Xbox Live confirmed for Windows 8

[LightHeaven]

Uh? It not supported as a Framework to develop Metro Style apps and that is all. XNA apps/Games are fully functional in Windows 8. Pin the XNA app's tile to the start screen and the average Joe won't see a difference.

There will be a large difference: App Store. Xna games could be first class citizens in windows for the first time, but they are still being pushed back into irrelevance on windows platform due this.

It's not much of a problem if Ms ditches the XNA, but provide a similar concept and apis in winRT, but so far Ms response has been: "Well, you just have to use c++/directX directly if you want to develop metro games on win8". which is really a boomer after all that: We need to democratize gaming, and bring more people to the industry" they've bragging for years now...

Specially now that would be probably the biggest move Ms could make to help improve a crucial area for indie games: Provide a store to sell those games without the need of a publisher.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Specially now that would be probably the biggest move Ms could make to help improve a crucial area for indie games: Provide a store to sell those games without the need of a publisher.

They don't do this on 360 Live!, so it's highly improbable they'd go this route with PC. In fact, to stop themselves being swamped by every conceivable software app, they're surely going to limit who can publish on their PC software portal? It's not really needed on PC where people can go looking for software on individual website, buy direct from indies and search particular specialist catalogue websites (Tucows, KVRAudio, GameTunnel). MS's portal is going to have to have something to differentiate it. I guess use of Live points will help tie people into a particular service.

Trying to keep this discussion more console focused, what games are going to be compatible between consoles and PC? Is there a framework that'll support WinMo, Win 8 Metro and 360? Or will we have to wait for XB3 and a metro frontend there?

 

[Arwin]

They don't do this on 360 Live!, so it's highly improbable they'd go this route with PC. In fact, to stop themselves being swamped by every conceivable software app, they're surely going to limit who can publish on their PC software portal? It's not really needed on PC where people can go looking for software on individual website, buy direct from indies and search particular specialist catalogue websites (Tucows, KVRAudio, GameTunnel).

You couldn't be more wrong about this one, in my humble opinion. A unified platform store is insanely more convenient in every possible way for the large majority of home users. An Apple style model where you need to pay a registration fee of $99 a year for publishing software there is more than enough to weed out total crap, and for the rest you have a unified rating system.

For me more interesting would be to see if they can manage something like this also for business users. That's a lot harder, and I don't see it happening in the short term.

MS's portal is going to have to have something to differentiate it.

All Windows Store needs is to be the thing that people think is the Windows equivalent of the App stores on their phone.

Trying to keep this discussion more console focused, what games are going to be compatible between consoles and PC? Is there a framework that'll support WinMo, Win 8 Metro and 360? Or will we have to wait for XB3 and a metro frontend there?

Not supporting XNA on Win8 is not encouraging. We also already had Games for Windows Live before, and I wonder how much of a difference this 'Xbox Live' for Windows 8 will be in that regard, or whether that changes anything about Microsoft's generally unwilling stance towards PC/360 interoperability (not that there are many developers interested in mixing PC mouse and console pad users in the first place).

We won't have to wait for XB3 necessarily for that Metro front-end; the Kinect interface is already a not very far removed cousin to Metro if you ask me, and I could definitely see those two merge further.

 

[pjbliverpool]

As of right now I don't know of any XNA Xbox 360 game that can be purchased and ran on a Windows 7/Vista PC (I could be wrong though so feel free to correct me) and this , AFAIK, won't change with Windows 8.
To put it simply Windows 8 will treat XNA apps (developed for PC..once again I'mnot aware of XBLA XNA games compatible/playable on the Windows..) the same way Windows 7 treats them . The only new thing here is that the XNA framework won't be supported to develop Metro-Style apps.

Let's for example imagine that I develope an XNA gamesfor the X360 and and PC (= two different packages). I will be able to sell on XBLA arcade on the X360 and in the Windows 8 Store because Metro apps and regular "desktop" apps can coexist in it (and Win8 will treat XNA apps as regular desktop apps). The only "major" downside in all of this is that XNA apps won't be able to take advatge of the new cool WinRT stuff and all the cloud/share/print apis etc... stuff that make a Metro app.

