Microsoft’s Wickham Touts Games for Windows

Gamasutra has a 5 page interview with Rich Wickham, director of Microsoft’s Games for Windows group regarding the company’s vision for the PC as a gaming space and his personal plan to make the brand succeed. Wickham is facing a lot of negative feedback as Microsoft inserts the pay to play cost model along with a new, power hungry operating systems on gamers. In the interview he admits that Microsoft is not taking Vista acceptance as a granted in the PC space and looks to use games to make the upgrades needed to adopt the new environment an inticement for platform adoption.

One interesting point that Wickham pushes in the interview is the difference for PC gamers between the Silver and Gold versions of Windows Live! with the Xbox version of the service:

“Let’s be crystal clear about what the subscription fees for Live on Xbox and Live on Windows really are. Because I think there’s a lot of confusion out there, and I want to make sure we’re clear on what’s in and what’s out.”

“The differences between Gold and Silver on the 360 when it comes to Live? Those are not the same differences on Windows. On Games for Windows – Live, there is multiplayer, there is voice, there is text chat. All of those are in the Silver tier, which is a non-subscription, completely free tier. If you buy Halo 2 when it comes out, or if you buy Shadowrun, you will be able to have a multiplayer experience with voice and text chat integrated into the game for free. However, you do not get matchmaking of any kind, achievements, or cross-platform gameplay – you need to pay for those with Gold.”

Wickham gose on to talk about DirectX 10 adoption, cross platform matchmaking and of course the value of Vista and Windows Live! enabled games.