Games for Windows Live is a sham!

Im sorry, but Games for Windows Live is beyond a joke right now. Noone is using it except for Microsoft. Whatever happened to this grand vision of an entirely new brand for PC gaming to simultaneously launch alongside Windows Vista? I think I have seen 4 games under the branding, and only 2 that have LIVE support. I own both these games, because I was excited at the prospect of what Xbox Live and Windows could make of itself. Now Halo 2 is decent enough, got a nice fanbase, and a good online experience. But Shadowrun... Shadowrun is bad. I mean BAD. It takes me about an HOUR to set up LIVE.

My question is, why cant LIVE be out-of-the-box with Vista? Be a part of the Operating System? Even integrating Gamertags with Windows Live Messenger will be a good idea. Keeping in touch with your friends, wether they be at work, or play. the 360 offers the WLM support, so why not the other way round?

That's the simple answer to the problem. The more interesting and something that would REALLY put a staple into Vista's Next-Generation Computing and the Games for Windows brand, is to actually BUILD LIVE into the OS. Make it so that the guide can come up at any point. This is where things get interesting. How cool would it be to video chat with someone in the US on an Xbox with the Vision cam, and on Windows over here in the UK with a generic Logitech camera? This will extend that usage by a longshot. I mean take the situation, I, myself have family across the pond in the US, and one day we tried having a linked Christmas celebration, and we had to bring an entire PC rig downstairs (noone had a laptop at this point in time) and connect it all up. Theoretically if one of the parties had an Xbox in their living room with a Vision camera, you could just dial them on Vista LIVE and instantly see them. No mess. No fuss.

I came up with a short idea of what the idle state for LIVE might look like. If you have Vista, I'm sure you're familiar with the Sidebar.

On a LIVE enabled Vista Install, before setting up your LIVE connection, or just offline for whatever reason, the guide will look like this..

Bland, unobtrusive, yet still there, reminding you that LIVE is running, but not in use. Of course you should be able to set LIVE to off by default to save system resources. In that case no widget at all will appear.

Take the situatuion, you have set up LIVE, and have disabled auto-sign in. Want to connect? Just click the orb.

Bam! the Windows orb lights up in full colour. Note that it does have a ring of light around it, and we will see why in a second. This means your account is connected, and to every Xbox gamer on your list, they will see you as online. If you set to Away, or leave the PC idle, the orb will go green with an icon of a clock in the center (Sorry I havent made this diagram yet :-( )

What does this mean? Well. This means that you have connected a Wired or Wireless Xbox controller. and as such, can use the LIVE guide with the controller. If you want to access the guide with no controller, you can press CTRL+Home.

As with the ring of light on the Xbox 360, the ring will flash to alert you of any changes, such as recieving a message, or a game invite. If you recieve a non-cross-platform invite, you can not accept the invite, but an option will allow you to send back a preset text message to the other party, saying that you do want to accept, but that you are on Windows, and the other party should wait until you are signed in on the Xbox before sending another invite.

Identifying a cross-playform user should be as easy as looking at the alert that pops up in both Windows and Xbox. Xbox users have (of course) the Xbox logo, and Windows users should have the Windows logo (duh). So take this example, I have signed in on Windows, and a friend is on Xbox, this is what he should see on his HDTV.

Instantly he can see that I'm on Windows. Simple as that. It really doesnt need to be the fragmented, in-and-out system that it is today. I really think if this is implimented, Games for Windows LIVE can be seen as another defining mark in Windows gaming.