Battleangel

Or smothering it. Microsoft wants to streamline, standardize gaming for Windows Vista. Should we be afraid or really, really afraid?

We recently sat down with Games for Windows (GFW) Marketing Director Kevin Unangst and PR Manager Michael Wolf for a brief pre-launch tour of gaming on Vista. Admittedly, the implementation hasn’t changed much since we first previewed Vista nearly a year ago. Even so, from a GUI-perspective, Vista features a user-friendly central location for cataloging, accessing, and tweaking (settings, parental controls, updating, etc.) GFW-branded games — non-GFW games won’t necessarily be excluded, but they won’t feature many of the required functionalities built into the branded titles.

Some of these functionalities would be mimicing the Xbox 360 interface and require Xbox controller compatability. This in itself should be enough to rattle most serious gamers. No one would turn down the easy install requirement at face value perhaps but there is no telling what it would entail in terms of copy protection schemes and reduced install options. Not to mention the fear that the Live service would be the only service on which to play these GFW titles in any meaningful way. Then again, it may force companies like Blizzard to reconsider their price model for games such as World of Warcraft, which is hideously overpriced. Perhaps that is the road we have to travel, forever giving up free multiplayer gaming, but setting a much more reasonable price level. Still, the lingering fear is that Microsoft will enfeeble the market, patronize users in what some would call the Duplo approach.