Xbox LIVE Comes to Windows 8
While Xbox LIVE was originally
conceived as an online service for the Xbox video game consoles,
Microsoft ported it to Windows, poorly, as Games for Windows – LIVE in
2006. Games for Windows – LIVE is pretty lackluster, only offering a
subset of the capabilities you get with Xbox LIVE on the 360. But it
still exists and Microsoft has pledged to continue supporting it in
Windows 8, even though it supports only those games that run via the
legacy Windows desktop. We won’t examine it in more detail here because
nothing has changed.
In the years since creating this weird offshoot
of Xbox LIVE, Microsoft also created the Windows Phone platform, which
debuted in 2010. One of the major features of that platform was an
integrated version of Xbox LIVE.
Unlike Games for Windows – LIVE, Xbox LIVE for
Windows Phone wasn’t a horrible compromise, and it provided access to
great Xbox LIVE games, with achievements and other Xbox LIVE features.
Xbox LIVE on Windows Phone was so successful, in fact, that Microsoft
decided to bring it to Windows 8 as well.
Windows 8 also includes apps for Xbox entertainment services, including Xbox Music and Xbox Video.
So what’s the difference between Xbox LIVE (for
Windows 8) and Games for Windows – LIVE? It’s two-fold. First, Xbox
LIVE works with Metro-style games on Windows 8, not desktop-based
games. Second, Microsoft has created new Xbox LIVE user experiences for
Windows 8 that mirror those it created first for Windows Phone. These
experiences take the form of two apps, for now, called Xbox Games and
Xbox Companion.
NOTE Like
so many Metro-style apps in Windows 8, Xbox Games and Xbox Companion
are connected apps, meaning that they require you to sign in with a
Microsoft account. As always, it’s easiest if you simply sign in to
your Windows 8 PC or device using a Microsoft account. But if you are
using a local account type, you can sign in to a Microsoft account the
first time you run either of these apps.
Xbox Games
The Xbox Games app is identified only as Games on the app’s live tile and in All Apps.
Xbox Games
is the front end to all of your Xbox LIVE game activities on Windows 8,
and oddly enough that includes a ton of Xbox 360-related functionality,
too. If you’re familiar with the Games hub in Windows Phone, you will
see the functional similarities, though the Windows Phone interface
lacks the links to Microsoft’s dedicated gaming console. And if you’re
familiar with the Xbox 360, you’ll immediately recognize that the
Metro-style Xbox Games app is very much based on the console’s
Dashboard user experience. You can see this app in Figure 3.
Xbox Games is a standard, horizontally oriented,
Metro-style user experience, but with one twist. Yes, it’s divided into
a series of groups that extend from left to right, like other Metro
experiences. As with the Xbox entertainment apps, Music, and Video,
Xbox Games does not start up oriented at the left edge of its extended,
multi-screen user interface. So while you can scroll to the right when
you first enter the app, you can also, oddly, scroll to the left.
When you do, you’ll see that there are two small
groups, Gamercard and Friends, to the left of the starting point of the
app, at the Spotlight group, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Look to the left of Spotlight and you’ll see two semi-hidden groups.
The following groups are available in Xbox Games.
Gamertag
This interactive group provides a ton
of editable information related to your Gamertag, including your first
name, Gamerscore, motto, location, and bio, plus links to customize
your avatar, edit your profile, view your and achievements. You can
also share your profile and view incoming friend requests.
The achievements interface lets you view your
Xbox 360, Windows Phone, Games for Windows – LIVE, and Windows 8 game
achievements by game or date, with the ability to sort between all
achievements and unlocked achievements (those you’ve actually
achieved). As you can see in Figure 5,
as you scroll to the right, you will see that every Xbox LIVE game
you’ve ever played, regardless of platform, is accounted for.
You can also click on individual games—using the
box art or Game Details button—to see the full-screen landing page for
that game in what’s called the Games Store . This interface scrolls off to the right and provides
different capabilities depending on the title, but you’ll see such
things as a trailer movie, Buy Game for Xbox 360 and Play on Xbox 360
buttons, lists of game achievements, extras, and related games, and
more. A typical game landing page is shown in Figure 6.
It’s up to you, of course, but real men don’t play dress-up with their avatar. Just saying.
The Customize Avatar option brings up a paper
doll-like interface where you can dress up your avatar with new tops,
headgear, glasses, wrist wear, gloves, rings, and other silliness. The
Customize Avatar interface is shown in Figure 7.
Friends
In the Friends group, you’ll see the
avatars of the first several of your friends who are currently online.
