Microsoft Talks the Decision to Make GFW Live Free

Whether you realized it or not, Microsoft changing course and announcing that Games for Windows Live would now be free is actually a big deal, particularly when you factor in some of the accompanying announcements. With the number of technical requirements to get a game Live certified cut down by about a third, the concept of supporting GFW Live in games has become a more attractive option for developers.

There remains much work to be done on Microsoft’s part before they get where they want, but the question begs to be asked — why wasn’t GFW Live completely free in the first place?

1UP had a chance to speak with Games for Windows global director Kevin Unangst following the announcements earlier this week, and that very question was among the first that were posed to Unangst.

Asked about what led to eliminating the Silver and Gold tiers on Live, he explained, “This is the result, simply put, of us building and listening and learning over the last year, and hearing both what PC gamers say they want and what game developers tell us that they want. You talked to Relic — I’m sure you heard good things from them, that this change makes it much more appealing to them to integrate [Live] into their game and use the great multiplayer services that we’re offering.”

There was no indication as to the number of people who have been paying for Games for Windows Live, although I honestly can’t imagine the number is all that high. There aren’t that many games that support the service, so unless you were already an Xbox Live member, there wasn’t much incentive to use the Gold level features.

Unangst was asked again about pricing, and about why Microsoft chose to go ahead with their plan to charge customers a fee when developers and gamers alike seem opposed to the idea. He fell back onto the same (hollow) point, saying, “Again, I would go back to the fact that we had an offer and a value proposition when we first started the Games for Windows Live service, that we came upon after talking to publishers and developers, and a lot of learning from Xbox and a lot of studying what else was out there. I think if you take that, where we started, and look over the last year, what we did with going to Vista and bringing on XP and fast-forward to now, we learned quite a bit. This just made sense now, and why would we do it now? Of course, clearly, this week, this is the event once a year where we give all of our development partners and folks interested in what we’re doing on both of our platform a heads-up as to what’s coming. It made sense for us to go out broadly with that news today.”