Were PC Gamers Too Good For Microsoft’s Cross-Platform Gaming Project?

Rahul Sood, Voodoo PC founder and current CTO of gaming at HP, spins an interesting yarn about an aborted Microsoft project that would’ve let PC and Xbox gamers face-off. The only problem? During testing, the PC gamers cleaned Xboxers’ clocks.

In the middle of a rumination on the lukewarm state of PC gaming, Sood divulges some details of a project Microsoft was working on “many many months ago” to let PC and Xbox users face off in games like Gears of War and Unreal Tournament, effectively bridging Xbox Live and Windows Live.

Sadly for the project, there was more than a little disparity between the two groups:

I’ve heard from reliable sources that during the development they brought together the best console gamers to play mediocre PC gamers at the same game… and guess what happened? They pitted console gamers with their “console” controller, against PC gamers with their keyboard and mouse. The console players got destroyed every time. So much so that it would be embarrassing to the XBOX team in general had Microsoft launched this initiative.

That’s not entirely surprising to anyone who’s fragged on both platforms – Matt Buchanan says, “I’d slaughter anybody using a controller if i had a keyboard and mouse” – but it’s interesting to hear just how thoroughly the Xbox gamers supposedly got their arses whooped. [Rahul Sood CrunchGear]