Lego Star Wars II and Company of Heroes have become the first PC games to feature the Games For Windows branding on the top of the box. But what is that supposed to mean? Besides, uh.. being a game that runs on Windows.

“With the Games for Windows [labeling], it’s just a set of guidelines that we require that them to meet—things such as easy installation, support for the Game Explorer [for the upcoming Vista operating system] and support for ESRB and parental controls.”

In a statement, Microsoft also pointed out that "[Lego Star Wars II, Company of Heroes] and other new game titles carrying the Games for Windows branding will support wide-screen gaming, can be launched from within Windows Media Center, will be compatible with 64 bit consumer versions of Windows and support the Xbox 360 Controller for Windows (for games which enable gamepads)."

Coupled with the recent change of Computer Gaming World to Games For Windows: The Official Magazine, Microsoft hopes to demonstrate a renewed commitment to the PC as a gaming platform. They're pushing Vista as being a very "gamer friendly" OS, although I could've sworn that's what they said about XP. The question is.. does it really make a difference? The reason Microsoft has been "derelict", as Peter Moore once put it, in its duty to support PC gaming is because they didn't need to. If you wanted to play a game on a computer, you needed a PC and that was that. Hell, that still is that. Why the sudden concern about branding now?