Windows Phone 7 Gaming and Xbox Live 99
Engadget is running a preview of Microsoft's attempt to bring Xbox Live to upcoming Windows Phone 7 devices. Launch titles will include Guitar Hero, Castlevania, and Halo: Waypoint, and many of the features from the console version of Xbox Live will make the transition intact. Quoting:
"Live on WP7 will allow for full avatar integration (we're talking fully rendered, interactive avatars) along with customization (clothes, accessories, and more). The company has even crafted an avatar-centric version of familiar phone utilities like flashlight apps and levels, adding some whimsy to what would normally be pretty staid affairs. Additionally, messaging, friend lists / status, achievements, and leaderboards (with friend comparisons) are all here as well, making for a pretty complete mobile Xbox Live experience. And also just like the console, every game will have a try-before-you buy demo to check out before spending your hard-earned cash."
Gaming on WP7 (Score:5, Insightful)
OMG Halo Waypoint on a mobile phone! (Score:5, Insightful)
For those who don't know, Halo Waypoint is basically just a front end for the Halo series of games that lets you view all your achievements for the series and one or two bits of Halo news. It's not a game in itself, so calling it a "title" is probably giving it a bit too much credit, because it's largely dull and pointless.
Yes, the title of this post was meant in a sarcastic tone
On a different note though, I think XBox Live integration actually has the potential to be a killer feature for Windows 7- if Windows 7 phones are going to succede on anything it'll probably be this. It effectively means it's a gamer oriented phone and if it links into XBox live then there's a potential to harness the 27 million (or however many XBox Live has now) achievements whores and allow them to continue their achievement addiction even when they're not at their XBox.
I think Microsoft actually has a good vision in terms of XBox Live everywhere by linking XBox Live with Windows Games and mobile games, especially as it all integrates with MSN messenger and partially with Facebook too. Of course, the real test will be in the execution- having the right vision is only the start of it, pulling it off through Microsoft's layers upon layers of bureaucracy will be the real challenge.
Re:Thanks.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Would you perhaps prefer having the next iPhone spec instead?
Re:Thanks.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Who modded this idiot +5 insighful? If the next generation rival for iPhone and Android isn't "news for nerds", what is it then? Especially since it's linking to an engadget story. This is far from some shitty slashdot advertisement for some small firm. Get a clue.
Re:WP7 Connect Program (Score:4, Insightful)
"On the other hand, there are coming close to 500,000 released apps for the iPhone, a literally staggering amount of apps. Probably more apps than exist for Windows, although that's just speculation."
Did you really just say that?
Importantly, this is a negative, it means people have to find your app amongst those half a million others dependent entirely on Apple's interface with little ability yourself to control how much visibility it gets on that marketplace.
"But if you hit it big, you're in there. No such thing exists on WP7 yet since it's not even shipped. So where's the inducement to go WP7 instead of iPhone? Aside from Microsoft bribing you with a large wad of upfront?"
The fact that if you develop for XNA then you've written a game that can run on XBox 360, Windows, Windows Phone 7. In other words, writing for Windows phone 7 is simple because it uses the same tools and codebase as for Microsoft's other platforms. This means you can target hundreds of millions of devices out there with one codebase. In contrast with the iPhone, it's sold around 50 - 60 mill units to date, however many of those are replacements for previous generations so the actual market size is probably more in the 30mill - 40mill range. That's a much smaller market.
Or to cut a long story short, even if Windows Phone 7 doesn't take off, developing for XNA alone means you automatically are developing for a market that dwarfs that of every other mobile operating system out there.
Of course, there's also the point that there are countless XBLIG and .NET apps that already exist which can be moved directly to, or with minor porting to Windows 7 Phone from the outset. That is, the cost for existing XNA developers to produce for this additional platform is next to nothing, but the potential market is large.
Re:WP7 Connect Program (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not talking about the iPhone. There are literally millions of Android development phones out there though. Every single one of them. There's less of a development cost. If you want to claim that development will skyrocket because of how many dev phones are out there all you have to do is look at how Android is doing.
There are just as many (if not more) hardware firms kicking out Android based devices (phones, tablets, remote controls, etc.) and several global telco's with Android as well... What's your point?
Re:Gaming on WP7 (Score:3, Insightful)
My own view is that Microsoft recognized how mouldy Windows Mobile 6.5 had become, especially the UI and decided to bisect the OS with a rump Windows CE acting as the kernel and a new .NET front end. All well and good but they'd have to toss a lot of functionality out in the process. So they picked to implement a consumer phone first and build the rest of the features in later.
Windows Mobile 7 won't match Android or iPhone for features but if MS can make a decent consumer phone with gaming then they might create a platform they can build from. There is no doubt that Android is pretty poor for gaming and iPhone lacks things that XBL could bring like trophies etc. So if MS can pull off that part they might be in with a chance but they're really going to have work on the missing functionality and fast.