Xbox Live coming to Windows 8

by David Hinkle on Sep 13th 2011 6:00PM

As part of Microsoft's continuing effort to provide its users one all-encompassing ecosystem for all of their entertainment needs (or something), the company has announced that its latest operating system, Windows 8, will support Xbox Live. Exact details on integration are forthcoming, but the biggest question that surfaces in our is: What does this mean for Games for Windows Live?

We've got some questions in to Microsoft and will update as soon as we can. [Update: A Microsoft spokesperson tells us "we currently have nothing to announce beyond the statement that Major Nelson posted on his blog."] In the meanwhile, how about some tentative rejoicing?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Source: Major Nelson

Tags: games-for-windows-live, microsoft, pc, windows-8, xbox, xbox-live

Reader Comments (90)

Windows 8 coming to Xbox Live.

@Enigma7ic

Oh, what a wonderful day this has turned out to be! Such exciting and encouraging news as this does not come often in the magical kingdom of PC gaming. Oh, I am simply delighted that the Glorious Xbox Live experience is finally here to shove that evil and no-good Steam out of the PC kingdom for good. Only heretics and witches worship the Steam! MAY ALL HAIL AND WORSHIP THE GLORIOUS XBOX LIVE FOR THE REST OF ETERNITY!!!

Didn't windows 7 come out like 5 minutes ago?

@mietha
Real life doesn't run on Valve time.
At least I think it doesn;t.

@mietha

I've been using Windows 7 since summer '09. I'm ready for something new!

@mietha
Windows historically has run on a 2-3 year schedule. XP to Vista being the sole discrepancy.

@mietha
Well, the developers figured out a way to "extend" their time.
They found out that in a dream, time becomes much faster, and being asleep for 5 minutes can seem like 30. So they had time to develop without worry about what happened in the real world.

But then they made a break through, they could live a whole lifetime, by going inside a dream inside ANOTHER DREAM, which in turn, is inside ANOTHER dream, in about a week!

And that's how they already came up with this.

@einhanderkiller

Yeah, and every other OS has been terrible. Since 7 is great, that means 8 will be vomited dogcrap and 9 will be good again.

@mietha Exactly the issue. Welcome to the world of ever growing technology

@Mr Hett The official retail release was in October of '09, which is ages in software years. The market has also changed, A LOT, since Windows 7 cam out, and not even Microsoft is arrogant enough to think they can get complacent.

@Mr Hett
i've been using vista since summer of '09, i'm ready for something new

@mietha
You mean Windows Vista SP1?

@SisypheanLife
Actually, 8 looks like 7 with some added features, so I predict it will be good, since only Vista and ME were really the only "bad" Windows.

@SisypheanLife; I highly doubt that Windows 8 will be "vomited dog crap." As someone who's been using the Metro UI for a couple years with the Zune HD and Windows Phone 7, I have no doubts about how well it will perform. Microsoft as a whole has been really stepping their game up recently in part due to tenacious market competition.

I don't doubt that this will be an awesome version of Windows.

@SisypheanLife
2000 was pretty awesome. Very solid and reliable. Then XP was great too.
Before that 95 was pretty amazing followed by 98 which was even better, then 98 SE which was better still! Then ME sucked.

@SisypheanLife What a load of nonsense.

" What does this mean for Games for Windows Live?"

Microsoft already killed it. Unless they do something insane like Xbox 360 emulation or buy an existing digital distribution store nothing will work.

@Fox318

games for windows live could have been cool, but right now, it's always a pain in the ass if a game requires it.

@Fox318

Not true. It could mean all your xbox services on your PC. Not that you can't already get Twitter and such through the PC, but the market place for Indie, XNA, etc. games on the PC. Videos and Music from the marketplace now on your PC.

And it can continue to be a DRM platform with the XBL friends list, messaging system, and achievements.

If it's integrated it's windows then developers only need a few lines of code to use it instead of putting it into their games (like GWL.)

@Fox318

Whatever. I just want my 360 Avatar to Dance on my desktop!

@Fox318 It's gradually being merged into the Xbox brand.

I seriously hope this means we'll be seeing a lot of PC and Xbox cross-gameplay.

@MystileArmor They promised that with GFWL. Needless to say it didn't pan out so well.

@MystileArmor will never happen. Unless they charge PC users. PC users won't accept that though. We get BETTER network on our free to play services than xbox live can ever hope to achieve. with a few exceptions.

@Faceless Troll

Not many developers who make games for both the 360 and PC have made use of the GFWL environment.

There are games out there which support cross platform play so it does work, just no one uses it.

@MystileArmor mice vs controller?

@MystileArmor

I hope for cross-platform play to.

Windows 8 Ultimate Edition plays Xbox 360 games?

@Mr Hett

Nope. It's basically "Games for Windows - LIVE" being killed and merged into one single naming system: Xbox Live on Windows.

@Mr Hett
There was a rumor a few months ago saying that you could use xbox game discs to play on your PC with windows 8. Check it out:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6323247/windows-8-to-play-xbox-360-games

Nice.

