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We give Microsoft credit for finally understanding that what works on a console won't necessarily appeal to PC gamers. First, it stripped away the much-derided, fee-based Games for Windows Live Gold membership level. Now the entire Games for Windows Live interface has received an update. The Xbox 360-style "blade" interface is gone, replaced by a fully mouse-driven drop-down menu system. If it only worked as well as it should.

To clarify, you're not intended to download a GFW Live client for your PC, at least not yet (technically you can). For the moment, you're instead supposed to launch any GFW Live-enabled game, log in to the Live service, and from there follow the update prompt. Microsoft says a separate downloadable client is coming, along with a PC gaming-oriented Marketplace that will sell updated content for GFW Live-supported games.

The main Games for Windows Live menu (GamerTag redacted).

(Credit: CNET)

For now, you can use the GFW Live service to socialize and find people to play with from your Windows or Xbox Live friends lists. It also includes an achievement system, as well as an update monitor, which can be both a blessing and a curse. For example, the recent Fallout 3 patch has its share of problems, but GFW Live requires you to update, or else it will log you out (the same is true of Valve's Steam service, GFW Live's primary competition).

Microsoft's Kevin Unangst

(Credit: Microsoft)

Q&A If you missed our earlier post on Microsoft's announcements from the GameFest 2008 conference, here's a brief recap:

• Games for Windows Live is now free at all membership levels
• In the fall, Microsoft will launch a digital distribution service called the Games for Windows Live Marketplace
• DirectX 11 is official, and it will include support for GPU programming, among other new features.

We had a chance to talk to Kevin Unangst, Microsoft's Senior Director of Global Gaming, and he provided some more details.

What was the deciding factor that lead Microsoft to drop the Gold-level membership fee for Games for Windows Live?
Since we introduced Games for Windows Live we've listened to developers and to PC gamers and they said look, there's a baseline expectation that multiplayer is a service that is just free on Windows; that is just how it works. Looking at it from a competitive angle, it makes sense for us to deliver on that expectation and to go above and beyond. We're confident we have the best matchmaking service on the planet with TruSkill matchmaking and we want to make sure that's available to the largest group of Windows gamers. Making this decision really was a natural part of focusing on what gamers want and what game developers told us what they wanted.

Do you expect Xbox Live will remain a fee-based service?
This announcement in no way has an effect on our Xbox Live plan. If you look at what we announced at E3 there's innovation happening on the Xbox side that's going to deliver great value to Xbox Live subscribers. That's not going to change. What's interesting for us is looking at these two services as connected yet different. We're acknowledging that the needs of PC gamers and PC developers are different and we're going to meet those needs. And there will be unique features that show up on Xbox and don't go to Windows, and there will be unique features that go to Windows and that don't go to Xbox.

What kinds of unique features do you mean?
The business model clearly now is a differentiator. Cross-platform is something the two have in common, but there may be different types of content between the two. Now that we'll have the Marketplace that we'll distribute content on, the content does not have to be identical, the game types may be different. Pricing models, which we're not going into detail on today, may be different as well, based on what the expectations and needs are of the PC market versus the console market. If you look at some of the things announced at E3, it is not a foregone conclusion that some of the things that are uniquely designed for a console will come to the PC and vice versa.

Do you have agreements with any publishers to sell their games through the Games for Windows Live Marketplace?
We haven't made any announcements and aren't at this point talking about who's going to be in the store, but you can imagine our goal is to offer the widest range of content we can to our consumers, whether that's free content or paid content. We have great relationships on both platforms with publishers, and we'll certainly be working with all of them to encourage them to take advantage of what we're going to offer in the new Marketplace.

You can expect to see additional announcements moving ahead as we get closer to that fall release, both in games that take advantage of Games for Windows Live, as well as content that may be available through the Marketplace.

How do you intend to differentiate Games for Windows Live from Valve's Steam service?
We're not focused on how we compete with Steam. We're focused on what kind of value we can deliver to gamers and PC games that make them more desirable. We have a lot of experience on things like achievements, both for single player and multiplayer games. We've got the cross-platform connectivity. There's a lot of community features built-in, things like in our matchmaking being able to choose to prefer or avoid players. The feedback system I think is unmatched, and that's what you get from having experience with many millions of Xbox Live users. Really our focus is on making the games better, and the publishers will decide for themselves. I think what Steam's doing is a good service.

