Halo-style Matchmaking for ALL 360 games recommended

If you ask Phil Spencer, Microsoft Game Studios’ head of game development, he’ll tell you that he wants every new Xbox 360 game to have Matchmaking. So 1UP asked him, and they also asked him why, of all the games on the Xbox, Halo 2‘s Matchmaking service outclassed them all. Spencer gave a sensible answer: Bungie spent a lot of time on their Matchmaking code, and it works like a dream. Lucky them.

Developers of other games have a lot on their platter, multiplayer development being one of them. Heck, Gears of War didn’t ship with Matchmaking out of the box, but that’s only because of the schedule:

The Epic scenario and why we don’t have that code in Gears of War is really more of a scheduling issue than a “We weren’t going to share the code with them, or help them add that feature to the game” because it’s clearly a great feature in online shooting play. For us, it was just “could we get this done on time in order to get the game to come out when it needed to come out.”

So, ask Spencer again on what he’d wish for Xbox Live multiplayer: after rattling off the merits of Halo 2 multiplayer Matchmaking, he says “it’s a very innovative system and it should be across all 360 games – definitely all [applicable] first party 360 games.”

This may just be the personal opinion of a Microsoft employee, but think about it. At least for all Microsoft-published games, they feature a “standard” Matchmaking service modeled on Halo 2, tweaked for the unique requirements of the game, but certainly based off Bungie’s model. Spencer also said this:

As a publisher, that’s our job, to take code, encapsulate it up and ship it off to other people, not because they can’t figure it out but because there are other things on the schedule and if we can help other people by handing out pieces of code, pieces of technology, we should.

This statement got us thinking: suppose Microsoft offered “modular” Matchmaking code that any 360 dev can integrate into their game – based off Halo 2‘s example, in this case. On the down side, it kind of boxes the game’s multiplayer matchups to Halo 2‘s model, unless the game devs work on the code some more. Still, having something to work with does save a lot of development time and effort.

Eh, but if wishes were horses… Advanced Happy Valentine’s Day, hope your Matchmaking is made in heaven and not in hell.

If you ask Phil Spencer, Microsoft Game Studios’ head of game development, he’ll tell you that he wants every new Xbox 360 game to have Matchmaking. So 1UP asked him, and they also asked him why, of all the games on the Xbox, Halo 2‘s Matchmaking service outclassed them all. Spencer gave a sensible answer: Bungie spent a lot of time on their Matchmaking code, and it works like a dream. Lucky them.

Developers of other games have a lot on their platter, multiplayer development being one of them. Heck, Gears of War didn’t ship with Matchmaking out of the box, but that’s only because of the schedule:

The Epic scenario and why we don’t have that code in Gears of War is really more of a scheduling issue than a “We weren’t going to share the code with them, or help them add that feature to the game” because it’s clearly a great feature in online shooting play. For us, it was just “could we get this done on time in order to get the game to come out when it needed to come out.”

So, ask Spencer again on what he’d wish for Xbox Live multiplayer: after rattling off the merits of Halo 2 multiplayer Matchmaking, he says “it’s a very innovative system and it should be across all 360 games – definitely all [applicable] first party 360 games.”

This may just be the personal opinion of a Microsoft employee, but think about it. At least for all Microsoft-published games, they feature a “standard” Matchmaking service modeled on Halo 2, tweaked for the unique requirements of the game, but certainly based off Bungie’s model. Spencer also said this:

As a publisher, that’s our job, to take code, encapsulate it up and ship it off to other people, not because they can’t figure it out but because there are other things on the schedule and if we can help other people by handing out pieces of code, pieces of technology, we should.

This statement got us thinking: suppose Microsoft offered “modular” Matchmaking code that any 360 dev can integrate into their game – based off Halo 2‘s example, in this case. On the down side, it kind of boxes the game’s multiplayer matchups to Halo 2‘s model, unless the game devs work on the code some more. Still, having something to work with does save a lot of development time and effort.

Eh, but if wishes were horses… Advanced Happy Valentine’s Day, hope your Matchmaking is made in heaven and not in hell.