| hasanwhy said: I just never understood of what makes Steamworks different from GFWL. I'm a console gamer, and I first heard about Steamworks from Portal 2 which is coming out for the consoles as well. I just want to know a couple of things. 1. What are the pros? 2. What are the cons? 3. If a game comes out onto the consoles with Steamworks enabled, what features does it provide to console owners that which they didn't already have to begin with? |
The DRM implementation and features I suppose. I think the general experience with GFWL is that it's not that great and hasn't been doing much compared to how Valve has been evolving Steam. Then there's Microsoft's ignoring of PC gaming. They say that they'll be making a PC push, but who knows.
Anyway, back to Steamworks.
1- The pros are that it can be a less restricve DRM while offering a number of features. There's also stuff like cloud saves, steam achievements and tools for developers to update games and such. Then there's the fact that you're using Steam so you get the friends list, voice/text messaging, community features, ect.
2. The cons are that it's still a form of DRM. Steam has an offline mode, but you'll generally be logged onto Steam to play your games. However, Steam is a service while Ubisoft's always on DRM doesn't exactly offer any features for the paying customer except a possible headache.
3- What I've talked about is about the PC. I don't think we know anything about what's going to happen with the PS3 version of Portal 2 other than it will 'implement' Steamworks. So I don't think there's an exact feature list for the PS3 version yet.
According to Gamespot,
http://e3.gamespot.com/story/6265808/portal-2-steamworks-ps3-bound-in-2011
"Newell's reason for crowning the PS3 edition of Portal 2 was that it will be supported by Steamworks. Released in 2008, the free toolset allows developers to integrate support from its Steam content delivery service into their games. Steamworks will allow for Portal 2 auto-updates, downloadable content, and community support directly from Valve, a feature the 360 edition of the game will not have. How it will exactly work on the PlayStation Network is unclear."
