Whether you think the Games For Windows Live banner waving and sabre rattling is succeeding or failing, Microsoft’s Kevin Unangst believes it’s just ”too early” to know.
Unangst says it’s about Microsoft performing their role as ”the platform stewards” of PC, and telling the development teams which way the winds blowing with the tools at hand.
”We also launched Games for Windows Live in the last year and a half - did a lot of the plumbing, brought that over with nine games shipping for Windows Live. For a multiplayer technology platform, in a year, we feel pretty good about that,” said Kevin Unangst, senior global Windows gaming director, in an interview with Gamasutra. Today they have 85 videogame titles to the GFW banner.
”Really, for us, both today and overall, it’s about being the platform stewards, the ones telling the truth about what’s happening on the platform and guiding developers in the industry, saying, ‘Hey, the move to online is happening. Take advantage of it, and we’re going to give you tools to do that.’”
”We are more successful when we make platforms that help, that are profitable, and valuable for other people to invest in and build on top of. We don’t have to own every piece. That’s not our business model. And I think Windows gaming overall is a fantastic example of how that model works.”
”We don’t charge a royalty for the brand. It helps the ecosystem, and it helps Windows, by having great games that people want to play. It helps working with the hardware partners. The more we push the graphics technology forward, the more AMD and Nvidia will sell graphics chips, and allow developers, then, to make better games, with more complexity and more graphics.”
There has been some controversy of the Games for Windows Live scheme from Microsoft when it comes to multiplayer games. Titles like Petroglyph’s Universe At War for example require a paid membership to Live in order to play online and access a game mode.
”I think it’s way too early to judge or put a report card out for us as to where we’ve been. And I think Microsoft cannot and will not do it all on our own.”
Click here for the full interview between Kevin Unangst and Gamasutra.
Source: VE3D
