WinPho + Xbox Live + Games for Windows = Awesomeness
posted Sunday Mar 7, 2010 by Scott Ertz
Apparently Microsoft couldn't wait until the next major conference to whip out their new little friend, Windows Phone 7 Series. This week, it peeked its head out at TechEd Middle East in a surprising new way: a demo of a three-way cross-platform gaming experience, all held together with Xbox Live.
Microsoft's Eric Rudder got the chance to keynote the conference and decided this would be the best place to show the world what gaming on all devices would look like. While the game itself was simple, the technology was not. Built in Microsoft Visual Studio with the capability of 90% code sharing, a team designed an Indiana Jones game that could be played on the PC with a mouse and keyboard, the Xbox with a controller and the ASUS WinPho device with accelerometers and multi-touch.
There may not have been anything spectacular about the game, the cross-platform capabilities were certainly something to be excited about. Then, the realization that you could pause and save a game on one platform and pick it back up on another changed the game completely. You can't really do that on the PSN, you definitely can't do it between OSX and iPhone - only here.
We knew WinPho7 was going to change the market, so long as they can get consumer acceptance, but Microsoft had plans even we weren't prepared for. Check the link for a video from the keynote and let us know your feels about it in the comments section.