MIX is over (whew!), and as I write I’m on the flight back to Seattle. It’s been an amazing show for Windows Phone, and I just want to say thanks to those of you who swung by the booth to chat! It was great showing off the device in person and answering questions, and I look forward to doing much more in the future!
Our big announcements at the show were around the release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools Preview. Those tools feature…
- Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone
- Windows Phone Emulator
- XNA Game Studio 4.0
… and are available right now as a free single download at http://developer.windowsphone.com. If you haven’t already grabbed them, I highly encourage you to do so. I think you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to get up and going – just yesterday a MIX developer was showing off a full-fledged stock ticker tracking tool he’d whipped up as an experiment.
Being the cloud gaming guy, I’ll point you to some of the other Windows Phone development for more details on the tech side. For one, Charlie Kindle has a great summary on his blog here. And as always,you should absolutely keep an eye on the rest of the WP7 development team. You can follow the team on Twitter @wp7dev, or individually: Charlie Kindel (@ckindel), Shawn Hargreaves (@shawnhargreaves) , Michael Klucher (@kluch), Loke Uei Tan (@lokeuei) and Christian Schormann (@cschormann).Obviously, you can also follow me as @Ozymandias on Twitter, and if you need my blog address we’ve both got a problem. 
That done, I wanted to talk about some of the implications of these announcements from a cloud gaming perspective. We’re in the early stages of rolling out our cloud gaming story, and how that relates to Xbox LIVE. Make no mistake: Xbox LIVE is Microsoft’s cloud gaming service, and I’ll be writing a lot more on our plans here in the future. But I did want to follow up with some thoughts following MIX.
The key point to consider is that in today’s world it takes a combination of hardware, software, and services to make the magic of cloud computing (and cloud gaming!) tick. This is a crucial point – you occasionally see attempts at painting a cloud gaming story that include one or two of these components, but fall flat because they miss legs of the stool. After MIX I think it’s clear that we have all of the building blocks necessary to build a robust connected entertainment ecosystem.
We have hardware that spans all screens (TV, PC, Mobile); we have the cloud services connecting them (Xbox LIVE and Azure), and finally, with our recent development tool announcements (Silverlight and XNA Game Studio) we have the development ecosystem that spans all of these devices, and allows developers to create and deploy connected experiences across these devices more easily than ever before.
We recognize every platform and use case is different. Although the buzz term of “write once, sell many” sounds great, the reality is that some work almost always needs to be done to take advantage of the differences in each platform’s input methods, display surface, and use case. You can see this in action with the tech demo that Luma Arcade built with The Harvest. This demo was done in three weeks, and reuses 90% of the code across the Xbox 360, Windows, and Windows Phone. Of course, some code had to be changed; where a controller could be used on the Xbox, the developers needed to create an input system for a touch screen on the phone. Interestingly, in this example, the art resources were simply used as-is on the phone – the high-resolution screen allowed for a seamless port. And of course, having a unified API via XNA allowed the title to award achievements on all three devices without a single change.
As we move past MIX we’ll be talking a lot more about how titles can use our cloud gaming services to easily create rich, connected experiences. We are working hard to make it easy for developers to enable these experiences in a way that will allow gamers to connect, play, and socialize seamlessly wherever and whenever they want. But we’re also making sure to take into account the inherent differences between platforms, knowing that a “cloud gaming” experience on one device is necessarily different than on another. A simple example of this is our focus on enabling seamless, asynchronous connected gaming experiences at launch. I’ll write up a post at some point about why we chose to focus on this aspect initially, but rest assured it all comes down to creating a seamless, user-driven experience that’s appropriate to each platform. Just as The Harvest demo changed its input paradigm as it moved across platforms, so we are focusing on enabling the appropriate sorts of cloud-connected, social gaming that you expect.
Will be writing much more in the coming months on all this. But first, time to get home, walk the dogs, and get some sleep!
Been a great week, with us finally being able to announce more details around our Windows Phone development tools, partners, and application support. If you haven’t had a chance, definitely head over to http://developer.windowsphone.com and check out the developer tools we released yesterday!
Also have had the opportunity to show the phone off to quite a few folks, especially the game demos. Trust me when I say The Harvest always elicits a great reaction, both for 3D capabilities and for Xbox LIVE integration (particularly Achievements.) Last night it was the Engadget guys – really funny to watch them try to play, capture video, juggle drinks, and talk, all the while being in a dark and thumping nightclub. That’s dedication for you… or something.
