Xbox Live coming to Windows phones

@ suicidalblues Little girl? Are you kidding? You would not stand next to me and say that, trust me. Failure rate? Dude get over that it is not like it was 4 years ago. Do some reading it actually works!

Really, the only thing I've ever wanted to do on a smartphone involving XBL is check my friends list, and there are already apps for the iPhone and Android that do just that. Being able to see avatars is absolutely not a selling point for me.

@ zgreenwell I think that every single game what will be made for this phone platform, will be on cross-platform engine but with some adjustances. Like WP7 racing game will be pretty simple, but on PC and X360 it will have some cool reflections, antialiasing, shadows etc. P.S. English isn't my native, so sorry for any weirdnesses in post.

The problem is that if I am invited to a phone game while on the Xbox 360, there is no way I'm going to switch platforms. It is the same problem that I have on the few PC titles that already support LIVE. Another issue is that very few, if any, of my LIVE friends will upgrade to a new Windows 7 phone, just like few of the phone users will buy a 360 just because they have LIVE on their phone. While I applaud their effort, these platforms just aren't as compatible as Microsoft would like them to be.

All MS have to do now is release the 250GB drive for the 360, oh, for about £99, and lower the price of the 120GB drive to about £50, and everyone will be happy.

Wow, cool beans. I'm always up for cool features that connect together. It's a natural fit. Microsoft is really doing thing's right this year. From games to peripherals to great idea's like this one. Good job Microsoft!

@sleepnsurf: It's funny that little girls like you see someone write a negative about MS and you have to call them Sony fanboys. Most of the comments on here have no comparative or even mention Sony, so you're the one looking like a fanboy. It's fine with me that this bit of news gets you excited, but I'd rather see MS beef up their internal game development and do something about the "still way too high" failure rate of the 360. So yeah, does this news impress me, no. But not because I'm a fanboy, it's because I'm not.

I'm not pro to any one console but the rrod jokes are getting a little old.

oh dear.... why don't they concentrate on improving Windows Mobile itself first before making it laden with yet more features that it can't access in a uder friendly manner?

hey MS, why don't you do something with the Zune HD??? What a waste of money that thing turned out to be. As soon as I get an iPhone, it's gone unless you start supporting it.

Sony fanboys always out to hate. I guess they have to defend their original investment on a 600 dollar shiny grill when 360 keeps pounding it into the ground.

Nice, something I may not use but I am sure others will. Competition is good for the consumer.

This feature competition between PS3 and 360 reminds me of what banks used to do. Quite a few years ago, banks were competing so fiercely for business that they would offer "non-banking" services to get the edge. They would take utility payments, business tax payments, sell stamps, etc. Those things didnt have anything to do with the Core goal of the bank, however it was a silly little feature race that now, they stoped doing because theyre costly and just not necessary. I see this going on in this console generation. They add all these "non-gaming" features that might be ok to have, but it has nothing to do with the Core goal of hardcore gaming. Maybe in a decade or so we'll look back at this ridiculous feature race and just laugh because of the silly features they added just to get the edge in business.

I haven't seen a WinPho7 cell phone in like 2 years. What are the goods one and top of the line WinPhones out now?

@ Lord_Midas You just are very lucky not to have had the RROD until now, it might happen the next time you switch on your Xbox 360. :)

wow. this is absolute bs. microsoft and sony are gonna end up loosing all of their ACTUAL "gamers" like me if they continue trying to make the consoles "media hubs"

As a phone OS this looks very good. Needs to have blisteringly quick Internet browsing, FREE turn by turn GPS and solid phone service and reception capabilities. Oh, and MMS out of the box. Mobile gaming is neither here nor there for me. But viewing my Xbox Live stuff sounds cool. However, if someone makes a WinPho7 device with a Tegra2 SoC in it then I'm there. Oh, and @Nineteen93, I've never had the RROD. I'm obviously a lucky SOAB!! :) And DwD, I'd guess you wouldn't have to pay if you already have Xbox Live Gold. Still you doin't have to pay if you've got a Silver account. You just won't be able to do much. You'll still have an avatar and that.

sick so you go on your xbox live on you windows phone will wou have to pay.

So when will MiKRo$oft bring the Red Ring of Death to their phones because it is the single most important and consistent feature of the Xbox 360 and the Xbox 360 experience is not complete until you experience the RROD at least once.

@aGiantSquirrel Just to clear something up, XBL HAS actually given many free games out.

I'll hold thumbs for Windows Phone 7, but I'm afraid it may be a case of "too little, too late". Motorola's decision to drop Windows Mobile in favor of Android-based alternatives was seen by many as the death knell of Windows Mobile. :(

And the mutation into the casual gaming hub called the 'Wii60' continues. So they take original XBOX Live away and put this in? If MS are so desperete for the casual non-gamer money.. why not just go all the way. Forget about the xbox brand and a good games service and go into partnership with nintendo & sky and make the xbox-Wii sky tv viewer & facebbook surfing kiddy-focused kiddy-entertainment hub that they have decided to change my 360 into. XBOX live used to be great (i liked it because im a gamer), i could play any of my games online because i pay for that service.. now i feel it is going down the pan and i get less and less of a games service (original XBOX is going offline) more & more & more games with garbage forced-matchmaking for online... basically tons of **** that i dont want hogging up the bandwidth across the service instead of games. wii60

Not interested in it on my phone TBH. I love Live and can;t imagine console gaming without it. But I can log on to XBL now on my iPhone and do everything you just mentioned. Not sure how many people will want to pay Live's subscription either if their primary use is on a phone and not a console. The subsrciption model is getting stale anyway so on the whole I hope they have something better up their sleeve to compete with Apple's App Store cos this isn't going to cut it.