The conclusion here is that Microsoft is apparently ditching XNA in favor of WinRT and all the new apis associated with it.

Okay thanks for the clarification, that's better than I thought.

The way I saw it was that having XBL on Windows would be a perfect opportunity for XBLA games to be made available on the PC. As long as this isn't a technical blocker to that then my concerns with unfounded.

Whether MS actually choose to release those XBLA games on PC is a different question though. From what I'm hearing they should already be natively compatible due to them being developed away from the metal in XNA?

 

[pjbliverpool]

What about DirectX?

That's one example of where MS is helping push forwards PC gaming but you could argue this is as much for the xbox as for the PC. i.e. DX developement drives hardware development which is needed for their next console.

Plus releases have been pretty few and far between lately.

But even if DX is some good that MS is doing for PC gaming, it doesn't outweigh the bad like the jokes that were GfWL and the half finished Games Explorer.

And I don't think we need to mention all the first party exclusives that have been locked out from the PC market. That alone is MS's biggest attack on PC gaming.

 

[AlphaWolf]

And you're going to jump to Sony and Apple because they've been so supportive of PC gaming?

Comedy gold.

 

[pjbliverpool]

And you're going to jump to Sony and Apple because they've been so supportive of PC gaming?

Comedy gold.

Apple and Sony are in competition with MS, their lack of support for PC gaming is hardly going to be cause for upset for most sensible people. But as the custodian of PC gaming then Microsofts apparent attempts to diminish it are definately more of a kick in the balls to PC gamers, so yes I think it's perfectly reasonable to vote with my wallet against Microsofts behavior.

That and the obvious fact that gaming is the only thing keeing me with them right now. Once it's gone I'm more than happy to move to competitors platforms.

 

[joker454]

The way I saw it was that having XBL on Windows would be a perfect opportunity for XBLA games to be made available on the PC. As long as this isn't a technical blocker to that then my concerns with unfounded.

I'd expect phone and tablet apps to run on pc and console eventually, but I wouldn't count on having current XBLA apps run on pc. Aside from technical issues, some studios long since gone, etc, there may be legal/liscensing issues as well.

Now as to future XBLive apps on their next console, that's a different story. That could be done but it's unknown if it would be. I know this is always a touchy topic, but many publishers, smaller devs, etc will not want their XBLive apps on pc until the piracy issue is resolved. So even if if Xbox 720 XBLive apps could be run on PC, I'd still expect that many would not be due to individual developer choice.

 

[sebbbi]

Whether MS actually choose to release those XBLA games on PC is a different question though. From what I'm hearing they should already be natively compatible due to them being developed away from the metal in XNA?

You are confusing XBox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) with Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA). XBLA games use exactly the same development tools as retail Xbox games, and have full hardware access. It would be pretty hard to directly run a sophisticated XBLA game on PC, as PC doesn't have unified memory (on PC GPU/CPU can't directly access same memory areas) and x86 instruction set is completely different from the consoles that are based on PPC instruction set (and big endian memory model).

You would need to port the game to PC based DirectX (DX9 is missing lot of XB functionality, so DX10 would be the obvious choice for sophisticated games). Of course you would need to port all your file operations to little endian format, and all your vector instructions to SSE, etc. If Win 8 / Windows App Store become incredibly popular, I am sure many XBLA developers would become really interested in the platform. It's not that much work to port a console game to PC. Many developers already have internal PC versions for development and debugging purposes (and/or tools/editors running on same engine on PC), making the porting process even easier. But it's not something that could be fully automated.

Personally I am interested to see where things go in the future. The Samsung development tablets Microsoft was giving away have hardware that is in many ways more powerful than current consoles (4GB RAM, 64GB SSD, i5 CPU, 1366x768 display), but the HD 3000 integrated graphics is still slightly lagging behind the current generation console GPUs. Luckily Intel is releasing Ivy Bridge based CPUs next spring, and claim 60% faster GPU speed... it is highly possible that we have tablets more powerful than current generation consoles at Win 8 launch. Porting console games to monsters like that would be technically pretty straightforward. But naturally you would need to port the user interface and the game controls to touchscreen as well, and the success of that depends entirely on the game itself.

