What do you get if you cross an Xbox 360 and Vista? Games for Windows!

Microsoft have been producing Games for Windows labeled games for the best part of a year now. Both Lego Star Wars II and MS Flight Simulator 10 received the shiny GfW branding, but at a press conference last night, MS revealed what Games for Windows/Vista actually means for your average PC gamer.

Basically, with the next generation of Windows games, we’re going to be seeing the Live service extend on to PCs as well as the Xbox 360 and the Zune. This includes cross-platform multiplayer (Uno and Shadowrun have been confirmed as having cross platform multi-player so far), Achievement Points and the release of a number of Xbox Live Arcade titles for the PC, presumably over a download service.

The live features will be rolled out gradually on Vista following it’s release at the end of the month. Upcoming Games for Windows titles include Crysis, Age of Conan, Age of Empires III, Bioshock and Halo 2.

Thrills Killa from the Xbox Domain was lucky enough to get an invite to the GfW showcase event and has a good write up of it here.

I think that overall, Games for Windows is a good idea. The PC gaming market needs some kind of regulation when it comes to compatibility and Microsoft are the only company that are really in a position to do it. It will take a while to catch on (much in the same way that it took a good year for the Steam download service to take off), but when it does I think publishers will be clamoring to get on board and get a peice of the pie.

The addition of Achievement Points and Live style features is an amazing bonus for PC games. Achievement Points add a lot of replay value to games and give you more satisfaction then just completing the game. The Live Arcade games on PC is a good idea, but to be honest, I wouldn’t use them. I like playing the arcade games on my 360 and I’d get bored of Geometry Wars too quickly on a PC.

Finally, I have concerns over cross platform multiplayer. In Phantsay Star Universe, it worked. In Counter-Strike, it didnt, resulting in the servers for Xbox and PC being seperating. I think it will very much depend on a the games.

Fable 2 Teaser Released

GayGamer.Net came accross this rather interesting photo which had been posted on Lionhead Studio’s public forum.

It comes from the upcoming Fable 2, looks sexy as fuck and has a rather interesting teaser message attached.

The message comes from one of Lionhead Studio’s development staff and reads:

There is something we’d like to show you…… and we would like to add the following 3 points, for you to speculate: * This is a castle * “Own all the world’s property” * Located in a city

So, with any luck, Fable 2 is going to have Elder Scrolls Style cities, with even more potential to own and customise houses and even the above castle.

Just now, Fable 2 remains Xbox 360 exclusive, but given Microsoft’s push for high quality, high graphics games on Windows Vista, I suspect that there’s a good chance that we’ll see it released under the Games for Windows brand.