Boycott Games for Windows - Live

[Crian]

I think this deserves some attention...

http://boycott-live.com/

EXCERPT:

Boycott Live? Why?

We have decided to start a boycott campaign against Microsoft’s Games for Windows – Live service because it’s violating our rights as PC gamers. Microsoft is pushing hard to make online PC gaming exactly like the Xbox’s. They want us to pay additional costs to subscribe to their Live service, and pay more monthly fees for a gold account, or to use the barely/non-working Silver account. Even if a gamer surrenders his soul for the attached fees to Microsoft; he may not even be able to purchase a subscription because the Live service is only available in 26 countries out of the 257 countries. This means that gamers from 231 countries are currently unable to purchase gold subscriptions even if they want to.

These two main issues put the future of online PC gaming at serious risk. This is what convinced us someone needed to start a boycott campaign against the Games for Windows – Live service. This became imminent to preserve online gaming and gamers rights. Of course Microsoft is a multi-millionaire corporation and they probably won’t care about this boycott, but game developers and publishers are more vulnerable to boycotts, and therefore we will target them instead. Sega, Eidos and THQ already signed to bring more Games for Windows – Live titles. The clock is ticking, now it’s the time to stop it. Say NO to LIVE.

[Fragony]

If only pc gaming would be as slick and carefree as xbox-live but since it is windows it is going to be paying to test their beta's. The heart of pc-gaming is in the modding and nothing is going to change that, gaming industry has found a market in the casual gamer and the casual gamer just wants to play the game and doesn't mind paying for a carefree hour of fun, and the hardcore gamer knows what to do and dooesn't need it. It's a good thing for the more serious gamers because some of these newbies are bound to get interested in the less-casual stuff, making it more convenient to experiment for developers. What did we see on pc besides STALKER these years.

[FactionHeir]

Even if a gamer surrenders his soul for the attached fees to Microsoft; he may not even be able to purchase a subscription because the Live service is only available in 26 countries out of the 257 countries. This means that gamers from 231 countries are currently unable to purchase gold subscriptions even if they want to.

Yes of course. Except that of those 257 countries, quite a few don't even have internet to begin with and an even larger number only has sporadic access in the country. Way to go blowing this out of proportion. Oh, and there are actually only 193 officially recognized countries too.

[ArtistofWarfare]

I wouldn't be too concerned about any of this...

Pay to play is just a part of the future of gaming. It doesn't threaten or jeopardize PC gaming or Console gaming. It's something that just affects gaming across the board.

The same reasons for someone choosing either format will still exist. There won't be some mass jumping of ship from PC gamers to go play Xbox Live, because most of these same people are not concerned about $15 a month.

They very well may have a gripe with pay to play, but they won't find any solution by moving to consoles simply to ...pay to play anyway.

So- Sure...I'll boycott MS's pay to play model moving into the PC world. For the reason of simply, paying less longterm. But I'm not boycotting it because it would "seriously threaten the existance of PC gaming". I don't see how it would.

I hate to bring it up in another thread but look at World of Warcraft. 12 million gamers and counting over there, all paying monthly to play, who would be totally unaffected by this. Plus...they already pay..that's the point.

When it comes to games like FPS- We're back to the original point. The people who chose PC over console, almost entirely did not do so simply to avoid the extra $15 a month for Xbox Live. They had other reasons...and those had nothing to do with this.

I just wouldn't worry about it...

There's so much more to this as well...but that's enough. You're just making an "Inconvenient Truth" out of this. Ironically, this is about as much of a cause for alarm.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Paranoid, much?

zomg lol did u heer M$ is gonna charg for vidya gaems on teh PC?

Honestly, they should get their tinfoil hats and go sit in the foil coated corner with the rest of the loonies.

[Fragony]

Having a bad day MC?

[Vladimir]

Do lesbian rebels ever have a bad day?

[LeftEyeNine]

When all they attract are guys, yes.

[Mikeus Caesar]

No, actually, i'm having a smashing day, if you must know

It's just that i hate it when people automatically start seeing conspiracies everywhere when it comes to MS. I mean, look, the tin-foil hat crowd were all saying that MS will have forced us all to Vista by the beginning of 2008 - so far, it looks like Vista is probably going to go down with Windows ME as the greatest piece of fail in history, while XP has never been more popular.

This is just more scare-mongering by pretentious people with self-warranted importance.

[Ravencroft]

Go XP!

Maybe Microsoft's trying to be penitent and somehow screwed with Vista... thinking that eryone needs super interactivity when most people don't even have a PC let alone Vista.

Just my take.

[ArtistofWarfare]

Go XP!

Maybe Microsoft's trying to be penitent and somehow screwed with Vista... thinking that eryone needs super interactivity when most people don't even have a PC let alone Vista.

Just my take.

XP's got one foot in the grave my man...

[caravel]

As to M$ forcing us all on to Vista, that is basically what they're trying to do. Because the OS has nothing much new to offer over XP, forcing is probably the only way to get people to upgrade.