Can you get more specific than "fall" for the Marketplace release date?
I have no more specifics other than we have a developer's kit available for game publishers and developers. The release will coincide with the initial games that take advantage of the Marketplace when it first ships. "By the end of the year" is as specific as we can get, but we're targeting fall to release to developers the full, final kit.

And public availability will happen after that?
The way people will be able to get Marketplace content will be from the Web or from a standalone client. When the first games ship that take advantage of Marketplace, that client will be available from Microsoft for download to consumers.

What issues regarding Games for Windows that developers asked you to address?
The biggest was the technical requirements that we had for developers to meet in order to be part of the Live Network on Windows. We've reduced those by nearly a third in terms of the hurdles and the technology they needed to include for testing.

On to DirectX 11. When is that due out?
The final, commercial release will be available for both the next version of Windows and for Windows Vista at the time that the next version of Windows becomes available. We'll of course have developers kits and other things prior to that. We want to make sure that folks know, we made a big leap with Windows Vista in terms of having to rewrite the graphics pipeline for performance and for new capability. Because we made that leap with Windows Vista, we don't have to make that kind of change moving ahead in terms of backwards compatibility. DirectX 11 will support both Windows Vista and the next version of Windows. We'll also be compatible with DirectX 10 and DirectX 10.1 hardware in addition to new DirectX 11 hardware that comes out.

And because we have to ask, when can we expect the next version of Windows?
There's no announced timing for any follow-ons to Windows Vista at this point.

How does DirectX 11 work with the other GPU computing software out there, like Nvidia's Cuda?
There are different methods to implement similar goals. If you're going to do things like parallel programming for GPUs, the advantage with DirectX 11 is that the compute shader will be part of what we've done and have very similar functionality to the rest of the shaders and the rest of the language that we use in DirectX. We expect significant adoption, but that's a choice developers will make and how they want to implement it.

Is the goal similar to the streamlining that Direct3D achieved for 3D graphics drivers?
The goal is really about adding the tools and functionality into the DirectX API that developers tell us they want. If that's multicore support or allowing more programmability on the shaders, all of those things are just about extending a known API that's trusted and used by literally millions of apps over the lifecycle of DirectX and extending that in a way that leverages the investment they already have.

Update:

The release also features the official announcement from Microsoft of DirectX 11. Features include support for GPU computing, and better use of multicore CPUs, among others.

Original post:

Free admission.

(Credit: Microsoft)

We have an interview with Microsoft's Kevin Unangst in a few hours, so we'll be able to find out more shortly, but the basic news is that Microsoft has announced that it will be adding digital distribution to its Games for Windows Live program. It also plans to shed all user fees connected to its Games for Windows Live, whose Gold membership level previously required a $7.99-a-month fee for some advanced services.

Microsoft hinted at its plans to sell online game downloads a few months ago. Combined with no more user fees (which we're not sure anyone actually paid to begin with), Games for Windows Live becomes a more direct competitor to Valve's Steam service.

Thanks, Shack, for the heads up.

Kevin Unangst, Microsoft Senior Global Director, Games for Windows

(Credit: Microsoft)

Q&A Kevin Unangst, Microsoft's Senior Director of Global Gaming, hit the interview rounds starting in April, with the goal of working to dispel the myth that PC gaming is in trouble.

That idea came about in the beginning of the year following a report from NPD research showing that U.S. retail sales of PC games trailed those of games for the various consoles. As Unangst and others have pointed out since the NPD report, those figures do not take into account subscription-based PC gaming, like the World of Warcraft juggernaut, nor do they factor digital distribution from services like GameTap and Valve Software's Steam.

Over the course of Unangst's interviews, he made some interesting points about the perception of PC gaming, the adoption of DirectX 10 hardware, and Microsoft's plans for its Games for Windows Live program. We followed up with Unangst earlier this week.

When you spoke to the game blog Kotaku, you mentioned perception as one of PC gaming's biggest problems right now. Valve Software's Doug Lombardi said the same thing in an interview with Shack News. Can you elaborate?

