As promised a few weeks ago, Microsoft has now released a stand alone client for its Games For Windows Live service. Previously the service was put inside PC games that supported Live but now you can download it and have it ready to go on your desktop without having to start a game up.

At the moment the service is pretty bare bones in terms of content. There's only a handful of game videos to download and just one demo to check out, and it's for the PC version of the year old game Viva Pinata. There's no message center or friends access and there's not even a way to check out your Achievement points. You can add Microsoft Points to your account via the client, however.

Microsoft plans to use Games For Windows Live as a way to offer things like add-ons for titles like Fallout 3 and they have also said that having full games for download (a la Steam and Direct2Drive) is in the works as well. Still this first stand alone client release seems almost like a beta with just a few features implemented.

Update: It looks like the stand alone client was released as a way to update Games For Windows Live for the release of the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV. Before you can play the game Rockstar's own update client requires that players download the stand alone client before they can play. Shacknews reports that European users have a demo of Kane and Lynch available through Games For Windows Live.

Download Games for Windows Live 2.0 (30 MB)