Widescreen Gaming Forum

What can you tell me about this "Games for Windows" certification, that you can find in certain games? Is widescreen support one of the requirements, that the game must meet, in order to be "Games for Windows" certified? What all kind of standards does it need to fulfil and how is it actually done - some sort of Microsoft testing the game when it goes gold or what?

Well looking at their website on the subject, it appears that they just certify it if it runs on xp.. so basicly every game. Just another stupid ploy by Microsoft to get dumb people to buy games.

"oh its microsoft certified, it must be good" etc

I asked, because i read this

Btw, this is one of the first games with the official "Games for Windows" branding from Microsoft. It's not just an ad for MS and Windows, but it's also a certificate which requires the game to fulfil certain standards. Supporting widescreen monitors is one of them. :)

in here
[url]http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/node/6719]

Lego Star Wars II had the logo and is a Certified Game. I tried to Google for this, but couldn't come up with anything beyond marketing fluff. Will be interesting to see the ratio of games marketed under this that support WS.

I found a link to this on another forum. It's a list of some stuff which "Game for Windows" certified products have to comply with:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/directx9_c/Games_for_Microsoft_Windows_Logo_for_Applications.asp

I'm not sure if that thing is complete though, as it doesn't list widescreen resolutions or compatibility with XBox 360 controllers. But it has some other interesting points like supporting Alt-Tabbing out of the game, and not f***ing about with private or secure files on the operating system. So games with intrusive copy protection systems like StarForce will probably not get certified, I guess. :)

I'd be happy if the ONLY thing required was something like that :D.

as I've read right now: games for windows MUST SUPPORT WS resolutions!
:)

MS has been planning this for sometime, and yes, its basically just a way of rearranging the marketing presentation to directly tie in pc games to the Windows platform.

Luck posted the heads up a while back, (before the mods removed the links :cry: to the article) which detailed a hypothetical storefront arrangement for pc games. It looked pretty nice actually, I'd love to see stores integrate a slicker, more streamlined presentation for games.

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5148

There was talk that it was to try to combat the slowly vanishing PC game segment in high street game stores - the PlayStation 2, XBox, GameCube... etc... etc... all have their own little 'flash' across the top which allows you to determine what platform they are for. PCs, up until now, didn't really have that.

Although I think that design is a little too complex... just the four Window colours and 'Windows PC Game' in white on a black background would have been adequate.

MS Flight Simulator X is vert -, so I think we can be sure that good WS support is not a requirement for the "games for Windows" label.