Microsoft makes Games For Windows Live free for all

this is similar to my thoughts on the matter

I would pay 4x the cost of XBL without thinking twice even if you could still play on Live (without all the other stuff) for free.

Also, the P2P vs. dedicated servers issue is not as clear-cut as the fanboys would have you believe,

Dedicated servers are superior if you're looking to just join a public room with a bunch of random people. Personally, I love the ability to just create a room off my connection with a group of friends that we can play on without having to involve a bunch of random GP dudes who are probably going to sing into their mics.

At this point, given that playin with friends is at minimum 100 times more fun than playing with random people, I don't know why people would still be doing the "jump into a random server" thing since XBL makes building up a friends list so damned easy. Unless you're just one of those people that scares people away I guess.

Oh, and then there's that whole "real life" friends thing too.

Not to mention, dedicated servers disappear when their owners decide to take them down. Meaning if you want to keep playing Madden online you have to pony up the $60 fee to upgrade to the new version, even if you don't feel that year's annual roster update is worth the price.

Dedicated servers also suffer the flaws of their creators. What we have right now is a bunch of console developers trying to do something they've never done before, and aren't very good at. That's why we see games like GTA4 and R6V2 unplayable online at launch on the PS3 side with their dedicated servers, while on the 360 side both launched online without so much of a hitch.

The happy medium would be dedicated servers for the random public rooms and P2P for private rooms (like UT3 does). However, dedicated servers are still going to suffer the same location based lag as P2P. If you ping 80ms to Jax, you still ping 80ms to Jax on a dedicated server. The only real advantage is being able to support more players, but there are few games released on consoles that are meant to be played with loads of players anyhow.

@Vcize

Or you know, you could join a game with your friends. I've played online games with five of my friends at the same time and never had any problem with it. Just because you aren't bright enough to figure it out, doesn't mean all of us can't either.

Secondly, you clearly don't know that most games allow you to create your own games. You know. Games that you host, without involving a dedicated server. Apparently, that simple little fact was lost on you as well. Dedicated servers just allow you to have a continuous server which allows for fantastic things such as mods, custom content, and administrator abilities. Many games give you the option of joining a dedicated server or hosting your own.

I can see why you might have some trouble playing with random people on LIVE, seeing as 90% of the community is a bunch of retards. Fortunately, most PC games aren't graced by that kind of community and most random people aren't all that bad to play with. Some of us actually like making new friends online and meeting new people. Not to mention, dedicated servers kind of allow a "hangout" spot, where you can join and find regulars that you know always there without having to hassle with organizing everyone together.. Of course, you probably wouldn't understand this concept coming from consoles.

You also have a piss-poor understanding of how dedicated servers work in terms of latency. Dedicated servers can suffer from lag, yes, but that's why they list the ping of the server right next to the server. It's your own stupid fault if you decide to join a server with 200+ ping. Dedicated servers are many times run on computers that are extremely fast and have excellent internet connections. This provides a strong connection to EVERYONE there as long as the server stays up.

It's pretty clear that you aren't exactly the brightest guy out there and many of the options and advantages of dedicated servers were lost on you. It's your own fault for having such a poor experience with dedicated servers. Perhaps if you actually spent a tiny amount of time figuring them out, you would have seen them for what they truely are.

GOLD features. They have to though, given the same and more features are free on STEAM and Xfire and Gamespy(for the most part, getting a revamp very soon)

thanks Shawn. Wonder how this will affect the Xbox360 long term. It definitely gives a nice feature free to PC gamers.

yeah, well, with Xbox, I would suspect that is going to head in a different direction, with the new avatars and the whole Xbox experience(Major Nelson, Live Arcade etc..). On PC, we don't have that type of deal, just the Live blades when you are in a game itself. It doesn't run on the desktop at all. The PC version of Live is more or less a stripped down version of what the Xbox has. Plus, there's no Movies, Demos , etc.available on the PC version of Live for PC Gaming. On PC, it simply connects you to your buddies on Xbox live so you can chat, play online with other PC peeps(unless it's crossplatform which is rare), and get Live achievements. For this reason, this is mainly why many PC gamers like myself wanted to see Live on PC free from the get go, as it's very limited.

as a gamer, I think that would be awesome.
As a Microsoft stockholder (not that much, really), it would be a problem for me :p Seriously, XboxLive Gold seems to be the only sure thing making money for E&D right now-losing out on that $50/user stream would just keep E&D in the red.

That would be terrible. Live works because everyone that plays online has it. Friends list and game invites and voice chat all work because everyone you run into has it.

It would be incredibly lame if you tried to add someone to your friend's list or send them a message and got back "This user is not a primetime member and cannot receive your message".

I think you missed my point - I meant the Primetime thing where you participate in for-prizes games, etc. Not merely friends lists, etc. That stuff should be free.