Microsoft, you disappoint me.

When the first Xbox hit the market, it was given its own online service, Xbox Live. This service was lauded as the driving force that essentially created online gaming as we know it today. Later the enchancements added made it even more powerful and versatile. Integration with Facebook, Twitter, and Netflix made it much more than just a gaming platform.

So they took the next logical step: Ported the platform to PC. Imagine having an all-in-one gaming social network, now available for computer games, also allowing cross-communication with its console brother.

Now imagine none of that.

To phrase this as nicely as I can, Games For Windows Live is a steaming pile of crap the likes of which Microsoft has not produced since Windows ME.

When I got my first GFWL game, I had a problem with the in-game overlay downloading an update for itself. It simply hung there, not making progress. So I made a shortcut, and instead launched the GFWL standalone program, and ran the update without any (real) issues. Then went back. It was at this point I discovered that the standalone program and in-game overlay are entirely separate and unrelated processes. I had to sit there, again, and wait as the overlay chugged through a few megabytes of update in about seven minutes' time. As far as I know, there is no way to speed this up.

I also recently had issues with getting into GFWL in Game: Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II. After several attempts to get the GFWL overlay to log me in, I gave up and went to play another GFWL game, Game: Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. Same problem. I eventually tried deleting the GFWL data (thereby forcing the program to "reset" itself), a registry hack, a router setting hack, different game profiles, changing Windows Services settings, and finally, after all this had been done, a reboot.

It works now, and I can actually play my game. But the person who designed and/or programmed GFWL needs to be dragged out into the street, shot, tramped by a mob, and set on fire. This program suffers from massive glitches, erratic and unpredictable errors, and most damning, a lack of unification in design. Just the fact that the overlay and standalone program are separate is asinine in itself.

It boggles the mind that something so perfect and problem-free as Xbox Live could be twisted into the junk that is Games for Windows Live. It's as if Microsoft made the perfect clonetrooper, so they decided to clone a new one, but replaced the nutrients with pure corn syrup and merged playpus genes into its genetic structure at random. It's as if they wanted to create a grossly disfigured, scarred, mentally retarded shadow of its big brother.

And I guess that makes sense. If they were afraid of GFWL cutting into the market share of XBL, then this would certainly prevent it from ever going big.