Xbox live on PC?

[CptStern]

We know some of you want to hear more about the online plans for Halo 2 on Windows Vista. Microsoft will soon have a lot more to say about the Live gaming and entertainment network on Windows, but what we can tell you now is that you?ll be able to play H2V online and even interact with your friends on the Xbox 360 at zero cost (although Halo 2 doesn?t support cross-platform multiplayer). Now that said, there are going to be some very tempting reasons for you to upgrade to a full paid Live Gold membership.

so I wonder if it'll be just a content delivery system (which in my opinion makes no sense) or if we'll be able to play against xbox360 players in cross platform games ..kinda sucks cuz that might mean xbox360 ports to pc would cost extra (gold membership) to play online ...obviously I'm only speculating, I could just be misinterpreting what he's saying

http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?cid=9300

 

[smwScott]

I hate X-BOX live. The thought of having to pay to play online games that are run on private servers really pisses me off. It's obvious MS is trying to spread this business model to Windows gaming as well. I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't play future MS published titles online without an XBLive subscription before long.

I really can't understand why people seem to enjoy it so much. They're paying for something that used to (and should be) be free (and still is on PC and PS2/3), yet they seem to be happy about it.

 

[destrukt]

Well we've known about Xbox Live Anywhere for awhile now so yes, there will be Xbox Live on Vista and on other devices too (Mobile phones and so on).

You'll most definitely need a Gamertag to use Live Anywhere so it may be that to play games which are cross-platform compatible (That Shadow one which is coming out, Halo2V, etc) you might need a Gold subscription to play them VS 360 owners but if they make it you need a Gold subscription to play them online, just on the PC, there will be an outrage.

Edit: There is no unified system like Xbox Live on PC and to have the same equivalent feature set of Xbox Live you'd have to use several programs and even than it's nowhere near as good. Also, with Xbox Live there needs to be a huge backend to manage everything and on PC there are some things like Xfire but that doesn't touch Live.

So, to have Xbox Live on a PC you'd need:

Voice chat - Vent or TS
Voice messages - ??
Video chat - Messenger or something
Friends list - XFire
Achievements - ??
Text messages - Messenger or something
Arcade system with leaderboards - ROMs/Emulators but they don't touch Live Arcade
Downloads (Demos/videos) - Several websites and you have to wade through queues, corrupted downloads, figure out what to download (What format, etc)
Profile used for everything - XFire but it sucks compared to Gamertags

.. and all the other things and even with all these things they aren't unified, as good, baked into every game, etc.

We're happy/fine with it because it's a damn good service and it really isn't that expensive at all.

 

[CptStern]

some of the most fun I've had online is playing on servers with user created maps/mods etc ..will xbox live have that too?

anything more than $0 a year is more expensive than $0 a year

 

[CyberPitz]

Yeah, I just can't justify paying to play a game online...that's why I don't play MMORPGs! you bought the damn game, why suck more money out of you?

 

[destrukt]

.. because you have some sad inability to understand that servers aren't magical and require no cost, maintenance, staff, and so on. :O

 

[Mr-Fusion]

Blizzards servers are magical!

I've been playing diablo and starcraft for free..for years!

 

[CyberPitz]

Blizzards servers are magical!

I've been playing diablo and starcraft for free..for years!

They may not have as big of a server load, but think of the stats server for BF2! They take a beating. And the fact that battle.net has been up for so many years, they have supported and worked on it for so long, that's alot of man hours put into it. It's free.....

The point is, they use the whole "server usage" excuse to make MORE money, when they could still reap a profit if the game was free to play.

Guild Wars doesn't charge..they aren't having any problems.

 

[destrukt]

No, those servers don't handle anywhere near the load as the WoW ones do and are different. And wow, stats, that's amazing, truly amazing.

Guild Wars is also instanced and not the same as WoW, EQ and other games.

 

[smwScott]

.. because you have some sad inability to understand that servers aren't magical and require no cost, maintenance, staff, and so on. :O

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't the games run on private servers? I mean if MS personally hosted the game servers that you play on then I could see the cost for matchmaking being justified. I don't think that's the case though.

A lot of people seem to spout the PR "talking points" MS throws out about giving people choice as their reason for not including a HD-DVD drive within the console itself. I don't see them employing the same argument towards people who just want to join a private server and play a game and who might not care too much about video chat or listening to a 12 year old call them a n****r for 20 minutes.

Personally, I couldn't give **** all about those extra features. I rarely play online games, and when I do I just want to hop in and play. Last I checked I can do that with my PC and my PS2 and I don't have to give anyone my money. One of the reasons I dislike XBLive so much is that it's the difference between a console actually being online or not ... because I wouldn't bother paying for it (and judging by the amount of subscribers the majority of people who own the console don't either ... no one ever takes into account that these people essentially don't have an online console).

As long as MS doesn't put that same business model into Windows then I really don't care too much. I'm sure they'd like to, and with this new unified gaming structure they're striving for they might just do it.

 

[Fliko]

so I wonder if it'll be just a content delivery system (which in my opinion makes no sense) or if we'll be able to play against xbox360 players in cross platform games ..kinda sucks cuz that might mean xbox360 ports to pc would cost extra (gold membership) to play online ...obviously I'm only speculating, I could just be misinterpreting what he's saying

http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?cid=9300

The idea is that gold membership will give you access to some 'exclusive content', like a backstage pass. It'll also get you access to tournaments. There might be plans to make a matchmaking service for people who pay for gold too. (Read this off of PC Gamer)

Which means we will have out of the box online games still

Oh, and btw, let me slip this in...

Halo 2 PC can't play online with Halo 2 Xbox...

 

[Iced_Eagle]

XBL Gold is actually a great deal.

You get the ability to play with people of your skill level, not a hit-or-miss like in almost every other game... Only game which does this for PC that I know of is Company of Heroes.

You also get video chat, text messaging, access to lots of great demos/videos for consoles (demos on consoles via internet??? Not in the past generations! It used to be disc-only demos), and also reliable service and the whole friends list. Challenge a friend to a game anytime and you can pair up very easily in any game...

It's a really really nice service, and it's all for less than the price of one AAA game per year.

Once you get XBL gold, you can never go back.

I think it does suck that you can't even play games together though with silver members, but I guess that's the price you pay if you want to use their TruSkill systems and all of that other stuff, which does turn out to be helpful.