That original design gave it a ”rocky start,” he says. Microsoft promise it will ”continue to get better over time” as developer input is taken seriously by them.
”The service started with the right intent, which was to bring Achievements, friends, multiplayer gaming and matchmaking in a really great way to PC,” said Microsoft interactive entertainment business senior producer, Kevin Unangst.
”I think because it was designed originally as a partner to the console service more than the PC service, we had a rocky start.”
”We also didn’t back it up with the most important thing, which is doing fantastic games to take advantage of the service. A network by itself isn’t valuable - there needs to be great games to take advantage,” he continued.
Gas Powered Games and Lionhead Studios are two examples of developers feeding Microsoft with requests and design ideas on how to evolve GfW Live.
”I look at it as like what Halo did for Xbox Live,” he explained, ”where you had Bungie and Microsoft going back and saying ‘to make a great multiplayer game here’s some things I need in the service, here’s my audience’.”
”The Age of Empire team has got a lot of great input and the same can be said for Lionhead, who said ‘we’re going to build Fable 3 on the PC’ and know what they want out of the service.”
”I think the underpinnings are great, I think it’s going to continue to get better. We launched a new Marketplace which was great, we’re selling Live and non-Live enabled games.”
”We’re also seeing developers get back to development. Epic did a great job of promoting Live with Bulletstorm. They’re pleased with the platform and the service is going to continue to get better over time.”
We’ll believe it when we see it Microsoft. The corporate giant has pledged they are backing PC gaming once again having admitted they neglected the platform.
