You may or may not have seen the Valve interview on GamesIndusrty.biz last week, to cut a long story short, Doug Lombardi pondered whether Microsoft really cared about their Games for Windows initiative or whether it was just a short term thing to drive Vista sales.

"Right now it seems like it's part of the marketing push to help Vista. To really back a platform is a sustained effort over years and years, so we'll see if in two years Microsoft is still spending money to put Games for Windows sections in retail, and having PR people preach that message that we were just talking about, which is that the PC isn't dying, in fact it's actually bigger than all the consoles put together. You know, if it were to sign up for that, that's great. If it's going to use it to promote sales of Vista, that's really not good for the industry, it's good for Microsoft in the short term."

Interestingly, Microsoft seemed to have responded in an interview Games for Windows director Rich Wickham had with CVG

I think we may have to prove - because we're Microsoft - our intentions over time, and that's exactly what we're going to do with Games for Windows. We're going to continue to invest in retail, we're going to continue to invest in the Games for Windows brand, we're going to continue to make sure that great titles come out on this platform and that you see... We're absolutely going to commit to what we're doing on Live

Sounds positive at least. I personally think that Games for Window Live has the potential to make Microsoft a lot of money in much the same way that Xbox Live Marketplace does and they know that, micro-transactions are coming to PC gaming in a big way, you can bet on that.

Thanks Voodoo Extreme