X-Box/PC Cross Plateform Play: What Happened?

[Xathos]

Did Microsoft kill Xbox-Windows cross-platform play?

Some say Xbox players were trounced too often in matches with PC gamers

Microsoft at one point had plans to bridge Xbox and Windows gaming, but eventually killed them, because in cross-platform matches, console gamers couldn't hack it.

So says Rahul Sood, founder of Voodoo PC and CTO of HP's gaming biz, fingering a rumor that Microsoft was hoping to bring PC and console gamers together under its LIVE multiplayer brand in games like Unreal and Gears of War.

"This was all part of their Live strategy, and had Microsoft just stuck to their guns and made it work PC Gaming might be in a much better position than it is today," wrote Sood on his blog. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)


Sood says the project was "designed to allow console gamers and PC gamers to interact and battle over a connected environment," and that "during the development they brought together the best console gamers to play mediocre PC gamers at the same game," keyboard and mouse against console gamepad.
The results?

"The console players got destroyed every time," says Sood. "So much so that it would be embarrassing to the XBOX team in general had Microsoft launched this initiative.



Microsoft currently runs two versions of LIVE, one for Windows, another for the Xbox 360. If you remember games like Shadowrun, Universe at War, and Lost Planet (if you don't, don't feel bad) you may also recall those games offering cross-platform play. The point about disparate control schemes was raised, and pretty much settled in favor of neither.


Whatever Microsoft did or didn't do, it almost goes without saying: A gamepad offers one way to play a game, a keyboard and mouse another. Each has genre strengths and weaknesses. Pitting one against the other is a little like running formula one and rally cars on both paved and off-road tracks in hopes of determining one's "superiority."

And just to disabuse those of you who think the default Windows control scheme is always more accurate than a gamepad, riddle me this: Ever tried to play Super Mario Bros. with a keyboard-mouse?



Massive lulz. It's exactly like I would expect. Unless you universalize the aiming, it's just going to be death. I will also say the last line was crap. I've played old school mario games on PC just fine. You don't use a mouse, you use a keyboard. It's no different control wise.

[Karl Malone]

I remember when they tried this with Shadowrun. I heard on pc version if you were zoomed with a sniper rifle and turned too fast it would knock you out of zoom as a way to try to balance things out and keep pc players from dominating. This is also Sony and Microsoft will never do support for mouse controls, it would basically become mandatory for fps and rts games online.

[FA7AL!]

A mouse and keyboard will always beat someone using a controller, I'm a console gamer and know this .. there's no real need for cross platform gaming involving PC - console gamers are at an automactic disadvantage.

Just an opinion though, I'm sure there are .. or were people who did fairly well in the cross platforming realm.

[Hayabusa85]

This article is looking at a very, very minor factor. Cross platform didn't fail. GFWL failed. PC gamers like dedicated servers and are used to the best online gaming options. Peer to peer gaming on PC was doomed to fail and that is why barely any games even support GFWL let alone cross platform play. They tried to make it totally free on PC but even that barely made PC gamers interested in it. Even single player only games like Fallout 3 have got hate from PC gamers. They are now trying to expand it as something to compete with Steam. They will get buried

As for advantages. A console gamer against a PC gamer in Universe at War will get raped (And by RTS standards on PC that was toned down) but Shadowrun was so gimped for PC that PC gamers don't have the advantage they normally would have with a shooter. Lost Planet seemed gimped to me too and was horribly optimized for PC (I could run Crysis better on my now fried PC) so I am sure a lot of PC gamers were getting killed due to FPS being lower.

[Ninja-X³]

Well of course PC gamers are gonna beat XBOX gamers. They got better aim with the mouse than with a thumb stick.