Mark May 8th on your calendar; Halo2 & Games for Windows Live

[destrukt]

http://gamerscoreblog.com/team/archive/2007/03/14/542900.aspx

Silver Membership Features
? Single gamertag
? Common gamer profile
? Common gamerscore
? Single player achievements
? Private chat via text and voice
? Common friends list and online presence
? PC only multiplayer including browsing a list of active PC games

Gold Membership Features
? All Silver membership features
? Multiplayer matchmaking with friends
? TrueSkill? matchmaking
? Multiplayer achievements
? Cross-platform gameplay

And http://www.joystiq.com/2007/03/14/games-for-windows-live-and-halo-2-hit-vista-may-8th/ - Watch the video too.

Edit: Watched some more of the video, some awesome features:

You can log in to G4WL on your home PC, play say, Zuma (Their example) for a bit and than make a savegame, you can than go to another PC with G4WL, login and continue that savegame. It also allows you to save game preferences, the example they use is your Halo2 profile, like if it's inverted or whatnot -- quite awesome.

The 'problem' is is that this isn't required, so most games probably won't bother to do this till the whole 'Games for Windows' thing takes off huge, so for the first year it'll probably be only Microsoft games and their 'first party developer friends.' So, third-party will be big in 08 and probably a few reasonable ones by the end of the year.

Also, in the video the people in the interview also express their worries that G4WL is within the game, and not as a layer outside.

 

[Seppo]

damn you, I thought Halo 2 was coming to PC on May 8th

 

[Lucid]

Games for Windows Live definitely sounds interesting.

 

[DigiQ8]

Actually that doesn't sound too bad
i mean the silver got all the features i need right now.

 

[VictimOfScience]

This does nothing for me atm....

 

[CptStern]

Games for Windows should be released with Halo 2 for free ...they really dont expect us to pay to play their little experiment do they?

 

[DEATH eVADER]

Thank God with have Counterstrike and Steam

 

[DEATHMASTER]

damn you, I thought Halo 2 was coming to PC on May 8th

?Halo 2? for Windows Vista (Microsoft? Game Studios). Release date: May 8, 2007.

Also how can multiplayer matchmaking not be done with like IM, xfire, or is it just one of those convenience things in game? Trueskill~sounds ok, can live without like in every other game. Cross platform~dont care. Multiplayer achievements~ sounds nice but not willing to pay just for that one interesting feature. Silver membership it is!

 

[alehm]

Games for Windows should be released with Halo 2 for free ...they really dont expect us to pay to play their little experiment do they?

Microsoft. Killing one game at a time.

 

[Deleted member 56031]

I hope Steam doesn't go down this road.

 

[Qonfused]

Cross platform will be the selling point for me. If it is true cross platform, I'm buying it when it's released.

 

[Sebastian]

What pisses me off about this is that it isn't included with XBOX live.

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

Bah. That TrueSkill craps sucks ass. I'd rather it not pick what server I go to.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Thank God with have Counterstrike and Steam

But GFW Live is just like Steam, except you get like the Friends list features and single-player achievements and such.

For Windows Live, it's going to be the same as it always is if you want to do PC vs PC games... However when you want to cross boundaries and go PC vs Console, that's when you need a paid account.

So essentially, you won't have to do too much different with these new titles. You don't have to pay anything and you can keep getting free multiplayer and such.

Oh, and a thing which is actually a bummer but nobody has talked about (found out about it at GDC) is that to gain any achievement you MUST be online. So if you take your laptop to your grandma's house, earn some achievements, they will not count! This is to deter cheating and all of those other forms since gamer score is a big deal. You must re-earn those achievements unfortunately. They know it sucks really bad, and I'm sure they're looking at options in the future to change that to make it more user-friendly.

*Edit* In turn with the above, with all GFW Live titles there is a LOT of anti-cheating stuff built in. It should make it hard for hackers to hack the titles since it has like three layers of protection or something IIRC.

 

[ríomhaire]

Those poor Xbox Halo 2 players. They're going to get so many headshots.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Halo 2 doesn't support Cross-Platform play because while Bungie was designing Halo2 they didn't account for mouse players.

Shadowrun will be the first title to be cross-platform because it's been designed from the ground up to make sure nobody has a control edge over the other.

