Microsoft has announced they’ll be giving Xbox Live silver accounts access to play some multi-player cross-platform games for free until the fall update. Recently, Microsoft announced free online play with Games for Windows titles, effectively giving PC gamers “gold accounts” to play online.
Most people agree the move to give gold subscriptions to PC gamers was done because PC gamers don’t care to play Games for Windows games online if they have to pay for it. The culture of PC gaming is much different than console gaming on XBL, gamers expect the online experience at no cost; they’re already paying an ISP for network access, paying for a match-making system with a yearly subscription is not desired.
Console gamers don’t have a choice, buying the 360 experience arrives with simple to play games (no drivers, no installs) but limited online choices: pay or go away. Now, silver members will get a little taste of network play, along side PC gamers in the cross-platform Games for Windows titles.
“Supported cross-platform titles include Universe at War, Shadowrun, and Lost Planet: Colonies Edition.” (gamespot)
We question the intention here… is this as a good faith move or are they wetting people’s appitite for XBL so they’ll want to upgrade to gold in the fall? Or, maybe there are some logistical reasons to doing this in the Xbox Live infrastructure to prepare for upgrades where making it free solves a few of their internal upgrade paths and, as a side effect, gives gamers some games to play.
Of course, we’ve seen few people playing Shadowrun or Lost Planet lately. Maybe this will re-popularize a few older titles as well.
Nice to have a three man podcast again 🙂
@Occulous Rift: This is the first I’m hearing it called an absolute joke after seeing constant praise for this device.
I agree with the bring on the Holodeck sentiment, I’m sure society will fall apart when everyone decides to live in one.
@Simcity offline: This feels a bit like too little too late for me.
@QOTW: I once bought a Neo-geo and ten games for 20 dollars from a pawn shop. The games were a soccor side scrolling platformer, a space game that didn’t look better than Star Fox, a mystery game with very cheap animation, a doom clone and DragonSlayer. Aside from Dragonslayer most of these games looked like they could have been done on the other consoles at the time. We eneded up using it as a media player, funny how a out of date console can play CD’s while the Ps4 and Xbone can’t.