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JaggedSac on 03 December 2009
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vlad321 said:
JaggedSac said:

Yes, MS provides servers to handle the matchmaking and an SDK to utilize their matchmaking service with a P2P online system.  This is so full retail, Arcade, and XNA developers can create online experiences and not foot the bill for dedicated servers for anything.  I am not talking about simplicity, I am speaking of ubiquity.  Steam as a platform will never be ubiquitous because it is on PC.  If a game is developed for 360, you are garaunteed a set of services/features that are available at the OS level.  In order for a party system to be implemented on PC, all games would need to have a similar feature in order for an outside service to get the party from game to game.  Or some similarly hacked solution.  You might not like that ubiquity between games, but I find it very nice.  Also, having a single profile between all games with these ubiquitous features is quite nice as well.

Steam also supports matchmaking, providing the servers. Also how can you say developers foot the bill of dedicated servers? The players put up dedicated servers, not the companies.  And I understand ubiquity and that's the pro that LIVE has over anything on the PC. However in terms o helping developers (why are the most indie games on the PC, even ones with multiplayer?) or really, just about any measure, it falls really short. Don't even get me started on all the non-game features.

 

So really you pay 50 bucks for ubiquity and that's about it, nevermind the fact that said ubiquity doesn't really bring anything special either.

Developers either foot the bill for enough servers or risk not having enough when the game comes out.  Imagine IW having to have enough dedicated servers to handle over 2 million people at once on the day of release.  They would have to rely on a vendor to provide them servers until the community provided enough to handle the load.  Nothing like relying on players to provide the backbone to a 2 million player dedicated server infrastructure.  That is footing the bill.  And that is why they went P2P.

Oh, I find ubiquity of services and features to be very appealing.  That ubiquity mixed with the matchmaking, ranking, and party system that MS's infrastructure provides is the main reason I love Live.

 

@NJ5, what am I getting wrong about Steam?