The Windows Phone 7 Review

Xbox Live

The hub that probably saves the most space in the UI is the Xbox Live/Games hub. All of your games go here regardless of whether they are Xbox Live titles or regular Windows Phone games.

There are two categories of games on Windows Phone 7: Xbox Live titles and standard games. The latter are similar to games developed for iOS or Android, anyone can develop for them you just need to spring for the $99 account to get them published. These games can be developed in either Silverlight or using the XNA framework and can leverage the GPU.

Xbox Live titles are supposed to be more polished and come with a stricter set of requirements. All XBL titles must support a try before you buy demo mode (it’s optional for regular games), they all support achievements and they can support turn based multiplayer (real time is out of the cards for now, we need better mobile bandwidth for that).

The regular games on Windows Phone aren’t all that impressive, they’re not terrible either. But we’re missing titles like Angry Birds (heh) and Plants vs. Zombies. I suspect over time we’ll see these in the marketplace, the phones just need to start shipping first.

With the original Xbox Microsoft had Halo, and what it’s desperately missing from Windows Phone 7 is a Halo equivalent. Not necessarily a first person shooter, but a game that’s so enjoyable that it alone is justification to buy into the platform.

The Xbox Live titles aren’t half bad, but so far they aren’t an order of magnitude better than what you get on an iPhone. They are pricey too. The titles range from $0.99 all the way up to $6.99, and in the long run I expect these prices to follow an upward trend. Games will get deeper, art/development budgets go up and the end user will foot a higher bill. I think the ultimate goal for smartphone gaming is for it to replace handhelds like the PSP or Nintendo DS. I would expect AAA smartphone game prices to be in the same range as games for those devices eventually. Without the need for the traditional publishing model the final price may be a bit lower, but that remains to be seen. It may take a few years but that’s where things are headed.

If your Live id is tied to your Xbox Live Gamertag then you’ll immediately get your avatar and gamer score imported into the Xbox Live hub. Any gamer score accrued in playing on your phone gets added to your total.

Through the free Xbox Live Extras app you can edit your avatar as well as interact with your XBL friends. This app is one of the slowest on the phone however, switching between tabs is choppy and it’s the only app that seems to consistently have problems.

Within the extras app you can view all of your achievements (both in XBL phone games and in 360 titles). You can also view your XBL friends list to see who’s online and even send them messages.

I see the messaging/friends list management as the killer feature for WP7’s Xbox Live integration. Typing messages via an Xbox 360 controller is a pain and the chatpad accessory is a silly thing to buy when you’ve got a fully functional smartphone. If you do a lot of communicating on Xbox Live, Windows Phone 7 has the potential to make things easier. The main problem is the performance of the Extras app, it’s just unacceptable. It’s laggy and crashes a lot - perhaps a rushed attempt to meet the European launch tomorrow, but it needs to be fixed asap.

The XBL Extras app is currently in a state of disarray