Gamertell

On January 2, 2010, Times Online reported Microsoft’s possible plan to become part of the mobile world in the future. The questions and possibilities are numerous.

It was reported that Microsoft has already hinted that it might try to link Xbox Live experience to the Windows Mobile platform. It seems like a pretty wise choice to do so since smartphones have their own game apps that help flesh out their capabilities and makes them even more enticing to the gaming public. If Microsoft does link up Xbox Live to Windows Mobile, that would probably increase the popularity of Windows Mobile phones. That is if the idea is pursued and actually works.

Microsoft had a job posting for a software engineer who would work on making this happen. So the company is at least looking into it. It seems like a good idea, especially with the growing popularity of different smartphones being used as gaming outlets. There are a lot of ways that this can go, though.

The thought could be pursued and succeed. It could be pursued and fail. Microsoft could also find out that it’s not going to work and scrap the idea in development. Microsoft could even scrap it entirely before they hire the programmer that would help bring the idea closer to being a reality. As it stands, Xbox Live on smartphones seems like it might not work quite as planned. The hardware capabilities from console-to-smartphone are different enough to cause a considerable amount of problems.

Regardless, to test out how the mobile Xbox Live would work, the wisest choices for Microsoft would go in this order.

First, the company needs to find someone to make the option a reality.

Next, as a beta, the programming should be leaked out to some of the more popular smartphones on the market. Either way, gaming on cell phones is no new thing, though the games have been getting more elaborate since many of the current smartphones like the iPhone have been released and found to be legitimate venues for certain kinds of games. Even gaming on the Android devices seems to have taken off. Since Xbox Live is pay-to-play, Microsoft would still make money off the beta and the waters would’ve been tested.

Times Online also reported that Microsoft is thinking about the possibility of a mobile gaming platform to try to compete with the PSP and the DS. The thing to wonder about, though, is the practicality of pursuing the idea with the current generation of technology.

The DS and the PSP are firmly established and any real competition, until the next generation shift, would be between the DS and PSP. The handheld idea could end up working out if pursued. After all, when they released the original Xbox, both the PS2 and the Gamecube were well-established and the Xbox did well enough to warrant its current-gen successor.

So there are the more established handhelds out there but there are also lesser known ones that tend to go around with hardcore open-source software users, at which point the Gp2x is out as well. Sure, the Gp2x doesn’t appeal to all gamers, since it is mostly covering retro games, however it does have its fanbase. Microsoft has gotten lucky before but pushing that luck would be ill-advised.

Since there are loads of mobile gaming outlets at the current generation, Microsoft is going to have to look at things from every possible angle and weigh all the options, as any good business should.

A word of advice would be to release a handheld when it looks like the technology is about to advance. The technology for handhelds is probably going to shift in two or three years at most. If Microsoft starts working on a handheld console now, they’ve got time to develop, test and fix things so that they can possibly beat the competition to releasing a piece of quality hardware. There would be another advantage to this as well.

What would essentially be a handheld Xbox, Xbox 360 or whatever the next form of the console is next would probably require much less coding work and scaling back to make Xbox Live go mobile than linking up to smartphones.

Read [Times Online] Also Read [Windows Mobile devices]