The perception is really what's being written about in the press since the console battle began anew with the Xbox 360, the PS3, and the Wii. When the PC's written about it's "oh, wow, the PC's not selling as many copies at retail so it must be dying." That's the story that's been written about for so long and that's where the root of this perception issue comes from. And it does get a bit frustrating for folks like Valve and Microsoft, and Intel and Nvidia and others who are investing time and money and seeing new gamers and seeing PC sales increasing and seeing Direct X card sales increasing and seeing these huge revenues in online. We've seen a growth in casual games. MSN Games and PopCap are doing incredibly well on the PC, but you're not seeing a lot of coverage about that. So that's where I think the history of the perception point comes from and it's not true.

Has there been any progress towards more balanced reporting of PC gaming's financial landscape?

NPD has a new study. They're actually taking an assessment of the online space and starting to aggregate. DFC (Intelligence, a video game market research firm) has done a bunch of work there. As you look at the DFC numbers for 2007, the PC is ahead of any other platform, with $8.2 billion in worldwide game sales, with about $5 billion of that online. So in terms of raw numbers, we think the PC is still by far the leading platform when you look at the entire picture.

What do you make of the fact that 2007 was the same year Microsoft's Games for Windows retail branding program was in full swing?

I'd be interested to see what the decline might have been had we and our partners not invested. I think there is a natural shift to online that we're seeing in the PC space, and I think we still feel like with a billion-dollar opportunity sitting at retail we needed to continue to invest in building out dedicated, branded shelf space. I can't peek into what could have been, I certainly think that our investment has kept publishers and retailers devoting shelf space to the PC that they may not have otherwise, or at least attention on the PC that they might not have otherwise.

You mentioned the installed base for Direct X 10 hardware earlier, and in your interview with Kotaku you said that there are 60 million DirectX 10 parts in the marketplace right now. Is that discrete graphics cards?

That is discrete as I understand it. And potentially laptop chips, as well.

Yet the numbers on Valve's PC Hardware Survey (which catalogs system information from users of its Steam PC game download and community software) indicate that of the 1.7 million systems it sampled, 80 percent still use Windows XP, and 90 percent do not have Direct X10-capable hardware.

That like all the others is just one more stat to look at when you're measuring adoption. You have to take into account that Steam and its installed base has been very focused on Half Life and other games that are Valve's first-party IP, and we believe those survey results skew heavily towards those customers. I don't believe that any of their titles take advantage of Direct X 10 at this point, so it doesn't surprise me that they haven't seen a strong adoption rate among their core consumers. I think the (hardware) sales numbers speak for themselves as well as the numbers of titles that are shipping and the investment that the publishers continue to make.

Speaking with the game developer trade site Gamasutra, you said that Microsoft would be working to compete with Valve's Steam software by way of Games for Windows Live. You also pointed to a public development document on MSDN.com outlining the requirements for Games for Windows Live. We didn't find that, but we did find a PowerPoint presentation from this year's Game Developers Conference called Games for Windows Live: Just the Facts. That document outlines features like digital downloads, automatic game patching, and remotely storing saved games, all of which are currently available in Steam. What kind of time table does Microsoft have for adding those features to Games for Windows Live?

I don't recall the document that you're referring to, but I can speak in general that things like automatic updates are available in Games for Windows Live offered today. Those features are all part of the infrastructure that we built and it's something that we're going to build on over time. It's really been our focus to bring over as much of the platform as we can. And then build on top of that the unique experience we think Windows gamers and Windows developers are going to want. So you're going to see even more significant investment from us on Games for Windows Live. Digital distribution and things like that are certainly areas that we have talked about, that we're looking at how we build on the infrastructure and support. But today the focus is on having an identity, having a common friends list, and being able to offer in-game updates. We also have things that other services don't offer like cross-platform support with Xbox 360.

In some ways, over time, there will be competition there as we both continue to deliver on feature sets that we think developers and consumers are going to want. That said I think what Valve is doing for the PC is a great service. They're delivering great games, they're delivering an interesting set of digital content to millions of people. They've done great things for the Windows gaming ecosystem and we hope that they continue to do that.