A video is floating around youtube that appears to be a leaked internal presentation for their Games for Windows “eXperience” roadmap. After a cringe-inducing viewing , I can now safely conclude that this Microsoft’s plan to attract the people who play Starcraft II, Team Fortress 2, Minecraft and Battlefield is to make them pay for pretty little virtual dresses. That’s right!
The Games for Windows platform is to serve as the bedrock for the belief that there is no room for regular, good old fashioned gaming left on the PC platform and that Farmville, Bejeweled and Facebook games are the way of the future. Forget the fact that the guys who run the Steam service are laughing their way to the bank with a rumoured hundreds of millions in revenue all from ‘core’ PC games, you can even forget that they try to attract people to PC gaming with cheaper pricing, a service that makes online functionality easier for everyone and tonnes of free features… No sir! The suits at MS want you to buy clothes for your virtual avatar, and they want you to share that embarrassment on Facebook for your disturbingly giddy friends to comment on.
Oh, but there’s more… you can now compare your bejeweled scores with OTHER PEOPLE ONLINE! Revolutionary, I tell ya! There’s something about ‘buying useless crap that enhances my experience’ in there as well. It’s painful to watch. Needless to say, you can pretty much safely bet that Steam is going to maintain its monopoly for a while without worrying about competition.
lol