 

[AzBat]

Sebbi is right. There are very few actual Live Arcade published titles(less than 10 I believe) that actually are developed with the XNA Game Studio & tools.

Tommy McClain

 

[pjbliverpool]

Thanks for the info sebbbi, that's really informative.

 

[patsu]

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/interv...Offensive-Interview-With-Valves-Chet-Faliszek

Will cross-platform play only be across PC, Mac and PS3? Why not the 360?

Getting Steam on the 360 is not something we’re able to do right now, and that’s how matchmaking works. Microsoft are working with us for some other stuff you’re going to see in Portal 2 that’s kind of interesting – originally I was supposed to come over here and talk about that, because the Portal 2 DLC was supposed to be out by now – but you’ll see that we’re doing some more work with them. I think that as they get older and older, the consoles are all looking for more ways that they can let people interact, so we’ll see. But right now, 360’s not allowing us to do that kind of thing.

Are you hoping to get Steam on the 360 at some point?

I think Microsoft first thought that the PS3 was getting the Steam store, but when they realised it was just getting features that we use internally to make our games, I think they got a lot less worried. So with the second DLC, we’re talking to them a lot about features that we want and things we want to work with them on and they’re really open about working with us on that, so we’ll see.

Good to hear MS is more open to explore new experiences with Valve.

I wonder if MS will "export" Passport in XBL so that third party networks like Valve and Origins can have their own experience.

 

[joker454]

Man I hope not, the last thing I want is the now clean and consistent XBLive sullied by other inconsistent services. I don't know much about Origin, but Steam already is a hodgepodge of this game supports this, that game supports that, etc, I really don't want that kinda crap anywhere near XBLive.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Man I hope not, the last thing I want is the now clean and consistent XBLive sullied by other inconsistent services. I don't know much about Origin, but Steam already is a hodgepodge of this game supports this, that game supports that, etc, I really don't want that kinda crap anywhere near XBLive.

I'll second that.

 

[RobertR1]

Man I hope not, the last thing I want is the now clean and consistent XBLive sullied by other inconsistent services. I don't know much about Origin, but Steam already is a hodgepodge of this game supports this, that game supports that, etc, I really don't want that kinda crap anywhere near XBLive.

Same. I like the consistency and reliability of Live. Take that away and I'm out.

I installed origin. I have to go Origin to launch the BF3 beta. Hitting launch opens up IE and takes me to a webpage which is what I use to interact with the community, launch games and so on. This page stays running the background while I'm gaming. I'm pretty sure I have to to have origin app and the webpage running at all times. Man, I wish I was making this up.

 

[mrcorbo]

Minus the store, what does Steam add to XBL that it doesn't already have? Personally, I couldn't care less about cross-platform play.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'll second that.

I imagine MS third that, given what they've crafted into Live. I get the impressions the intention here is more linking in crossover features, like achievements or cross-platform play on different servers. Within these talks, I expect MS to ensure that Steam lives up to Live's standards - it's be a poor backpeddle by Ms if not.

 

[MfA]

Good to hear MS is more open to explore new experiences with Valve.

Embrace and extinguish.

 

[AzBat]

Could this be the way Microsoft brings Xbox 360 games to Windows 8?

"Microsoft preparing OnLive rival for 2012 - report"
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/321458/microsoft-preparing-onlive-rival-for-2012-report/

They could also be a way to bring backward compatibility to the next Xbox as well. Just forego emulation altogether & do it OnLive style. Intriguing if true.

Tommy McClain

 

[pjbliverpool]

On the one hand I shudder at the thought of playing games which simply stream the image and sound over the internet to my PC (I assume that's how this works).

On the other hand, I'd be happy to get the 360 back catalogue on my PC even if this is how they have to do it.