During a video game review, I mentioned that I considered Games for Windows Live to be a negative when it came to picking what games to buy, and I was asked why I felt that way. Well, if I'm already logged into Steam, logging into a second mandatory service to play a game is just annoying, but there is another reason this bothers me: it makes my Xbox 360 unplayable.
Well, not completely unplayable, but I can't do anything of worth on the system. Your account can only be used on one device at a time, so if I'm using my existing account on my PC, it logs me out of my 360, and suddenly that system can't be used to watch Netflix, play a game online, or anything else that requires Xbox Live. I found this out the hard way when I logged in to play Section 8: Prejudice on my PC in my office, and my wife received an error message informing her she could no longer watch Netflix on our 360 in the living room.
She was confused by the situation, and logged back in on the 360, which booted me out of my game. Great.
I contacted Microsoft and was told the only way to get around this was to make a second account. Luckily, that's free on the PC, but that also means I need to rebuild my friends list and tell everyone my new account information. Also, my achievements won't count towards my main account. These are minor inconveniences in the grand scheme of things, but it all seems like a waste. Doesn't Microsoft want to help me keep all my information in one place? Is it really hurting them to allow me to play a PC game on my account while my wife watches Netflix in another room?
Microsoft wants to be a part of my living room, and they are. But if the company also wants to butt into my PC gaming and require this login, it needs to find a way to allow me to use my account on different devices at the same time. Heck, if you spend the money on two Xbox 360 systems, you can't use the same account on both; you have to move it with a USB stick or recover the account whenever you move between systems. I understand that if you want to play on both systems online at the same time, Microsoft wants you to have two accounts, but if I want to have two systems in different rooms they don't want me to switch back and forth in a convenient fashion? Really lame.
This is why I don't like Games for Windows Live: it takes away the use of my 360 for multimedia functions while I'm playing a PC game, and it gives me nothing that Steam doesn't already have in return. It's a liability, an annoyance, and it needs to either be fixed—or removed.
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