Winrumors

Microsoft demonstrated its Xbox LIVE support for Windows 8 on Thursday.

Microsoft program manager Avi Ben-Menahem detailed the company’s plans for Xbox LIVE inside Windows 8 during a session at BUILD on Thursday morning. Xbox LIVE on Windows 8 is a big move for Microsoft as the company looks to the future of Windows across multiple devices. The Xbox LIVE service is available in 35 countries today and has around 35 million subscribers. Xbox LIVE users spend around 2.1 billion hours per month on the service, roughly 60 hours per user per month.

“It’s a huge opportunity for you as developers,” explained Ben-Menahem on Thursday. Microsoft has done some incredible graphics work in Windows 8 to improve the speed of game launches and their performance. Microsoft is bringing the following features to Windows 8 Xbox LIVE:

• Roaming save state
• Title managed storage
• Beacons
• Avatar awards
• Avatars
• Friends list and community
• Achievements and gamerscore
• Multiplayer
• Roaming storage
• Real time counting services
• Achievements

Ben-Menahem demonstrated achievement support in Xbox LIVE for Windows 8 using Pinball FX2 (see below). The game launched very quickly and was smooth throughout the demo. Microsoft is implementing Metro style notifications in the lower left hand of Xbox LIVE games in Windows 8. The notifications slide into view for achievements and appear green in color at this stage of development.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE implementation is the fact that Microsoft is building async multiplayer into the platform. Async multiplayer will allow Windows PCs, Windows Phone and Xbox 360 users to play against each other using multiplayer and matchmaking functionality. The support brings a new level of multiplayer gaming to Xbox LIVE once Windows 8 is available.

Ben-Menahem also revealed that Microsoft plans to open up its developer side of Xbox LIVE for Windows 8 in a weeks time. Participating for developers will be free of charge and the audience at BUILD on Thursday morning appeared impressed with Microsoft’s work on Xbox LIVE for Windows 8. Expect this to be extremely huge for Xbox and Windows gaming.

http://www.winrumors.com/xbox-live-windows-8-gamers-can-play-against-pc-win-phone-and-xbox-video/

I am surprised that nobody cared :s;

Well except on the Gears of war 3 forum..

http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=822255

this is getting so confusing.. I know you pay for Xbox Live Gold... Windows Phone 7 Live is free.. Games for Windows Live is free.. but what about Windows 8 Xbox Live?

Why use XBL when you have Steam?

everyone knows MS want people to pay. But hopefully you dont because MS will buy up xbox for windows 8 exclusives and if you want that game you need to sign up or use games for windows live.

But it does appear unfair that people on xbox are paying over the other platforms which will likely get everything and much more to compete with steam. 

Ones thing is tho, that developers tend to stay away from Games for Windows Live on PC, it doesn't help sales and if only on windows live will result in failure now, hell even MS put Fable on steam because they know G4WL sucks.

In order to win over PC gamers on this new service, they dont need to push the wank like full character avatars and achievements and paying for clothes for that avatar or overpriced dlc. They need to focus on innoviative gaming experiences and push PC gaming to a new level, not to the consoles level because PC's can do more than consoles.  

aounds cool, but i want a demo of it!

I don't know whether to be happy about this news (console scrub ownage) or terrified (GFWL sucks the big one and nothing good can come out of its spread).

Nice

Now i can finally own some PC players with my controller and laugh at them when im done.

I suppose those are all good features... But the thing is, I don't really trust Microsoft to do it right. If they manage to get the service working as intended, I'm guessing they're going to charge for something that's always been free on PC and that should remain that way.

Yeah, that can happen when you have the official aimbot ;)