Lets forget the whole you suck, they suck part...

Okay, so in the left hand we have the PC with GfWL, the 360, and Windows Phone. Microsoft is trying to unify the experience into a single brand called XBOX LIVE. The idea is that, for properly developed games of course, you would be able to play with your friends together, and/or you would be able to use the same saved games, no matter the platform.

In the right hand, you have the PS3 and Steam. The idea is pretty much the same.

In different forums, I've seen lots of hate towards Microsoft's doing, and lots of praise for Sony's / Valve's doing.

They are basically trying to do the same thing... why is the first one hated, and the second one praised? Are Microsoft haters getting the better girls these days? Or are Valve's fanboys being given tastier cakes?

Opinions, if any?

I've never followed this story, but I assume it's a combination of Valve having a lot of fanboys in several sectors of the gaming community and the continuing perception of Microsoft being the corporation of evil.

Honestly, they all suck, but of the three, GFWL is the only one that's caused me personal any serious headaches, but that's mostly a matter of luck, I know that Steam and PSN are both waiting to bite me when I least expect it.

hmm i would not know about gfwl games why? cause this
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but i think the most hate comes from the fact that on steam, you would have to go through another login for all the gfwl titles offered there

GfWL may have caused problems for people, but Zune Pass, XBox Live, and a lot of the other crap they are doing are outstanding. Sony and Valve are actually trailing by a much larger margin than most people think in this game. If MS nails the phone thing they'll basically have replaced the only fail in the equation (they failed The Kin so I expect they might do better this time around), which is Zune hardware (and it was mostly a marketing fail, so far as I know there was nothing wrong with Zune).

If that happens a new version for GfWL will come out, called Desktop Live or some crap, which will brand desktop games a la XBox Live and they will have succeeded.

Now whether this will be a good thing or not, I'm not saying, what I am saying is that they are 75% there.

Well, pre-XBox there has arguably been a gap between the quality and popularity of Microsoft software. </Macintosh user ;) >

There has been, but I hear Win 7 is really solid, our upgrade at work from XP went flawlessly. I use Ubuntu because i'm one of those crazy guys who can support himself, but most people just need crap to work and not get in their way. It seems Win 7 does that at home and at work.

GFWL is a service that in all the years it has been around, it has not improved one bit. It's still terrible, it is annoying, and it fucks up advancement in games. Meanwhile, Steam went from pretty terrible to the current most convenient distribution platform.GFWL adds hurdles and does not provide a significant benefit to the player. Steam does.

Edit: Valve is also taking a pretty huge gamble with the PSN integration, and providing a free PC/Mac version of Portal 2 with the Steam integrated PS3 Portal 2.

GFWL is, in my experience, a terrible platform. It consistently annoyed me the few times I've used. Steam, on the other hand, I have used extensively and found it remarkably reliable, not to mention a source of great deals. The OP is right, the idea is similar, but I think the vast difference in usage stems from consumer satisfaction with the service they receive.

I think it's only a relatively small amount people on this forum and others who really care about one corporation being 'evil' or 'good' or whatever. For most it's just about the games, and the community that comes with it. If Steam were to suddenly go down the drain, I don't think all the goodwill that Valve has for their games would stop most people from looking for a competitor who offers a better service.

It is kind of puzzling why GFWL suffers so, since I generally hear only good things about XBL, although it's a paid service. There's a great article on The Escapist that describes the frustrations that GFWL causes. My personal frustrations were never this bad, but it was enough that I refuse to use it if I have an alternative.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/8365-Experienced-Points-Games-for-Windows-FAIL

I've heard that, but at this point, I refuse to give MS anymore money. Which is a pain given that it's bundled with most computers and apparently you can no longer refuse the EULA without returning the computer.

I'd much rather use XBOX Live than Steam to be honest. GFWL is very annoying, but so is Steam, let's face it. It's a clunky client that takes quite a long time to load if you got a few dozen games, it pushes updates on you even when you just want to play the game (so does Xbox Live come to think of it, boooo), you can't play the games offline when you want (offline mode is very very fiddly and stops working randomly - usually when I need it), etc. etc.

In the end, any digital services where game info is tied to a single source, sucks. Anything online WILL go offline some day - and for all those who say "Steam will never go down", I have one word for you: fraud. If even one single area of Steam is involved in fraud, it can have the entire system shut down by court order. Another word: lawsuit. If there's a dispute about who owns Steam, the same can happen. Just ask Braben & Bell about Elite. Even if the shut down only lasts a year ... Steam would be finished.

I think this is the true reason. Public opinion is sometimes not based on facts at all and solely on the image of a company. Microsoft is the bad guy because they are big, Google is the bad guy because they are big. And in 3 years Facebook, Apple and Steam also will be bad guys. I for myself am way beyond this development and just hate everything equally. :)))

That's the problem: shareholders. They're the assholes that have ruined gaming by forcing publishers to make safe choices. Even if a CEO has a gut feeling that a game will be a success, it would be putting his ass on the line if he were to try and convince the shareholders that they should let him invest a lot of money into a risky project.

Well, shareholders alone aren't the problem: the need for capital is what gave publishers so much more power. Many of the games in GOG's library were made without external funding - developers used to use profits to make their next game. Publishers then smelled money and decided to buy out developers which took away the incentive to work hard and be creative. They still had to work the same hours but for lower pay without royalties for sales. And since almost no dev has capital anymore (because publishers played bankers here), they can't do without publishers now.

So in the end, publishers really are to blame for the entire shithole we're in. Generic crappy games, they don't listen to gamers, try to reach the biggest possible market share at the expense of quality and originality, safe bets which means "been there, done that" for gamers, etc. Shareholders are just the shitty icing on the cake - the ones that have to be pandered to, who know nothing about gaming and about how piracy works but still want to screw loyal customers over in all sorts of lewd positions while pirates point and laugh.

I still don't "get" DRM from a shareholder perspective (or any, really). Those same shareholders are basically living a life of propaganda-driven fear. If it were put to them without emotion with just straight value/cost ratios, I bet most shareholders would guffaw at adding DRM to their product.

How else would a shareholder react to:
"How do you feel like throwing some money at some software in our upcoming mega-release which could cause public controversy, upset customers, create an unstable or potentially broken product (and in cases destroy customer equipment), increase the amount of money we have to spend on support and support personnel, and potentially call our most loyal and dedicated customers thieves and liars? Full disclosure: The software is targeted toward a group of people who will never see or use it."