Cool, maybe more cross-platform games are on the way.

Will there be an achievement for longest boot up time amongst people on my friends list?

@FlashJS

Have you not heard how little boot time Windows 8 will have. It's like 15 seconds.

@FlashJS
http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=US#/watch?v=y2Mjxp0UvGw

@ItsameMatt03

Well, if they're wanting people to play Windows 8, there better be some goshdarn easy achievements. That's all I'm saying.

10G Open Insanity
Open the same document 10 times in a single day.

10G Mass Email Effect
Reply-to-all (minimum 20 people) on 10 emails in Outlook in a single day.

10G Deus Ex: Human Vocalization
Use the Windows Narrator for 120 minutes cumulative.
...

Thinking I'm going to stick with Win 7 for awhile.

Is this Microsoft's attempt to force people to pay to play online for PCs as well? I seriously doubt its going to have anything to do with enabled 360 games to be played on PC. If anything, it'll probably just have an embedded gadget that shows your friends' status and allows you to chat with them. Basically, Yahoo Messenger.

@SisypheanLife
You mean Windows Live Messenger? That's already incorporated into Xbox Live.

And they already tried making PC gamers pay for the service when the first launched GFWL, that didn't go down too well. It's more likely just a push to integrate all their services into one, which I think is a good idea.. and something that should have happened a long time ago.

If they included xbox360 emulation, this would be very interesting. As it is, GFWL already exists and MSN Messenger already exists so not including x360 emulation makes this pretty pointless. GFWL can already do messenger stuff, game invites and share achievement points with xbox profiles and xbox.com.

Oh God. Does this mean we can expect PC games to be primarily paired with Live then in the next generation of consoles so MS can promote their platform? Its what happened earlier this gen with titles like Fallout 3, GTAIV and Bioshock 2.

Yeah now that Apple is ahead of them they decide to finally step up their game as they are no longer the #1 kid on the block.

They had the time to implement it and even did it in one game and then never did it again. :(

MS needs to take a cue from Apple and learn how it is done.
#1 know your market
#2 stick to your market
#3 (this is the bigger) LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS!

@lazerbyte Exactly what statistics are you using to define "ahead" here? Or are you just making stuff up?

@lazerbyte
IMO microsoft's metro UI is the single best design language ever made. Apple would be lucky to make something that beautiful AND intuitive. As it stands their products are intuitive.. But pretty it aint.

@lazerbyte Microsoft already charges enough, I don't want them following Apple and making their products more expensive.

@lazerbyte In what world is Apple ahead of MS on the computer market? Apple is literally only better for video production(and even that's debatable, it could be done just as well on a PC) and people who have no idea what things are worth or about computers. Well, hipsters too. I'd prefer not to go on a full rant as to why Apple is demonstrably inferior to Microsoft.

@lazerbyte

Can you explain to us how Apple relates to the article in any meaningful way?

@lazerbyte
Here, I fixed that list for you:
#1 Artificially create a market
#2 Make sure you have complete control over everything in that market
#3 (this is the "bigger") RIP OFF YOUR CUSTOMERS!!

Windows Achievements?

Close 500 windows! - The Closer
Uninstall IE - Noooooo!
Uninstall 50 programs - End of Line

@Lekko

BSOD - 1000

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Xbox Live coming to Windows 8

Reader Comments (90)

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:04PM Enigma7ic said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 8:14PM KamiKaji said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:05PM mietha said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:06PM Special Agent Steve said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:07PM Mr Hett said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:12PM einhanderkiller said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:14PM Andrew12h said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:17PM SisypheanLife said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:20PM Schlecht said

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Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:29PM Measlesopolis said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 8:18PM HiroProtagonist7 said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 8:58PM Warlock234 said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 11:45PM Mouthsmasher said

Posted: Sep 14th 2011 12:33AM Demaar said

Posted: Sep 14th 2011 2:30AM JasonGW said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:05PM Fox318 said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:10PM pedasn said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:30PM SirUrza said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 7:34PM whylekat said

Posted: Sep 14th 2011 1:08AM KeegdnaB said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:05PM MystileArmor said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:11PM Faceless Troll said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 8:42PM Kougeru said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 9:48PM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 9:55PM DigitalImpulse said

Posted: Sep 14th 2011 11:26AM Tuxy79 said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:06PM Mr Hett said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:12PM Ballistic H said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 8:26PM theSkillfull1 said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:07PM Bounceball said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:08PM jsowers said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:09PM FlashJS said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:29PM ItsameMatt03 said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:31PM Bewoulf said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:48PM FlashJS said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:09PM Faceless Troll said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:13PM SisypheanLife said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:32PM Snowblind said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:18PM Cranky Penguin said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:22PM AMonkey said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:22PM lazerbyte said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:28PM Faceless Troll said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:33PM Bewoulf said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 7:08PM WeRequireMOARMinerals said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 7:12PM blackangel209 said

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Posted: Sep 14th 2011 12:54PM trendscenedental said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 6:27PM Lekko said

Posted: Sep 13th 2011 7:03PM ungeheier said

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