How to ruin games and alienate people

A couple of days ago Pete and I were watching the trailer for Dead Rising 2. What an awesome concept. A zombie survival game where anything and everything is a weapon. And just in case that gets boring, you can combine some of the weapons! Sellotape drills to baseball bats. Flamethrowers to nunchuks. Ok, I dunno the specific examples, but it's pretty much the ultimate zombie sandbox.

But I won't be buying it. It's not that I can't afford £30. It's not that I don't want to play the game and experience the awesomeness of online co-op play.

No, the reason I won't be buying this is... of course... because it uses Games For Windows Live.

Sigh.

See I own two other games that use Games For Windows Live. Batman: Arkham Asylum and Fuel.
I managed to play Batman three or four times before the GFWL broke and Fuel I only got to play once! I spent a good two days trying to get Fuel working again but to no avail. And I'm not the only one who has issues. And so I, and indeed Pete, simply can't buy games containing GFWL because they won't work.

Which begs the question... when making a game as clearly awesome as Batman or Dead Rising why the fuck do games companies feel the need to load it with buggy third party software that is required for the game to run? I could maybe understand if GFWL was optional. Or if there was a non-GFWL version of the game for sale.

But there isn't. And so I miss out on playing Dead Rising with Pete. And Capcom lose out on two sales.

Fail all round.

Look what we're missing.


Did you see him cleave that zombie in half! :O
*weeps*