Headlines - Games For Windows digital distribution service to compete with STEAM

[Parm]

STEAM has a challenger to its digital distribution service. Step forward, Microsoft...

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[LuckyNV]

Sounds decent, if its anything like Steam it'll work out great.
Probably not edge out Steam since unlikely MS will be allowed to stock Valve games (although money talks )
Shouldn't be a problem on the bandwidth front for MS either so good for us.

[Steven W]

Sounds decent, if its anything like Steam it'll work out great.
Probably not edge out Steam since unlikely MS will be allowed to stock Valve games (although money talks )
Shouldn't be a problem on the bandwidth front for MS either so good for us.

I agree. STEAM already has a massive user base as well.

[nichomach]

Free is good, though it's the obvious move - if you want people to buy games a la Steam, charging them for the service wouldn't be too clever...

[Lucio]

Not convinced this "new era of gaming" offers any real improvement, other than making sure you have to have an insanely good internet connection just to sit down and play a single player game. Things like Half Life 2 showed the utter ridiculousness of the situation, having to wait a few hours to play because instead of shipping the games via discs, you have to wait for them to download and update from the internet....

This is yet another nail in the coffin for PC Gaming as far as I'm concerned...

[Rosaline]

Steam it must be remembered is actually more than just a shop. I find it's community features vital, and because of those (the ability to chat with friends when in game? Yes please!) I will always have it loaded. Unless games for windows can offer similar, it will not be quite the full competitor (aside from the MS monopoly abuse aspect).

As for being 'another nail in PC gaming', I really must disagree Lucio. Steam for me took PC gaming into proper competition with consoles at last. I want a game - I buy it. Download times, if left running overnight, are better than what you would get by mail ordering. Games seem generally to be priced fairly, thanks to the strong pound (all steam sales are in dollars). Installation is automagic, and there are no worries about it at all. I have purchased more new computer game releases since I stated using steam that I have in the two years previously (and without any change in my financial situation causing this difference).

Steam is still incomplete, and would like to see some radical changes in parts, but it has done wonders for PC gaming, and will continue to do so. If you want a perfect example of this sort of thing done properly, take a look at the Penny Arcade game on steam. At a few hundred Mb, it was a refreshingly small download for an amazingly fun game. The solution isn't to decry these online sales systems as the 'death' of PC gaming, but rather to admonish those developers that release 8Gb games over such services.

[kalniel]

Steam it must be remembered is actually more than just a shop. I find it's community features vital, and because of those (the ability to chat with friends when in game? Yes please!) I will always have it loaded. Unless games for windows can offer similar, it will not be quite the full competitor (aside from the MS monopoly abuse aspect).

I think GFW Live has all of those things - voice chat, servers, multiplayer matching, achievements etc.

[uKvinny]

this will be another half arsed attempt from MS

cant see why MS would want the PC gaming market, surely they makem ore from the 360

[kalniel]

cant see why MS would want the PC gaming market, surely they makem ore from the 360

Adding PC market stuff won't make them any less from the 360 - instead it might make them more if that's the only one that works together with the PC market.

[Judge Zetsumei]

I wish Microsoft could just work with valve instead. I don't want two programs running in the background. I like steam and think it's good enough so I'd rather not have another similar program as much as I love xbox live. In a perfect world they would just combine their ideas. Like EA aswell with their EA Link. Wow that is bad. I think it's just silly trying to make something compete with steam. As far as I'm concerned it's not what we want. We want one program for it all instead of separate ones from different publishers.

[Nub1]

Have to admit I hate steam. I bought the orange box. It says on the box "FIVE GAMES ONE BOX". I don't know about you but all I seemed to get was ONE BOX and a very inefficient download manager.

Took 5 days to download the games. Crashed my pc so many times. I know it has to do with updates, but just give us patches not whole new games to download. I will support M$ if it does this.

Steam annoyed me so much that even tho' I bought the games in Jan I have never played them. If I do go to play them I'll download the entire set from newsgroups in a few hours then install that and use my key. I'm not going to let steam take over again. Steam as far as I'm concerned is malware and should be shot.

[cleggbigd]

M$ will fail like they always do when they try to bring sumthing new out "cough" Vista "cough" and as for steam, when you buy a game u have to download it (even if u have bought a hard copy) which is a bummer for people with low speeds....also if your a first time buyer of a steam game (hard copy) and you dont have the internet it may not let you even play the game.

i suppose M$ could improve steams application and make it better but i doubt it.

[Steven W]

Steam it must be remembered is actually more than just a shop. I find it's community features vital, and because of those (the ability to chat with friends when in game? Yes please!) I will always have it loaded. Unless games for windows can offer similar, it will not be quite the full competitor (aside from the MS monopoly abuse aspect).

As for being 'another nail in PC gaming', I really must disagree Lucio. Steam for me took PC gaming into proper competition with consoles at last. I want a game - I buy it. Download times, if left running overnight, are better than what you would get by mail ordering. Games seem generally to be priced fairly, thanks to the strong pound (all steam sales are in dollars). Installation is automagic, and there are no worries about it at all. I have purchased more new computer game releases since I stated using steam that I have in the two years previously (and without any change in my financial situation causing this difference).

Steam is still incomplete, and would like to see some radical changes in parts, but it has done wonders for PC gaming, and will continue to do so. If you want a perfect example of this sort of thing done properly, take a look at the Penny Arcade game on steam. At a few hundred Mb, it was a refreshingly small download for an amazingly fun game. The solution isn't to decry these online sales systems as the 'death' of PC gaming, but rather to admonish those developers that release 8Gb games over such services.

Good point. I think with MS though, we know they can create an excellent user friendly interface. I'm sure they'll be looking at turning it into a community. I think STEAM will continue to be strong, but it will interesting to see if the new service will take off.

[DataMatrix]

Not convinced this "new era of gaming" offers any real improvement, other than making sure you have to have an insanely good internet connection just to sit down and play a single player game. Things like Half Life 2 showed the utter ridiculousness of the situation, having to wait a few hours to play because instead of shipping the games via discs, you have to wait for them to download and update from the internet....

This is yet another nail in the coffin for PC Gaming as far as I'm concerned...

I'm sorry did you not notice the preloading function of Steam? Also, where there's no discs, there's no clutter or damage to data. With Steam, you ALWAYS have the data safe. Also, shipping takes longer than downloading does, even on the slower equivalent of internet today which is usually 1-4MB minimum.

[kalniel]

Also, shipping takes longer than downloading does, even on the slower equivalent of internet today which is usually 1-4MB minimum.

That's not always the case with steam - I have a solid 6mbps connection but it took a week to download one of my steam games once - steam was only uploading at 500kbps (50KB/s) despite my connection speed to other servers being full speed when tested. I didn't particularly like leaving my computer on all that time either.

[PeterStoba]

I can see this failing