Xbox Windows branding coming to Windows 8

Hahahaha...

Because PC Gamers totally love being lumped in with the 360. Nothing says "personalising your gaming experience" like mass-branding.

Posted:9 months ago

+1 to Morville. That's exactly what I thought. Cause, you know, Windows Live has been such a resounding success. Microsoft will totally get more PC gamers under their blanket by associating them even more with the most detested gamers in the industry: Xbox Live gamers.

Posted:9 months ago

If you get away from fanboy "core" gamers then what is wrong with a game in the cloud being accessible in people's living room and also on their desktop? Because this is where we are headed. The same game will also be on tablets and phones.
Win 8 will be across all possible devices with a uniform kernel and a uniform look and feel. All optimised for using the cloud.

This is a bold strategic move by Microsoft that has the potential to give them great strategic advantage.

Posted:9 months ago

I've gotta go with Bruce on this one (I always have to pause for thought when that happens). It isn't about the hardcore PC crowd, they may be by far the most vocal but they're definitely not the biggest group of users. Having a unified system seems like a smart move to me.

Posted:9 months ago

Part of the issue is homogenisation - PC gaming is already awash with lazy ports, and if you rebrand something along a console line, then you're setting up the expectation (whether it's positive or negative) that the PC version will be the same as the console version.

The other part is that I'd feel a lot more comfortable with this if MS didn't do everything related to their PC gaming division in such a half-arsed manner. G4WL/XBox Marketplace is awful - from a consumer point of view it's technically flawed, and incompetently programmed - and this rebranding just strikes me as a lazy attempt to court PC gamers (both casual and core) without really doing anything of value.

Also:

The Xbox Windows branding seems to stand apart from Microsoft's previous Games for Windows Live service and covers titles offered through the Windows Store.

Not quite true. Fire up The Games For Windows Live client and you're presented with this: "Shop for your favorite games in every genre at the PC Games Marketplace on Xbox.com." So 'Stands apart' isn't quite accurate.

@ Bruce

This is a bold strategic move by Microsoft that has the potential to give them great strategic advantage.

As noted above, they've had the "Xbox on PC" branding for quite awhile now, albeit aiming at Core gamers (through the G4WL client). I would hardly say, therefore, that this is a "bold strategic move".

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Morville O'Driscoll on 8th August 2012 12:47pm

Posted:9 months ago

@ Bruce : I don't think that most people playing games want to pay a subscription or even any kind of fee for a game sitting in the cloud. Especially given the awful quality of internet infrastructure in a lot of developed countries. Plus, with the US facing a spectrum crunch and the ISPs limiting the bandwith available to users because of that issue, I don't think that we are going to see mass-market cloud gaming on mobile devices anytime soon.

And as soon as you rule out cloud gaming as far as mobile devices are concerned, the prospect of running the same game, even between a tablet and a smartphone becomes very unappealing.

Moreover, I don't think that most gamers want to play games designed for a touch interface. There are for sure really good games for tablets, but it's not the best interface you can think of. PC gamers have been complaining for ages about their games becoming dumbed-down because they were also released on consoles. If developers start dumbing-down games and their interface to be able to release them on tablets, I don't think that the consummers are going to be interested.

When you look at games that reach a mass-market audience in the PC space, you mostly find games like League of Legends, World of Warcraft, World of Tanks, Diablo III, all games that were tailored for a PC-specific experience using a mouse and keyboard. The only current big PC game that I can think of that could transition well to the tablets is The Sims.

This is why I think that this effort from Microsoft to offer a unified Xbox branding accross the board is not a smart idea. It clearly sends the wrong message to the target audience.

Edited 2 times. Last edit by Laurent Mandement on 8th August 2012 2:53pm

Posted:9 months ago

@Laurent, I think what you are calling 'mass-market' is what someone else might call 'core gamers'. Look at the games MS are bringing out under the new banner - Solitaire, Minesweeper - *these* are mass-market games, played by countless millions of casual gamers / regular computer users for many years. They are also games that will work perfectly well with a touch interface. I think it should work nicely to have these games standard across pc, tablet and phone. And they'll probably use cloud to sync game state and scores, but I agree there is no way they will be charging a fee for this - what made you think they would?

Posted:9 months ago

I agree with Bruce. It's an excellent idea to homogenise this brand and have all your gaming (mobile, console, desktop) on the same profile. I applaud it.

Posted:9 months ago

@Laurent Mandement

Look up Runescape. In the cloud since 2001. 200 million accounts created. 10 million active accounts.

As for touch interface, look up Angry Birds sales figures. 1,000 million and counting, mostly on touch interfaces. Which also serves as a game across many different platforms with different UIs.

Posted:9 months ago