Microsoft have just had a conference call with analysts and during the question and answer session Todd Bishop picked up on this response from Andy Lees, Microsoft mobile communication chief, about Xbox Live on the new mobile OS.
"We are very excited about the way in which the platform works across screens, so we have commonality of platform across the PC, the Xbox, and the web and the phone. We provide a new set of tools that makes it easy and very fast for people to develop applications for the phone but also in a way that works across screens, and we’ll announce details of that at MIX. You’re also right to point out that a marketplace is included, and the marketplace will work for applications but also for games, so the gaming marketplace for the first time will utilize Xbox Live, and that enables you to create multiplayer, multiscreen games, and the marketplace will facilitate that, so that it will actually work across screens."
As Todd points out there are several ways multiplayer and multiscreen can be interpreted wit turn based games being muliplayer and perhaps accessible via “the cloud” but this wont be the kind of thing real Xbox Live users will want to play.
I don’t own an Xbox, although I have often tried to win one, so don’t have much experience of Xbox Live but from my understanding it is what has made the Xbox such a popular console, now if Microsoft can get it right on mobile devices (I expect the Zune HD 2 to be running 7 Series in all but the phone functionality) too it could make the mobile OS just as popular. I guess we will know much more about this kind of thing at MIX, I think MIX might be even bigger than MWC what with IE9 news too.
