Mr Puggsly said:
Maybe I was giving an example that MS didn't give a shit about PC gaming? They started showing intrest in PC gaming again recently. They've announced three games that should be coming next year. More could be in the works.
And I was saying that history has shown that MS don't give a shit about PC gaming. They've made announcements in the past of supporting or pushing PC gaming, then they closed down all of their PC based developers. Forgive me if I'm sceptical about MS being serious in the PC scene.
It doesn't matter whats out there. They just need to create killer apps to attract people. Xbox Live became a success in a world with plenty of free options out there.
What free options? They have a monopoly on the 360. All other competing services are on competing consoles or PC making it indirect competition where their are many variables associated. You get a 360, you have to pay to play online, there is no other option on the 360. On PC, it's a direct comparison and competition between multiple free services.
Halo 2 was strong... back in 2004. The PC port didn't come until mid 2007. By then Halo fans were already going ape shit with Halo 3 just around the corner and it wasn't for the PC.
You consider Shadowrun a strong online game? GTFO!
You're absolutely oblivious to this topic or you're playing dumb.
Actually, you just reiterated my point. My point was that MS seem to think these kinds of tactics work.We both can see it was a stupid idea, yet they advertised Shadowrun as a top cross-platform multiplayer title and they thought a 2.5 yr port of an original X-box title would be strong enough to push people to pay for the service. Since then, they haven't even tried a cross-platform game. Why? Because whilst they will say they're serious about the PC, their actions have always said the opposite.
Until they can give GFWL the full support it needs to compete with services like Steam, it will always be seen as the poor version of X-box Live.
How do you know its minimal? All MS has to do is keep adding games and keep put up deals. You are just being obnoxious and you have no idea what they'll be doing in the future.
How do you know it's anything more than minimal? Where is all the buzz you've seen being generated? A few media sites advertised and announced the sale. Most other DD services get that sort of coverage on a monthly basis. Steam has it virtually every week.
All the dev support is moving away from GFWL, bigger publishers are pushing either Steam or their own DD services, and where are the announcements for the number of active customers on GFWL? MS are always proud to announce the number of X-box Live users, why not show how many are using GFWL? Valve announce every year how Steam is growing but we have yet to see how well GFWL is doing.
And no, I have no idea what they're adding in the future (neither do you for that matter), but I want it to be more than they're doing at the moment. Why is that obnoxious? It's obnoxious to want something to improve?
PR? You mean the stupid crap people post on the interweb? That really killed the 360, huh?
You're just trying to put whatever negative spin you can on it.
MS as much as admited the service was lagging behind it's competitors and needed improving. It's no good forcing people to use a service which is comparatively poor. Yes the interweb is full of complaints, but many are serious and fundamental problems the 360 never had (or were quickly fixed in the case of RROD). This isn't so much negative spin as it is more about a poor product being forced on consumers.
Anecdotally, if you force people to use a poor service they will resent it. Steam had similar problems on release and even now, I know people that refuse to use the service, even after all the improvements.
Note, I haven't once said that GFWL is doomed to failure, but it needs to improve a lot and I'm not convinced MS are taking the problems and complaints seriously.
