Steam Takes on XBL on the PC

Games
1

I’m happy that Steam has turned into a really nice platform for both purchasing and playing games. I’m happier that they’ve decided to compete with Microsoft’s lame attempt to bring XBL to the PC. This looks like one case where free certainly wins out.

Side note: why the hell doesn’t XBL let you join groups? What a silly thing to miss.

2

Yes.
No, wait: Hell, yes.
The lack of groups is just insane.

3

Yay for open platforms and competition.

4

How exactly is steam an open platform?

Competition, sure. But it ain’t open.

5

Yeah, what stusser said. It is cool that Steam is making a point of not charging for DLC* and all of that, but that doesn’t make it any more open than XBL. It isn’t an open platform.

  • (though harping on this is kind of just grandstanding, they’d never get away with charging for DLC on PC games anyway, simply because there are different expectations on the PC games side (due to historical precedent) than there are for console games)
6

I think he was refering to the PC being an open platform, where unlike an Xbox users can pick their “online gaming service”.

I for one still think Gametap will be the “better” service even if Valve does pull all this off and pull it off well. Thankfully, with the PC I can have both.

7

Oh, good call. Agreed, yay for open platforms!

8

I’ll vote for both Gametap and Valve to do well. God knows we need to keep Microsoft honest, particularly on the PC.

9

Sorry, what competition? Being a server browser? Being an online distributor? Having a friends list? Steam does too much and nothing else does everything else that Steam does. Personally I think its nice to have a good server browser since that’s the basis for all the Source games, but apart from that they should just focus on having better distribution… if I want groups I already have facebook, why reinvent the wheel?