Tap on the Friends title to see the full list of your online (and
recently online) friends, also in avatar form. Or, tap on a friend’s
avatar to view their Gamertag information, as in Figure 8, and compare how they’re doing against you.
Spotlight
The Spotlight group is the default view
in Xbox Games and functions as it does in Windows Store. It’s a place
for Microsoft to highlight and promote games and other offers that it
thinks you’ll find interesting. It’s also, sadly, stocked with a couple
of outright advertisements, which we find a bit insulting, having
recently renewed our Xbox LIVE Gold subscriptions at $50 a pop.
Game Activity
The Game Activity group, shown in Figure 9,
provides a grid of the games you most recently played across all of the
platforms on which Xbox LIVE is supported, in reverse order.
If you tap on the Game Activity title, it will
present the entire list of Xbox LIVE games you’ve ever played, dating
all the way back to 2005. In keeping with the game activity theme here,
the games—each represented by box art—can display messages about the
activities that friends have done with each. So you may see something
like 1 beacon, 2 online,
or similar noted on individual games, indicating that you’re friends
are busy having fun online while you’re reading this dry, humorless
tome.
When you tap on an individual game, a display
pops up to show more information about the game, much like the
interfaces in the other Xbox apps, Music and Video. This can be seen in
Figure 10.
What you see here will depend on the platform of
the game that you’ve selected. Most games will provide at least some
descriptive text about the title. But you can also see a number of
buttons, including:
- Play: This button appears next to Windows 8 Metro-style games. If you click this button, the game will begin playing immediately.
Figure 10: Viewing more information about a recently played game
- Play on Xbox 360: This
button appears next to Xbox 360 games. If you click this button, the
Xbox Companion app, will open
and attempt to connect to your Xbox 360 console and start the game.
- Buy game/Buy game for Xbox 360: This
button triggers a full-screen Confirm Purchase experience. If you’ve
selected this option for an Xbox 360 game, the game you’re purchasing
will be installed on the first console to which it’s downloaded, so be
careful if you own more than one. (Hey, it happens.) Note that the Buy
Game for Xbox 360 option is only available for those Xbox 360 games
that can be purchased electronically; some games are retail-only and
require physical DVD-based media.
- Explore Game: This button launches the game landing page discussed earlier.
- Play Trailer: This button launches the video playback of the game’s trailer.
Windows Games Store
Now, we can guess what you’re thinking. We just told you that the Windows Store was the only place
you could find, download, and update Windows 8 games, and yet here we
are in the Xbox Games app and there’s a group called Windows Games
Store. What’s up with that?
It’s a fair question.
Behind the scenes, all of Microsoft’s online
entertainment services—Xbox LIVE Marketplace, Windows Store, Windows
Phone Marketplace, the old Zune Music and Videos Marketplaces (now
called Xbox Music and Xbox Videos, respectively), and so on—utilize the
same back end. You might think of this back end as Microsoft
Marketplace, though to be honest that’s not really the name. But you
get the idea. Microsoft really has just one online marketplace. But
it’s exposed in different places differently.
So, yes, Windows Store is the go-to place for all
Windows 8 apps. But if you’re just looking for Xbox LIVE games for
Windows 8—that subset of Windows games that utilize the Xbox LIVE
service and thus provide unique features like achievements—then Windows
Games Store does that, and without any distractions. It includes
featured games, picks for you (based on previously played games), genre
lists, and more. To be fair, it’s not an actual marketplace; it’s just
a group within Xbox LIVE games, and a window, if you will, into a very
specific subset of Windows Store.
Xbox Game Marketplace
When you consider that Microsoft’s
online marketplace for the Xbox 360 is actually called Xbox
Marketplace, the Xbox Games Store group seems a bit misnamed. But let’s
not quibble. This group, like Windows Games Store, is really just a
view into an actual online store—in this case, the Xbox Marketplace—and
like the Windows Games Store, it provides different views, such as
Games on Demand, Demos, Indie, Arcade (for Xbox LIVE Arcade), and All
Games. You can also sort by genre and arrange the view by best-selling
today, release date, best-selling all-time, top rated, and title.
The Xbox Games Marketplace is shown in Figure 11.
What makes Xbox Games Store unique is that it’s
basically a place to browse, find, and purchase games for the Xbox 360.
You do this from Windows presumably because it’s a better experience
than doing so on the console itself. Like the Game Activity group
discussed previously, you’ll see buttons such as Play on Xbox 360 and
Explore Game, and they work just as they do elsewhere in this app. But
you’ll also see new options like Buy game for Xbox 360. And that means
you’ll eventually find yourself pushed over to the Xbox Companion app,
which happens when you make a game purchase or select the Play on Xbox
button. So let’s examine that app next.