You probably saw the news early this morning that Games for Windows Live will be launching on May 8 with Halo 2 for the PC.

I had a chance yesterday to speak with Aaron Greenberg, group product manager for the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, about the announcement and what it means to gamers.

The key thing to keep in mind is that while Microsoft will be charging for PC to Xbox 360 game play, they won't be charging for your standard PC to PC gaming.

Even better, I think, is the fact that your Live membership is platform agnostic. In other words, if you're a Gold member of Live on the 360, the same automatically holds true for the PC version and vice-versa.

So the free stuff, the silver membership, will include giving you a gamertag, game profile, gamerscore, achievements, chat via text and voice, friends list, online presence and the ability to browse a list of active PC games that our joinable.

What gold adds to the mix, besides that cross-platform dealio, will be multiplayer matchmaking with friends, trueskill matchmaking and multiplayer achievements.

This sounds like a win-win to me, if they don't start playing around with the pricing structure down the line. The one thing I really don't like is that Microsoft has decided not to force developers building multiplayer PC games to make use of Live if they want the Games for Windows label.

I'm a little confused by this decision. Microsoft already has established a set of rules for getting that brand slapped on your game and it includes things like the games explorer and ease of installation, so why not attach this requirement as well? I'd love to know, as a gamer, that every game with the Games for Windows label on it will make full use of this new Live feature. Brian Crecente