“We are confirming that we will be bringing Xbox LIVE to the PC with Xbox LIVE on Windows. We are very excited about Xbox LIVE coming to Windows 8. Xbox LIVE brings your games, music, movies, and TV shows to your favorite Microsoft and Windows devices. Bringing Xbox LIVE to Windows 8 is part of our vision to bring you all the entertainment you want, shared with the people you care about, made easy.” Xbox Live on desktops, laptops, tablets, phones, and the Xbox. Pretty awesome.
So how will this differ from, “Games for Windows LIVE”?
Not entirely sure. Suppose its going to give you the same experience you would have on an Xbox directly on your desktop. Purchasing games, downloading game demos, game add-ons etc.
I’m curious how this will compete against things like Steam. Will there be voice chat and messaging as well or just the game market?
I wonder if we’ll be able to play against consolers? I’d love to thrash some controller playing noobs in a FPS with a keyboard and mouse. ^_^
You can do that with the upcoming Counterstrike. Windows, Mac and PS3 players can all play together.
So I guess I’m supposed to love the idea of thrashing some mouse playing noobs in a Descent-style FPS with a two-knob joypad? (or in a driving game, or arcade sim, or scrolling shooter, or ~platformer adventure) Well, at least when I’m at the console at the time, and not at the PC.
Why some people are still so delighted with this observation, that games which at their core revolve around simple mechanics of pointing at things in 2D plane, are also better with a device meant for… pointing at things in 2D plane? (how such simplistic PC ports are pushed everywhere is another issue; and too bad, “spatial” games like Descent, Forsaken, or Lander (Psygnosis, “3D Gravity”) unfortunately died when mouselook became the dominating interaction…)
I’m writing this from Win7 so I’m not a zealot. As far as I can tell this OS is all about trapping people in a future that is ALL about Microsoft. Seems to me that Metro is primarily about selling their phones and well the Xbox dash doesn’t really need explaining does it.
Looking forward to a neutral view of what this is actually like to work on, maybe I’ll be able to get past my scepticism, who knows.
If you have XBOX gold, you can watch ESPN FWIW.