MS's Online Gaming Service - Blue's News Comments

MS's Online Gaming Service
[May 09, 2006, 7:04 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments

Microsoft Announces Online Gaming Service announces plans for a gaming service that will offer cross-platform support for Windows Vista, Xbox Live, as well as cell phones:

LOS ANGELES - Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates on Tuesday announced a new cross-platform gaming service that integrates games played on cell phones, Xbox 360 consoles and the upcoming Windows Vista operating system.

The "Live Anywhere" service will be available as part of Windows Vista, Microsoft's next-generation PC operating system. The consumer version is scheduled for release early next year.

"It means that you have one online community," Bill Gates said in a news conference. "This platform can really unleash developers to do amazing new things."

The system would extend the company's existing Xbox Live service for the Xbox 360 console into millions of Internet-enabled PCs and cellular phones. No pricing information on the new service was announced.

"The vision here is each platform plays its own role. We really think we're in a unique position," Gates said. "Microsoft is probably the only company that can pull this off."

In a demonstration, an Xbox 360 gamer using Live Anywhere was able to send an invitation to a friend on a PC. After the PC user agreed, the two connected for a cross-platform online gun battle.

In another example, a race car's stats were modified on a cellular phone, its appearance was edited in a paint program on the PC and then it was raced on a track on the Xbox 360.

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68.

Re: No subject
May 11, 2006, 15:42

Tango

68.

Re: No subject May 11, 2006, 15:42

May 11, 2006, 15:42

Tango

That flies directly into the face of comments Epic staff have made about UT2007. I think you are off your rocker on that one.

Well I'm just quoting what John Carmack said recently http://tinyurl.com/quzoo... here's the important bit:

Q14: Do you think that the MegaTexture technology will be accessible to mod teams?

Answer: It doesn’t help them. In general, all the technology progress has been essentially reducing the ability of a mod team to do something significant and competitive. We’ve certainly seen this over the last 10 years, where, in the early days of somebody messing with DOOM or QUAKE, you could take essentially a pure concept idea, put it in, and see how the game play evolved there. But doing a mod now, if you’re making new models, new animation, you essentially need to be a game studio doing something for free to do something that’s going to be the significant equivalent. Anything like this that allows more media effort to be spent, probably does not help the mods.

I have read other interviews with other developers (and can't be bothered to go looking for them :)) which suggest the same thing. I take your point about a lot of devs coming from the mod community, but you have to admit, as content becomes more and more costly to create, it becomes less and less likely that people will do it for free. The only reason why you might is in the hope you get picked up by a company like Valve (CS, Ricochet, etc.) or as a springboard into video game development as a profession. But even then I suspect portfolios of your individual animations / models / levels / etc will be the way forward. It's just a hunch.

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