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Live Anywhere could enhance MMOs
With the upcoming Live Anywhere service from Microsoft, various gaming platforms will unite in new ways. For MMOs, this means some exciting scenarios in the realm of pervasive gaming, gameplay that will follow you around, creating a seamless virtual world across your PC, phone and console.Checking in-game auctions from a mobile phone has been on our MMO wishlist for some time -- Live Anywhere will enable that, and other immersive features. Levelling up crafting skills via casual mini-games; chatting with guild leaders via PC or phone-based VoIP; sending in-game mail and IM from normal mail and IM clients. We'll have to wait and see if Live Anywhere will support more unification, such as matching friends lists and clan systems both in-game and outside it, but there are definitely some really cool possibilities that this vision opens up for MMOs. It's up to Microsoft and developers to really deliver on this potential.
Live Anywhere bad news for gaming IM
Being able to seamlessly connect with your friends while playing games is becoming increasingly important, both to gamers and to games companies. Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony all emphasised the importance of online as well as offline play, but Microsoft's announcement of Live Anywhere must surely have struck a nerve with a few niche companies.Niche up till now, that is. Companies like Viacom and Verizon who are heavily investing in the gaming IM space -- bringing social networking and gaming closer together -- are now in direct competition with a company that can reach multiple platforms easily. By connecting Xbox Live, Windows Vista, MSN Messenger and mobile phones together, Microsoft will make it hard for others to encroach on their territory.
Microsoft blends platform lines with Live Anywhere
The latest ambitious endeavor by Microsoft might have "monopoly" written all over it, but we have a feeling they wouldn't want it any other way. Microsoft's new Live Anywhere that they announced at today's E3 keynote takes their Xbox Live concept and extends it to the PC, Windows Mobile and even Java-enabled phones. Whether you're at your PC or rocking a mobile, you'll be able to track your gamer tag, message friends, purchase content for that device or set it to download to another device, and of course compare rankings with your buddies on various gaming titles. Halo isn't going to run so well on your RAZR, so for actual cross platform titles, Microsoft is sticking with XBLA-esque games that can translate easily to different platform, such as Bejeweled. There will, however, be major games that can be played on your Vista PC and Xbox 360. Microsoft is banking heavily on third party support for Live Anywhere, in the form of mobile friendly value-adds for 360 games, and just straight up phone-friendly casual titles. In order to get more support, they're claiming to approach this from a "platform agnostic" (hah!) angle, and after supporting the 360, Windows Vista and Windows Mobile, will move on to Java, S60 and possibly even Palm if they deem it worth their while. Microsoft obviously has the muscle to launch a service like this, and the features they demoed look quite entertaining and welcome, but we'll still be (pleasantly) surprised if they actually manage to pull it off. Keep on reading for screenshots and impressions.
Engadget & Joystiq's live coverage of Microsoft's Xbox 360 E3 event
2:42 pm - Koolaid blood spills from corpses, buildings demolished, apocalypse. The Gears of War trailer is the very first thing shown, and the applause is decent, but not deafening. CliffyB onstage now, giving us a playable demo of Gears of War. The game looks even better than our preview back in September at the Tokyo Game Show. It's come along nicely, with added HUD elements and a targeting system.
