Games for Windows Live was a failure; no way around it. It was especially frustrating when you would buy a game on Steam and find it inconveniently bundled with Games for Windows Live. I had this happen with the original Dark Souls. The idea was good in theory, but the platform was so riddled with issues from not recognizing accounts, passwords and game codes, that people just began avoiding buying games simply because of the platform.
Phil Spencer recently appeared on a Giant Bomb livestream and discussed a desire to bring more games from the Microsoft library to the Steam platform.
He said:
"I look at Steam today, it's on an incredible growth trajectory. It's a massive force in gaming; a positive force. I think it will be bigger a year from now than it is today. And five years later it will still be bigger again….I look at Valve as an important [independent software vendor] for us on Windows. They are a critical part of gaming's success on Windows. I don't think Valve's hurt by not having our first-party games in their store right now. They're doing incredibly well. We will ship games on Steam again."
To say that Steam is "doing incredibly well" would be putting it lightly. As of 2011, Valve was believed to be worth between $2 – $4 billion and during last year's Steam Summer Sale, the company raked in over $235 million in total revenue. Clearly Microsoft wants a piece of that pie.
However, Spencer did not say which games would become available on Steam, but it did seem as though not all of them would.
"There's going to be areas where we cooperate and there's going to be areas where we compete. The end result is better for gamers."
What's best for gamers remains to be seen. That's a line so often overused, it's lost all meaning until the talk is actually backed up. All I can say is that I hope Microsoft has learned from the mistakes of the past because DRM within DRM is such an unnecessary obstacle course.
Sources: Gamespot, Giant Bomb, Forbes, SteamSpy