Not interested.

OOoohhhhhhh.....So by the end of the year I can have "XBOX Live" on my phone but not on my original "XBOX". I sir, now give you the bird... Times two.

@BigBigR Oh, yeah... compare Live at ~$5/month to some cell phone games that think they deserve $2.99/month. Yeah, lesser of two evils. Still gotta watch them, naturally, but I think we're so used to getting boned by the cell phone companies we don't even care anymore... "Just give me my stupid phone."

@BigBigR Sega.Net on the Dreamcast used to be a pay service. Sony didn't have a real service on the PS2 like Live, and right now Sony is looking into paid-for services for PSN. I think that Live being paid for initially caused Sony to try and one-up them by having PSN free, but they didn't seem to put enough thought into the revenue/business model. We can't really look at Nintendo as their online gaming is the least impressive/existent of the three systems. Beyond that - there were paid-for services on the PC for quite a while too. Geez... some stuff used to be paid by the hour, even @_@ The big shift was the consumer-burdened client/server model, where consumers/enthusiasts were the ones hosting the game servers. They paid for the hardware, any needed software (usually the OS and the game itself), electricity, bandwidth, maintenance, etc. This created the illusion of free where in reality it was costing the company very little to nothing (just put out the server software) because they moved the cost onto some really dedicated/generous folks. There are companies out there that will host game servers for you if you don't feel like doing it all yourself but want a private server of your own. Gametap is a subscription service as well - they do have free stuff, but their library (which is huge) is mostly behind a $10/month fee. There are some others.

@Iron_Kni Yeah, you and the other 10 people who still game on a PC.

I love the idea.

lets just wait and see how it fails

Sounds cool. I knew Sony should've made a PSP phone type device awhile ago but never did (they claimed that the PS brand wouldn't do well as a phone or something like that) and now Microsoft will be a step ahead if and when Sony tries to do the same thing.

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*you've recieved an invite to play scrabble* hmm scrabble or ME2...... What a tough choice :s

dude, the old windows mobile was a hot mess of confusing awfulness. I thought it was just plain terrible. Setting the whole "is Live on phones good/bad" debate aside, I think it's awesome that MS decided to completely start over with their mobile OS and actually make one that looks easy/fun to use. Man I hated using a windows mobile phone...

if there's a subscription fee i'll be in hysterics lol

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@grove12345 xbl is much better than psn when it comes to social gaming BUT its laggy as hell if you live overseas and i barely see lag in psn, so dont tell me xbl has better coding than psn , the problem about psn is that no one has a mic and if they do all they do is scream and say things that no one can understand thats why they should add a little something to their ps3 box bundles called a mic , and yeah flow was one piece of crap game , i had more fun with aegis wing the co-op was a blast.

What's next? Windows Toilet 7? You have got to be kidding with me.

weird i dont get it

@BigBigR I didn't mean to start a whole debate with my last post. I was mostly kidding about that because most people on here do dislike $50 a year. I understand their opinion. Just felt like seeing how people would react, but I apologize. :P

rofl...this article has almost nothing to do with this comment log at all......i find that completly hilarious.....i'm srry for some of you ppl. u take fanboyism to the max...jeez.....have a convention or something.

totally unnecessary......

XBL is garbage. The little half campaign of Left 4 Dead was FREE for PC users while they charged XBL members for it. Sony here I come. @grove12345 Sony will be charging for certain things next year (or whenever the actual date is) but it won't be for playing online.

Are gamers these days really that desperate? Does everyone's real life need to be completely converted into an internet persona? How about we all just go back to playing video games without all the cheap gimmicks?

Remember when games weren't available on every little over priced piece of plastic? Remember when games were only available on consoles or computers? How about when games were worth spending money on? I'm forgetting too, I think Microsoft and a lot of other companies are slowly losing their footing among gamers because of things like this. Personally I think it's enough. Stop developing games for phones, iphones, blackberry's, zune's, ipod's, ipad's and get back to the consoles and audiences that made your jobs and companies possible. Really, some **** on the bus playing some game on his phone isn't prepared to spend big bucks on games like we are.

@dentui "" - get fried. You'd just get a bad frame rate (again, educate yourself, this is basic stuff). The only thing that might fry your GPU is catastrophic overheating, or in rare circumstances, if it requires far more power than your PSU can provide.

@chikahiro94 So we can forget about a smaller "evil" because a greater one exists. (not saying MS charging is evil, can't explain it better than this) Sort of like let's forget about healthcare because there's world hunger to cure! This is this and that is that. Should I bring up my gas, electricity and water bills as well? Thing is, XBL is the only paid online gaming service i know of. Besides the xbox, every other console with online capability that I know of has said capability free.

I have to laugh at the folks worried about MS charging for every little thing: when it comes to nickel and diming consumers, the video game market has NOTHING on phone providers. If we only got N&D'd as much with cell phones as we do with gaming? I'd be a happier man by far...

This is genuinely a good idea. If this goes right the iPhone has serious competition. XBLA games on my phone, clutch.

Yay for money making schemes!!