[ArtistofWarfare]

Why would someone not want to upgrade?

I mean, I understand that Vista does not currently offer any significant advantage over XP...but it will in the near future.

Why would there be resistance to upgrading?

[caravel]

Why would someone not want to upgrade?

I mean, I understand that Vista does not currently offer any significant advantage over XP...but it will in the near future.

Why would there be resistance to upgrading?

1) Cost and Value for money, easily the most important factor to all except the most spoilt of spoilt rich kids. There is simply no justification for spending money on an OS that does nothing much more than previous versions and for the price has little to offer.

2) As above, the product offers little or nothing over the previous product(s). Which it doesn't apart from DirectX 10. This will only change when M$ begin breaking compatibility with XP for newer software which they are in a position to do due to their control of DirectX and other apps, such as IE, M$ Office and .NET passport based sites and programs.

3) The product is less stable/useable than the previous version. As a new release it will need the bugs ironing out and security vulnerabilities patching. The M$ fans and OEM victims users that bought their PCs with Vista preinstalled can do this first. The rest of us can wait until the second or third service pack.

4) Issues of backwards compatibility - especially of interest to businesses. You can safely upgrade to Vista and the worst that can happen is that you won't be able to play Fluffy Bunnikins - Total War any more, but a business cannot just throw out a £25,000 piece of bespoke software just to upgrade to a new OS that has nothing else to offer. My company is currently sticking to a combination of XP, Server 2K3 and Red Hat/Fedora Core. As a whole business has not warmed to Vista.

5) System requirements. Not everyone has a system that can cope with the demands of such a bloated piece of software. This means upgrades, which means more money, which is brings us back to cost.

[Xiahou]

Don't forget the measurable drop in gaming performance with Vista compared to XP.

[ArtistofWarfare]

Don't forget the measurable drop in gaming performance with Vista compared to XP.

I guess except when you're playing a dx10 game?

I just went through quite a bit of research and asking people about building a new gaming pc. I do not recall anyone telling me to use XP. The debate was really about 32-bit vs. 64 bit Vista...not XP or Vista.

Not being argumentative, just telling you what research and feedback from other users has yielded...I obviously could have gone with XP. I didn't for a reason.

Regarding businesses- This I understand...makes sense. (the explanation Caravel provided). I really wasn't talking about for business use though. I was referring to personal use. Still, this comes down to cost. The have's don't mind. The have not's do. Justifiably. But that's just life. Who they are or whether they're spoiled or not- I don't know.

Regarding Vista's instability- I'm not too concerned. I'm more of a "get it over with" kind of guy. When other people are upgrading to Vista I'll have quite some experience with it already. And it will still be more stable with time for me. I'll deal with it in the meantime. As said- Everyone I consulted on the PC told me to go with Vista. Quite a few of the people I talked to have been using Vista for a while as well...they're not having problems. They actually told me it was more stable than XP- This is why I take everything with a grain of salt.

I'm not the expert though...so I can't debate this one. It's irrelevant- I took the dive. Obviously there's no doubting that we'll all be on Vista at some point, so I don't mind "getting it over with" as I said before.

Honestly- If I wasn't building a new PC I doubt I would have upgraded to Vista. You're right- No real reason to do so. Costs money, changes very little, is a major headache. Agreed. But again, when building from the ground up fresh...nobody I consulted suggested anything but Vista. Research from websites and forums didn't yield results that differed in any way. I saw debates about what kind of motherboard or processor to use- But not the OS.

[Ravencroft]

Well, it depends -- Vista eats at your ram and your processor, so good PCs shouldn't suffer.

But for those blokes in the Third World -- for us, I mean -- XP's still more useful.

[ArtistofWarfare]

Well, it depends -- Vista eats at your ram and your processor, so good PCs shouldn't suffer.

But for those blokes in the Third World -- for us, I mean -- XP's still more useful.

This is exactly the impression I got from everything everyone told me. Why I responded in a bit of detail was because the statement made by Xiahou was "don't forget the measurable drop in gaming performance with Vista compared to XP".

He needed to add: "if your computer cannot handle Vista".

Again- Exactly the impression I received from asking people and researching.

Why I went with Vista was because I'm one of the evil do'ers, (regardless of anything else) who have a computer that would fall in the high enough category to benefit from Vista while gaming. For a person with my specs, there was said to be absolutely no decision to be made: Go with Vista.

Yes- For the "rest of you" (I guess...we're not talking about wealth here), indeed. You don't want to game with Vista with 5 year old hardware. I have 5 year old hardware currently and people already warned me not to install Vista.

Again, just somehow the sands of time granted me with the cloak of evil and allowed me to use Vista without any fear of "measurable PC performance" loss while gaming. Quite the opposite...I'll do specifically well on a Vista OS with my PC.

Indeed...

I just didn't want another scumbag like me to come along and read false information, buy XP with his $8,800 gaming PC, and get what he really deserves.

