Widescreen Gaming Forum

http://kotaku.com/5418213/games-on-demand-coming-to-games-for-windows-live

Speaking of starts, the service's launch lineup will include Resident Evil 5, Red Faction: Guerrilla, and Battlestations: Pacific, along with Live-enabled versions of popular downloadable titles like World of Goo and Osmos. If those aren't enticing enough, there's also a free Live-enabled version of Tinker, the Windows Vista Ultimate Extra exclusive for those willing to download the Games for Windows Live client when the service goes live on the 15th.

Perfect reply on the Steam forums:

Great! Now I can buy all those great PC games that are not on PC because Microsoft made them for the Xbox!!

Great to see how they support the platform, and to see this edgy move, digital distribution? Never heard of that, sounds like futuristic stuff.

So... stuff that Steam already does? Whoop-de-do...

Everyone's jumpin' on the DD bandwagon...

So... stuff that Steam already does? Whoop-de-do...

Everyone's jumpin' on the DD bandwagon...

Steam vs DD vs Windows Live vs whoever wants to give me the game for cheapest...

The more the merrier. Gimme my cheap game pricing to undercut eachother. :twisted:

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Brad Hawthorne
Product Manager
Nthusim Pty. Ltd. | www.nthusim.com

Everyone's jumpin' on the DD bandwagon...

No kidding. There's only so many times one can slice a pie before the pieces start getting really small. I wonder how many DD players will actually be doing well 10-15 years from now.

Love this:

We challenged ourselves to deliver an integrated platform that takes full advantage of the unique capabilities offered by the LIVE service.

From the initial announcement, the main difference between Games on Demand and something like Steam is the use of Microsoft points to purchase games along with actual cash money, but it's certainly a start.

Seriously? That qualifies as a laudable feature? To modify a quote from Achilles after the first battle in Troy: "Is there nothing else!?"

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VirtualDub Game Recording Guide | BFME2 & RotWK Widescreen/Triplehead Mods

Maybe they should implement a way to use Bing cashback towards game purchases.

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Brad Hawthorne
Product Manager
Nthusim Pty. Ltd. | www.nthusim.com

Thing is, aside from the special offers that the DD companies run every so often, DD is all the same price - and they're all expensive. Picking games up on them when there is a sale is OK, but buying something 'normally' you'll be paying well over the odds compared to purchasing it from (some) brick-and-mortar stores or an e-tailer like Amazon or Play.

Aside from that, it's unlikely that Games for Windows Live, as a service, will ever die... much as I would like it to. Microsoft just has too much disposable capital that they can afford to lose to prop up something that isn't performing as well as it would need to be for another company to call it worth keeping. They can use that to keep the service afloat until other (less capital backed and less stable) opponents go under.

Steam has a lot of momentum, so I doubt that will die any time soon. EA Downloader, being backed by one of the larger publishers out there, is probably the same. Impulse... that might struggle, but it's the most visible of the 'indie' DD services.

I don't know if it's really related as I'm not very aware of those notions
but I just learned recently that Games For Windows is a nice feature since it forces devs to include such things as :
"universal save folder" (eg. put saves in a subfolder inside "My DocumentsMy Games" instead of a random folder)

Some things that the 'Games for Windows' brand does are good.

Games for Windows Live, however, should be consigned to the burning pit.

I don't know if it's really related as I'm not very aware of those notions
but I just learned recently that Games For Windows is a nice feature since it forces devs to include such things as :
"universal save folder" (eg. put saves in a subfolder inside "My DocumentsMy Games" instead of a random folder)

Games for Windows and Games for Windows LIVE are 2 different things.

Games for Windows which you mention has the set of standards that the game must adhere to.
Games for Windows LIVE is just the online platform used for such games.

I don't believe a game has to have both.

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Formerly eZ`

Follow me on twitter: @theg00seberry and find me on Steam

You're right, eZ`... a game can be 'Games for Windows' (like Devil May Cry 4) and not require GfW:Live... or it can be 'fully compliant' (as MS put it) and use GfWL too...