If you happened to connect the same Gamertag to your living room Xbox 360 and your office PC, you could expect to run into headaches where a console Netflix viewer would disconnect a PC gamer and vice versa. (You needed to play Shadowrun for 360/PC crossplay, and, apparently, very few people bothered with that.) Advertisement Microsoft failed to build momentum for a universe of cross-platform compatibility, especially since the service launched in June 2007 with a PC port of Halo 2 that did not connect to the Xbox player base and, at one point, required Windows Vista.
(Microsoft quickly changed course on that requirement and made it a free PC service.)Ī chicken-and-egg game followed, where players and publishers alike remained hesitant to adopt this add-on system when PC storefronts like Steam already offered conveniences like matchmaking and friends lists. Out of the gate, it required a $50/year subscription fee, mirroring that of Xbox 360's Live Gold tier, which PC gamers instantly rebuffed. It was intended to unify the Windows and Xbox 360 player bases but infamously crashed and burned thanks to a number of stumbles. Further Reading Microsoft refunding gamers, Games for Windows Live goes freeIf you're familiar with GFWL, you'll recall that the service has been defunct since 2014.
