Age of Empires III is currently going for 10c/10p on Games For Windows

[andrewducker]

Here.

You need to have a MS Live account (the same one that's used for an MSN chat account, or for XBox Live). In fact, it takes you through the XBox Live signup, which was slightly confusing. You'd think they'd streamline that, or at least put different branding on it.

But for 10p, who can complain?

Edit: And after setting up my account, I popped back to the page and it referred to me as "WailedNeptune7", and I thought something had gone drastically wrong with their login system. But no, it had just assigned me a random "Gamertag", and then started referring to me by that name. I know MS are shit with usability, but really, What The Fuck?

Comments

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

*shakes fist in anger* Last Wednesday apparently they had the same deal on Arkham Asylum, dammit, and I missed it.

-- Steve's debating whether or not to get AoEIII; he wasn't much interested in the series before, but it's hard to knock a retail-release game for 10¢.

[chuma.livejournal.com]

I bought it a while ago for me Sven and Hannah as we play AoE II so much... My review would suggest 10p is a fair price.

[matgb]

It gets worse. I go to create an ID, but it tells me my email address is already associated with an account, so I should type in my password.

I try multiple iterations of my generic throwaways I use for non commercial stuff, none work. So I go to reclaim my password. Which tells me my email address is not associated with an account.

Good job I know how to hack gmail addresses to look different.

[matgb]

Oh, and my GamerTag is ZippedOlive020. You can change it once for free, apparently.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, they seem to generate them randomly from Word1Word2ThreeDigitNumber.

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

its exactly that.
The sign up servers were streamlined a while back to stop bottlenecks when big games are released, rather than new users tying up resources going round in loops trying to get a unique gamertag that one of the several million users have already grabbed.

To give an example:
2.6 million unique gamers played COD Black OPS on November 9

[andrewducker]

That makes sense.

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

Kirsty recently got allocated KittenishRogue003, but we quickly changed that

[andrewducker]

That's not a bad one. Better than the one Julie just got - SolicitedMango009. Not great unless you _want_ to be a fruity prostitute.

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

that should be her new LJ name!

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

That's fabulous! And may explain some of the names that one sees online....

[andrewducker]

Is this down to the whole gmail/googlemail thing?

[matgb]

Nope, I've always had a gmail account, signed up before the fuss.

[matgb]

Another thought occurs. I wonder if they've got a special deal with Visa. I just paid 10p by my visa card. But Visa normally charge a %age of sale price, with a minimum charge of 50p. It's possible I just cost MS some money.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

The game is a couple of gigs in size, you probably cost them some bandwidth too

[matgb]

True, but that should be factered across the site as a whole.

I'm just impressed that they're running a promo of this nature that almost certainly costs them more money per transaction, before taking other costs into account.

ThatI haven't got it working yet, and they don't seem to have given me a CD key, is a different thing.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Once the game is downloaded, in the main GFW menu, click onto the game to get the full details of it. There's a CD key there.

It gets people using GFW. Some companies don't like Steamworks because it means you'll play a game and end up seeing ads for whatever Valve are advertising in Steam at that point, before you play the game. With GFW, microsoft are hoping they can promote other games that they sell.

[matgb]

Aha, thank you. Finding that was not intuitive.

I've never used Steam (this low spec netbook is the highest spec machine I've ever owned, not much of a gamer), but I'm guessing they've managed, due to their success, to have a UI that doesn't suck mightily.

So far, I've been pissed off enough to shout at the screen three times with GFW, for one 10p DL.

This machine has the spec for Rome Total War, just, which I've always wanted to play. So I looked at the screenshots.

0n a 600px high monitor, the button to close the screenshot display floats to above the top menu bar. If I look at screenshots, I can't stop looking at them without quitting the programme.

(Or, obviously, go plug it into the monitor, but that means getting out of bed)

But yeah, competition good, I just hope they fix the sucky UI, else they won't get very far.

FYI:

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

On the xbox live you can score a free month of Gold level membership by adding a new hotmail address then saying no to upgrading to Gold, so it gives you a free month!

Re: FYI:

[andrewducker]

Cheers - I shall remember that if/when I get an xbox!

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

Cost me less than 3p
I used M$ points which should equate to 8.5p, but we picked up the points at stupidly low prices

[andrewducker]

Yeah - I heard that you can get points in some places for very low prices. How does that work?

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the pointer. I was wondering whether Microsoft games were available anywhere.

It's too bad Age of Empires I isn't available. I've been craving it for a while.