Actually, Luka, it's got little to do w/ .Net. Your anti-MS feelings are duly noted, but try actually making a valid, well-founded point next time instead of just ranting.
Actually, there will be far less chance for "things going wrong and plain not working", because the code will be written once, will be better tested than any code in any single game could possibly ever be, and will be far cheaper for developers (and in the long run, us) because each different developer won't have to continue to re-invent the metaphorical wheel every time.
In case you haven't noticed, a variety of MS technologies have VASTLY improved gaming. Most notable are the DirectX technologies. While as a customer you probably think you haven't directly seen or felt any improvement, you have. Games are cheaper (to develop at least), more stable, and more powerful than they were before DirectX. Nobody forced developers to use DirectX. They use it because it's by far the best development platform for PC games out there.
You see, when developers have to keep writing match-making code, or networking code, or patching code, or installation code, or whatever from scratch, it takes a lot of time and a lot of money, and bugs will exist. If you look at most games over the last few years, even today, they are usually patched soon after release to fix the inevitable probelms with these areas of the product. This is because relatively few people have tested the code, and because it's expensive to write code well and robustly.
But when you have code (like, say, DirectX or Longhorn) that literally millions of people will have put their shakespeare-writing ape-hands on, you tend to find and fix these bugs very quickly. And game developers can now either shave off entire parts of their budgest (lowering prices and/or increasing profits), or reallocate those parts of their budget back into what matters -- the game itself.
This announcement is good news for PC gamers, just like DirectX was so many years ago. The transition may be a little awkward (like the DOS to Win95 transition), but eventually we'll all be sighing collectively in relief that we no longer have to worry about this or that, like we're all now glad we dont' have to worry about config.sys and EMS and XMS and those sorts of (now-)obsolete headaches.
-Scott
http://www.MediaJive.com/This comment was edited on Mar 10, 22:01.