[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Wilis_kid [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Dr Syx [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] General Heed If Microsoft really wanted to sabatage PC FPS games, why not just simply not release those games? Why would they even bother making all those games cross-platform?[/quote]What? My point is they released them with the intent of making the controller look just as good as the mouse. That way they could make the controller look good and entice people to buy the 360 for its exclusives. It seems far-fetched but it honestly seems like that was their intent. Also, how are you sabotaging something by not doing something? That makes no sense... [quote]The best way they can sell the Xbox 360 controller as "better" would be to make all the top FPS games Xbox 360 exclusives. In fact, exclusivity is the ultimate marketing strategy. It's what made the original xbox famous with Halo. If they made all the games Xbox 360 exclusives, nobody would even know what using a mouse and keyboard would be like on those games. And it would force people to buy Xbox 360's if they really wanted to play those top games. [/quote]They did already do that... There's a reason why they released Gears of War (Not 2) and Halo 2 (Not 3) for GFWL. -_-' Microsoft doesn't count on one thing, though. PC gamers are smart. They're not tricked by petty schemes like Microsoft tried with GFWL. They under estimate us. [quote]Also, if i'm not mistaken, GFWL was always free from the beginning, mostly. The gold membership was only for matchmaking and gold-exclusive servers. But otherwise, you could still join any multiplayer server you want through server lists. At least that's how it was with Halo 2 Vista. My friend thought he had to pay completely for GFWL, and I didn't know any better back then, so I loaned him my Gold account from the Xbox 360 so he could play online with all features while getting me achievements at the same time. But I later found out that you could still play online with a silver account.[/quote]That's what I was saying. They tried to make us pay for features we've had (Most things on GFWL being worse) since the '90s.[/quote] Not only that, but they do it worse than the Xbox Live equivalent. So PC gamers are faced with services that are far inferior to not only what we're used to from the 90's, but also the 360 counterpart. To name a few, "party chat" is present in Steam and I have used it with members of this forum in Halo 2 Vista and Halo CE game nights and the 360 as we well know has party chat, yet GFWL does not. To me, it feels like Microsoft is trying to sell us an outdated system when we and I'm sure they, know full well should be up to par (like Steam). They should at least make it equal to the 360 Live, and keep it free.[/quote] Games for Windows Live in my opinion was a huge missed oppurtunity for Microsoft from the beginning. If they had made it fully free from the beginning and included party chat and avatars, then they'd have a pretty decent service that could compete with Steam. If I recall, when GFWL first came out, Steam did not have party chat yet. You had to rely on additional 3rd party software to get party chat. The advantage of Xbox Live at the time was that it unified all the commonly used online features of a PC. Back then, you would have Steam or XFire for friends list, then Team Speak or Ventrillo for party chat, and other services for whatever else you might've needed. If Microsoft had included a unified service with GFWL from the beginning, before Steam did, then today, GFWL might be a bit more popular than it is. I'm not sure what's going to happen to GFWL after Windows 8 comes out. In the Consumer Preview of Windows 8, Xbox Live is integrated, but I'm not exactly sure how "Live aware" it is. I think it works like Windows Phone 7 where you're not really signed into Live real-time. But judging by Windows 8, the end is nigh for GFWL. I think Microsoft's intent is to promote all of their products by piggy backing off the success of the Xbox (eg. Windows Phone 7 with its Xbox Live features). However, at least in the consumer preview, GFWL still works. Xbox Live for PC, if it's equal to the 360 version, could be a huge hit potentially. These days, Xbox Live is more geared towards multi-media entertainment than just simple multiplayer. Basically, Xbox Live on the PC could replace Windows Media Center and become your all-in-one source for entertainment. One app for everything. Such a thing could make Steam step things up a bit.