:
1) OS sales.
2) Subscription fees.

It explains the old GFWL/Vista situation. And them ceasing to publish PC games after it failed. Up until the recent Fable 3 release. If they could get people to buy Windows 8 and start paying Live fees on PC, they might start putting out PC games regularly.

It seems unlikely, but consistent with their past actions.

I still think this is only going to result in XBox Live Arcade tm games.

Alan Wake also kicks ass and I would love to play it on PC, but if you own a PS3 you won't find any other 360 exclusives to leave your mouth open with awe.

Just think we could hear our DVD drives (if we still have them) spin constantly.

Also I can just hear all the people running Windows 8 on their pentium M's (or equivalent) with Intel integrated graphics wondering why their XBOX 360 games won't work.

Would the availability of Xbox games decrease the demand for PC games? That is what worries me. While our library is limited and ports to pc are usually crappy, isn't that better than just playing Xbox games better than the Xbox?

I know it wouldn't kill PC exclusive/based games, but would it hurt it? If I have a console, is it that important to play console games on my computer?

IDK, I am no expert. Enlighten me.

How would increasing the PC's games catalog by >1000 games be a bad thing? Choice is always a good thing and given how there are games we will never get (Final Fantasy XII, Virtua Fighter 5, Alan Wake, Gears of War 2, Red Dead Redemption) there is no way this can be considered a bad thing.

It does raise the possibility of companies neglecting to create PC optimized versions at all. We would get the game itself, but the quality of the version available may lack.

Of course, this would require Windows 8 to see widespread adoption.

I think it's really beautiful, looks like a more dark version of Uncharted.

What impact could it have on future PC game production?
If I play a new 60$ game on my computer, I want the bells and whistles that come from using a pc. Otherwise why wouldn't I play the game on the system it was intended for?
Here is the problem: why should a publisher decide to push a pc version when they can depend on pc gamers to just buy the xbox version? They no longer need to spend more money to reach the pc market.
I would love to play those older titles but I expect better quality and accessibility from a new pc title. I don't want to only play xbox versions.


EDIT: Of course we have already established the likelyhood so I need not worry.

The companies that make games for the PC will continue to do so. The companies that make half-arsed ports or can't be bothered porting games at all will continue to do so. The status quo will not be changed we will simply have more games to play.

Also this is for Xbox360 games. The Xbox720 or whatever it's going to be called is also due to be shown off in 2012. We wont have compatability for that so companies who want to make games for the PC with that generation of hardware will have to make proper PC versions. Don't make the mistake of thinking this is giving you a console, it's giving you legal emulation of what is now legacy hardware.
Answered above.

Sorry, I had my head wrapped around Xbox in general and not 360 specifically. That clears the whole matter up.

Yes, that would be great to have access to those games.

i think it would be a disaster especially aim and shoot games, we all have already seen how much rage console players have against those pc players using keyboard and mouse to aim, so multiplayer will be a mess, not to mention hacking,cheating etc on pc

See that's the point, by the time this is announced (if indeed its announced) they will be looking to migrate 360 owners to 720 consoles. There won't be very many players left to care about playing on the native 360.