Gears of War, the blockbuster 360 game that is now heading to PC, will require you to have a Live account in order to play online coop and multiplayer. However, before you go getting your pitchforks out, just know that it doesn’t require a Gold Live account. Players with a Silver account (the free one), can also play the game online.
Also, though currently Games for Windows Live only exists in a format that works with Windows Vista, it will also be releasing for Windows XP. According to CVG, the release for the XP GFW Live service will occur before the launch of Gears.
People will bitch about this and to them I say, you is stupid. No one complained vehemently about having to have a battlenet account to play StarCraft or Diablo online. Having those accounts at least gave the service provider access to stats on how many people were playing, allowing them to determine if future online content would be viable. The point is, while I am sure there are parts of the PC gamer’s anatomy that make him want to buck like a crazy bull at the thought of being forced into a service, this could be a good thing. Besides the possibility for future content, you don’t have to pay for the service.

Chufmoney

[via CVG]

While there were some non-gaming related reveals at Steve Job’s keynote at the WWDC this morning, EA and iD definitely seem to have spring the biggest surprises on the audience. First, EA has committed full platform support for Macs (presumably Intel macs though, I’d imagine).

Now, this makes sense for a couple of reasons. First, there are more Macs out there right now that are completely gaming capable than 360s, PS3s, or Wiis, possibly combined. It’s a big market, and ignoring it until this point has been a bit backwards, and a bit rooted in the previous architecture differences that separated the PC and the Mac. With that gone, there’s little reason to not embrace the platform.

There’s another possible reason though; Games for Windows. EA has demonstrated hesitance in accepting any outside standards and requirements for their games on Microsoft’s platforms in the past. One of the biggest hurdles of Live on the original Xbox was EA’s refusal to play ball on Microsoft servers, and therefore Xbox Live. On the PC side of things, rather than embrace the Games for Windows branding initiative for their titles, EA has created their own brand identity for the PC side in direct marketing competition with Games for Windows. EA has demonstrated an interest in maintaining absolute control over the games they publish (possibly because of the demographic and marketing information that they’ve taken to collecting through their clients for games like Battlefield 2142, or the marketing they send to players who access their games through Xbox Live), and increased adoption of Games for Windows in the PC space could threaten their ability to leverage their games for their own purposes. Making the Mac an acceptable, viable gaming platform is disruptive enough to distract and possibly even derail Games for Windows. Is that likely to happen? I would say not. But Microsoft should certainly be worried. And they should counter this by making Games for Windows less crap, which I say as a de facto subscriber to the service, since I pay for Live Gold on the 360.

That in mind, there’s also iD announcing that their next, as of now unnamed project will release on the Mac as well, and to boot, they debuted the engine today during Jobs’ keynote. The details of the engine are still scarce, but the images that have popped up are fairly impressive. This development may be from factors similar to EA’s possible motivations, and ironically from Carmack’s focus on the 360 as his lead platform for their new IP. Carmack has gone on record criticizing Vista and DirectX 10 already, so this may be his way of asserting iD’s own independence from Windows. Development on the 360 has also freed them from Windows in some ways as well.

So, all around, this is great news for gamers. The Mac looks like it may become much more of a viable platform for games, and Microsoft now has much more incentive to improve the shaky infrastructure its built for Games for Windows. As we’ve maintained around here on repeated occasions, Competition is Good amidst gaming platforms.

-Aegies