At E3 2006 Microsoft announced what they called “a new PC gaming initiative” under the moniker “Games for Windows”. Among the ambitious plans outlined at the press conference were a unified brand for PC games, Games for Windows LIVE, the release of Windows Vista and the DirectX 10 API.

This two-part series will take a look at the plans laid out at E3 2006, how they’ve been implemented so far and how they’ve generally been received by the gaming community. Part one examines the LIVE service and part two will focus on the GFW brand, Vista and DirectX 10.

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