 

[destrukt]

Comes out the 18th for Europeans, which hopefully includes Australia.

 

[CyberPitz]

as the day to bomb retail stores?

OK!

 

[Naudian]

So very meh

 

[Adabiviak]

I was hoping to play Halo 2 for, say, $50 bucks as a basic installation on my PC (like the first Halo). It seems more and more like this may not be the case. Is there like a bronze or stone version that'll run on XP? :frog:

 

[Hazar]

supposedly if you already have a gold account for your 360 it carries over for the pc as well.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Gonna have to go with Doug over at Valve on this one, the 'Games for Windows' initiative sounds more and more like a mechanism to promote 360 and Vista than giving a rats ass about PC Gaming and it's reclaiming the industry. Bottlenecking us into pay services and requiring it's new operating system is not a good way to approach the PC gaming community, we'll see if they are serious when summer rolls along. I suppose done of the things I treasure about PC gaming is not being forced to use services such as Xbox LIVE or face constrictions of the console developer, Microsoft making any kind of connection between Windows OS / Xbox gaming sort of scares me - I'd like PCs to remain dominated by third party hardware that I can pick and chose to my liking, I feel like this is threatened when something comes along from Microsoft itself.

 

[destrukt]

Yeah, who cares about a unified friends lists, easy joining matches, inviting people to matches, Achievements, etc.

It's all just some big agenda from big 'ole bad Microsoft. :|

Of course they're trying to get you to buy Vista, a 360, etc - it's a freaking business, they aren't there to make the world a magical place for geeks.

Live is the best thing for consoles in a long time, there's no doubting it's awesomeness and there is the potential to bring some of that awesomeness to the PC, but so many PC people on forums are such whiners.

Wait, how the hell are you feeling threatened in hardware choices ? WTF ?

 

[Sparta]

Yeah, who cares about a unified friends lists, easy joining matches, inviting people to matches, Achievements, etc.

No offense dude, but alot of this stuff can already be done on the pc with things like Steam and X-Fire. Achievements are nifty and all, but they aren't enough to make me pay 50 bucks a year just so i can have a few extra fine-tuned options when i want to play online games with friends.

 

[Fishlore]

LOL, I couldn't possibly care less. I hate online MP gaming with a passion though so I guess that's not a surprise. Personally I couldn't imagine a better way to waste my money. Well maybe buying any of the new consoles, but I digress.

 

[CptStern]

Yeah, who cares about a unified friends lists, easy joining matches, inviting people to matches, Achievements, etc.

It's all just some big agenda from big 'ole bad Microsoft. :|

besides the achievement points there's quite a few services that offer the same thing for free, what does the world largest software company have to offer me besides window dressing, unwanted features and payed subscriptions to game servers that have even less features than what is currently avaiable for free ..it's not exactly a good will gesture from MS

Of course they're trying to get you to buy Vista, a 360, etc - it's a freaking business, they aren't there to make the world a magical place for geeks.

no one is disputing that however Microsoft is known for steamroller tactics to win market dominance you cant blame us for thinking they dont exactly have the best of intentions, at least not for gamers

Live is the best thing for consoles in a long time, there's no doubting it's awesomeness and there is the potential to bring some of that awesomeness to the PC, but so many PC people on forums are such whiners.

Live brought functionality that pc games had 10 years ago I dont see how this is progressive in the least ..seems regressive imho

it's much easier for developers to simply tack on windows live netcode than it is to create their own from scratch ..how soon will we see pc games, especially xbox to pc ported games, that require Windows Live to play? ..well that's already here: Shadowrun. What about user content for these games? the modding community can make or break the longevity of a game. how will games that require crossplatform play implement mods/maps etc? this isnt even an issue for cross platform games that require live as they will most not have a editor included for just those reasons

it's regressive: it's pigeon holing us into this collection of services that allows them to control an area of gaming that has traditionally been wide open

the only one that benefits from Live for Pc at this point in time is Microsoft

 

[99.vikram]

Live brought functionality that pc games had 10 years ago I dont see how this is progressive in the least ..seems regressive imho

Agreed.

..how soon will we see pc games that require Windows Live to play?...What about user content for these games?...this isnt even an issue for cross platform games that require live as they will most not have a editor included for just those reasons

I never looked at it that way!