Microsoft Making New PC Games DL Marketplace

[Marcus Yam]

A Steam competitor?

Microsoft Making New PC Games DL Marketplace : Read more

 

[Albyint]

I would use them if they used the same strategy as Zune Marketplace. Pay monthly for access to the whole library but I doubt it turns out that way.

 

[rocky1234]

This is all good & all but they sure had better still have the DVD or blu ray versions as well. Call me old fashioned but I like to have the game & box in my hand. I also do not want to have to wait 2 hours every time I have to reinstall a game because of a windows wipe & reload. Steam works fairly well but it sure is annoying to have to wait 10 or 15 minutes for it to do updates to the installed games before being able to play a game.

When I first got CODMW2 I had to wait 2 hours before being able to play it & I owned the DVD version but because at the time steam was having problems it would not let me play my new game until they got their servers back up & running. I almost returned the game & said frack it but just as I was ready to give up it told me starting game updates now & then had to wait about 5 more minutes before playing it. Maybe this was just a bad Exp for me on that game but it sure makes online crap like that look bad. The thing that got me is it did not state that the game was attached to steam if it had I most likely would not have bought it because I would have wanted to avoid problems like I had with the game.

 

[siliconchampion]

@Rocky

Wow, I'm sorry. Here at school, I get roughly 80 Mbps download speeds, so installing large games goes quite quickly.

I purchase almost all my new games through steam, a notable exception being SC2 of course, and love it.

Before I left for class one day I simply began downloading about ten games, including MW2 and other large titles. When I returned from class (55 minutes later), my clean install of W7 was no longer barren of those games.

Steam is the model others should look for... Now if only there were a "steam for movies."

And Zune Pass is a fantastic system for music distribution.

 

[LongLiveRock1974]

While I like being able to purchase games online, I won't be using this service. I really dislike Windows Live and every experience I've had with it. I'll stick to Direct2Drive.

 

[invlem]

I dunno, they're going to have to pull a magic rabbit out of their hat for this to work... Games for Windows vs Steam, there's no comparison... I can't stand the GfW interface

 

[jkflipflop98]

All these greedy corporations eye up a slice of the pie they think they can win, but it's just going to end up costing them.

Just partner up with Steam. They've won. It's over. You'll NEVER be as good at this as Steam is, so just sign up with them and call it good. Sometimes I think the tech world purposefully tries to kill itself.

 

[rohitbaran]

[citation][nom]jkflipflop98[/nom]All these greedy corporations eye up a slice of the pie they think they can win, but it's just going to end up costing them.Just partner up with Steam. They've won. It's over. You'll NEVER be as good at this as Steam is, so just sign up with them and call it good. Sometimes I think the tech world purposefully tries to kill itself.[/citation]
Well, it is good to have competition. If they do turn out to be a good enough option which means price and service wise, I will buy some games from them as well.

 

[zmbcat]

Microsoft really wants to get themselves in to everything nowdays.

 

[thechief73]

I personally favor Steam ever since buying a retail box of Half Life 2, and it has grown on me more and more ever since. Great sales, friends, groups & chats and a well refined interface. The Steam forums and support are very helpfull and always post ahead of time Steam updates and downtimes along with what will be affected, and the instant game updates are a breeze / no hassel affair, as well as all the other perks Steam offers.

I say good luck to Microsoft shoe-horning into their territory, they are going to have to pull a rabbit out of a hat to compete. But if they can pull off a good system and match Steam's deals, a little compition never hurt anyone.

 

[Guest]

I am quite a fan of Steam but if Microsoft opens up their own store and has sales like Steam does, THEN WOOHOOOO! Competition is good for the end user!

 

[Guest]

If Microsoft had a game for half the cost of Steam would anyone still buy it off Steam?

 

[eklipz330]

[citation][nom]jkflipflop98[/nom]All these greedy corporations eye up a slice of the pie they think they can win, but it's just going to end up costing them.Just partner up with Steam. They've won. It's over. You'll NEVER be as good at this as Steam is, so just sign up with them and call it good. Sometimes I think the tech world purposefully tries to kill itself.[/citation]
without competition, we wud still be stuck with windows 95

 

[nativeson8803]

competition is always good but they have never offered very good deals in the past.