[Xiahou]

This is exactly the impression I got from everything everyone told me. Why I responded in a bit of detail was because the statement made by Xiahou was "don't forget the measurable drop in gaming performance with Vista compared to XP".

He needed to add: "if your computer cannot handle Vista".

Don't believe me? Google around and read the benchmarks yourself. DX9 games run the same or slower on Vista as they do on the same PC running XP. Here is one such Google result.

You're "if your computer cannot handle Vista" comment doesn't add up. If the OS places greater demands on hardware and uses up more resources there will be less available for running a game- period. A faster PC will obviously run faster, but in many cases you're losing a measurable bit of performance due to Vista sucking up resources that would still be available under XP. Generally speaking (there are a couple expections), the performance difference is only minor- but it is a difference nonetheless.

People are running Vista and perfectly happy with it, as I hope you will be. However, I'm not convinced that Vista is the inevitable future either. Many of it's most attractive features were stripped away before launch and there's plenty of resistance to moving from XP, for a variety of reasons. Maybe, in a few more years, we'll see Microsoft come out with a true successor that people will be more accepting of.

I just didn't want another scumbag like me to come along and read false information, buy XP with his $8,800 gaming PC, and get what he really deserves.

I'm not trying to make you (or anyone else) feel bad for choosing Vista -your new PC will likely be so much faster in comparison to your old one that you'll never even know if you lose a couple frames. My point is that there are still valid reasons for staying with XP. All one can do is read a little research and make the decision that they think is best for them.

[Husar]

This Live service sounds good.

Finally a quality industry standard that's worth paying for.
And what's so bad about paying for better services? Most american download sites do that anyway and if you use them for free they're so slow or overused that I always go elsewhere. Haven't seen the boycott gamespy topics yet though.
Vista is the very best OS they have ever made, especially since SP1 (yeah, as a premium 1337 MSDNAA business x64 customer it was offered early to me ) Just yesterday the graphics driver crashed and was restarted on the go, in XP that would be a BSoD if I'm not mistaken, for the crash I blame the software, not the OS in this case, was Alt-Tabbing out of Bloodlines, never happened with other games.

Well yeah, just that to show all of you the light that is Vista, buy, buy, buy!
And Bill if you read this, tell them to send me my salary.

J/k, it's good if you need a new OS anyway or get it for free, caravel is right about the costs, no real need to upgrade, my personal experience as explained before is mostly positive, similar to XP, a little bit slower in games maybe(yeah, we also have "measureable" earthquakes several times a day here, Xiahou ) but all in all I won't go back, more like parallel.

[Fragony]

Well for me it's hell, it's slower ok, but it's also unresponsive. Sometimes I have to give a command 5 times because it just doesn't react. Everything lags, takes a minute to remove something the size of 1 MB, not the actual removing but Vista starting removing, and because I can't be sure vista got the command it crashes because I gave it multiple times. Vista sucks harder then a black hole, even when it's just sitting there being the piece of crap it is the processor is buzzing like crazy.

[Husar]

Well for me it's hell, it's slower ok, but it's also unresponsive. Sometimes I have to give a command 5 times because it just doesn't react. Everything lags, takes a minute to remove something the size of 1 MB, not the actual removing but Vista starting removing, and because I can't be sure vista got the command it crashes because I gave it multiple times. Vista sucks harder then a black hole, even when it's just sitting there being the piece of crap it is the processor is buzzing like crazy.

That sounds like XP on my dad's laptop, and yes it's a 2GHz laptop but it runs absolutely horrible, a bit better since we put a bit more RAM into it though.

What system are you running Vista on?
If you don't want to derail the thread you can also PM me.

[Fragony]

Also 2 gig I believe 1000 something ram. Had it for a few months after my cat Blitzkrieg thought it was a great idea to spray on the screen of my Mac which I loved, oh so dearly. Man I could actually use it!

[ArtistofWarfare]

This Live service sounds good.

Finally a quality industry standard that's worth paying for.
And what's so bad about paying for better services? Most american download sites do that anyway and if you use them for free they're so slow or overused that I always go elsewhere. Haven't seen the boycott gamespy topics yet though.
Vista is the very best OS they have ever made, especially since SP1 (yeah, as a premium 1337 MSDNAA business x64 customer it was offered early to me ) Just yesterday the graphics driver crashed and was restarted on the go, in XP that would be a BSoD if I'm not mistaken, for the crash I blame the software, not the OS in this case, was Alt-Tabbing out of Bloodlines, never happened with other games.

Well yeah, just that to show all of you the light that is Vista, buy, buy, buy!
And Bill if you read this, tell them to send me my salary.

J/k, it's good if you need a new OS anyway or get it for free, caravel is right about the costs, no real need to upgrade, my personal experience as explained before is mostly positive, similar to XP, a little bit slower in games maybe(yeah, we also have "measureable" earthquakes several times a day here, Xiahou ) but all in all I won't go back, more like parallel.

And Husar comes along to save the thread...

Thank You