The Future of COM

Currently, there are a number of distributed object technologies similar to COM, such as CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture). However, since you're worried about Windows games, these other technologies aren't as important.

The latest version of COM is called COM++, and it's a much more robust implementation, with better rules and a more thought-out set of implementation details. COM++ will make distributed component software even easier to create. Granted, COM++ is a bit more complex than COM, but hey, that's life.

In addition to COM and COM++, there's also the full Internet/intranet version of COM called DCOM—Distributed COM. With DCOM technology, the COM objects don't even need to be on your machine. They can be served from other machines on the network. Is that cool or what? Imagine having massive DCOM servers that your programs basically act as clients to. Incredible technology, if I do say so myself.