 

[HaakonXCI]

They're trying to sell GTA SA for $4 but it requires you to play with GFWL. :\ eh...

 

[aliened]

one thing that I love about steam is that they don't get picky if ur buying outside the US, talking about those damn country restrictions, as simple as "if u have money u can buy it", knowing Microsoft they will surely put some kind of "special" treatment with those buying outside the US, for example I love playing my games on English, so I hate that on some Windows Live games the only expansion packs u can download are on Spanish, and not even Mexican Spanish, they are on European Spanish... and we Mexicans hate that accent, but because ur outside the US that means that ur screwed, so lets see how Microsoft treats their clients outside of US and Canada.

 

[Benihana]

If it has unlimited machine activations, stability, reliability, and I can always access my games without additional charges or permanent DRMs, then I may consider it.

Otherwise Steam's the way for me! And seeing how both Valve and MS treat customers, I won't be leaving Steam for a long time...

 

[efeat]

Whether this succeeds or fails will depend largely on Microsoft's ability to differentiate between GFWL and XBL. Up until now, GFWL has been a clone of XBL with a different name. Try clicking on a support link or something similar with GFWL - you'll notice that it'll bring you to support.xbox.com instead of something helpful. If MS treats the PC as if it were an Xbox, then this will fail.

 

[hunter315]

Unless they have some rare super awesome exclusives im sticking with steam for my downloaded games, its been nice and reliable and isnt a pain about DRMs which MS games have given me trouble with in the past when the DRM starts glitching.

 

[molo9000]

Games for Windows Live is an utter mess.
Kept sending me to non existent sites when I tried to make an account to play arkham asylum. When I finally made a live account, it said I had to create some other account but kept linking me to non existent websites. I was about to give up when I found a tiny tiny button that allowed me to just use an offline account.

I guess Microsoft is now what IBM was when personal computers came about. A huge lumbering corporation incapable of doing anything.

 

[theshonen8899]

Great. Now they're going to make game that are only for GFWL. What a nuisance.

 

[Lmeow]

Steam sucks. I've had so many problems. My problems with Steam?

- It for some reason takes Steam around three to five minutes to connect to my account, and even longer to launch a game. What the hell? Without Steam, games would probably load up less than a minute, in total.

- It forces you to download games that you have the discs for. I really do not see the point of Steam sometimes. Sure, I don't mind it as a DRM, but why do I have to download the game, and use up all my monthly bandwidth? And even worse, sometimes the games aren't available for download, despite having paid for them. If I have the disc with all the data needed for an installation, why download the game? As I said before, Steam as a DRM is understandable. But as a delivery service when you've already bought the disc? WTF?

- It takes around five minutes for Steam to realise that I have no internet and have to start offline. This happens quite a lot, and gets ridiculously annoying. Seriously? My five year old cousin can tell when the internet's not working.

- Steam overlay is glitched. It's a pretty cool idea, but there have been countless times where I've been stuck because I tried opening the Steam overlay. Other times I can't even use it at all, when I'm waiting for Infailty Ward's IWNet matchmaking system to find me a new game in MW2.

- The 'Cancel' button when loading games or checking for updates DOES NOT WORK. Fail more?

TL;DR?

I hate Steam, and I very much know that many wouldn't use it if they didn't have to.

 

[Darkerson]

I used to have high hopes for GFWL...but anymore it would take a miracle for it to turn around from the mess it has become...

 

[aliened]

[citation][nom]Lmeow[/nom]Steam sucks. I've had so many problems. My problems with Steam? - It for some reason takes Steam around three to five minutes to connect...[/citation]

Has worked very good for me and many other thousands of ppl, maybe it takes so long for u because of your net or computer cuz in mine it works perfectly (4gb ram, i7 @ 2.8 ghz).

 

[suisenbenjo]

It would really take something amazing to get me to use anything other than Steam, especially from the company that brought us GFWL. I almost never buy games that aren't available through Steam. The sales are incredible and very frequent. I've bought half of my library for more than 50% off. I absolutely abhor GFWL on the other hand. Aside from all that, I'm pretty loyal to Valve anyway since as far as gaming, they're more loyal to PC gamers than anyone and MS is always taking a dump on the PC gaming community even though they sell the only OS for most mainstream games.