Anyway, I’ve been grabbing some shots from the show, thought I’d share for those of you who couldn’t make it. Unfortunately, Wordpress is acting a bit wonky, so I can’t embed them elegantly in this post. For now, check them out over on Flickr. Love to hear your thoughts!
I’m at MIX10 all this week and would love to chat with any of you who might be attending!
I’m happy to answer any questions I can, especially around what we’ve disclosed on Xbox LIVE and the Game Hub on the phone. I should caveat that I can’t go into all of what we’re thinking around Xbox LIVE and the phone just yet… like any good company, we’re always planning cool stuff for the future. But I’m happy to clarify any questions I can, pontificate on cloud gaming, and otherwise just chat!
I’ll be in the main booth area called The Commons for much of the time – just ask around and folks should be able to point you my way. I’ll also be keeping an eye on my Twitter feed, so feel free to ping me there @Ozymandias. Heck, if we get a few folks together we’ll head out and grab a drink!
Look forward to meeting some of you in person!
Just came across this fantastic picture of the Horsetail Falls in Yosemite National Park, thanks to today and tomorrow. Apparently during the month of February the sunset causes the falls to turn golden – almost looks like lava pouring down. Enjoy!
Pretty exciting day today for the team – as I speak, Michael Klucher is presenting the first public talk on how to develop games for Windows Phone 7 Series devices. There’s been some good buzz around the show about the phone, and it looks like it’s translated nicely to filling the room!
So far Michael’s walked through the basic XNA Framework, and is currently demoing how easy it is to build a game for the PC and re-use much of that code to launch the game on the phone. It’s cool stuff – I can tell how excited he is to finally be able to share what he’s been working on for literally years… I’ve been there myself with Xbox LIVE and Xbox 360, and I can tell he’s having a blast!
Beyond today’s talks, I’d also like to point you to some of the coverage yesterday from our press demos. We showed off a couple of titles, including hardware accelerated 3D support and achievements which Engadget hit on in their post. The thing that’s most exciting to me is that we’re finally able to show off full-screen 3D titles, rendering in real-time with full hardware acceleration. All through the 3D functionality we supply in XNA Game Studio 4.0. Here are some sample shots:
Some folks are asking how they can start developing a Windows Phone game. There are some amazing ideas floating around out there about how to build experiences across devices with Xbox LIVE at the center. I’m really excited by some of them, and am looking forward to seeing the innovation you all bring to the platform. Some of these folks are already looking ahead and asking who they can talk to about their game – and we have an answer for you.
The bar is pretty high for titles to be able to use Xbox LIVE services – we’re aiming for a very high-quality, managed portfolio. But if you feel you’ve got the ideas and the chops to hit that bar, both our publishing partners and ourselves are interested in talking with you! You can start developing today with XNA Game Studio 3.1; XNA Game Studio 4.0 with Windows Phone support will be available later this month. (And fear not – everyone else will of course be able to release your titles to the Windows Phone Marketplace – we’ll be talking a lot more about that next week at MIX.)
Feel like you’ve got game? Here’s what you do:
- Email wpgames@microsoft.com with a description of your game and your contact information. We’ll send you a content submission form. We love playable demos!
- If your game is accepted, you’ll hear from the developer relations staff and we’ll work with you to get you the resources required to get started.
- We’ll take care of the rest – game integration, promotions, marketing, data analysis and community support.
Please note, by submitting your game, you agree to the following: Unless and until we sign a contract for the publishing and distribution of this game, we don’t have any kind of formal relationship other than under existing contracts between us. This is to protect both of us: for example, it means that if you spend money working on the project, then you don’t expect us to reimburse you, and it means you may develop and publish this game (excluding any Microsoft intellectual property) for other platforms without consequences. Nothing anyone who works for either of us says or does will change this unless and until your game is selected and we enter into a formal written agreement for our Xbox LIVE portfolio.
Look forward to seeing how you push the boundaries of what’s possible with Xbox LIVE!
Made it to GDC, and I have to say it’s been great hearing buzz around Windows Phone already! We’ve got some great big banners up (as you can see), and between dinner last night and just getting coffee this morning I’ve had five folks ask about where they can get more information about making games for Windows Phone at the show. Figured I’d put a little something up here I could point people to.
For one, definitely check out a great post Michael just put up, where he talks a bit about XNA Game Studio 4.0. I’ll also steal a quote from him to point you to Shawn Hargreave’s blog, where you can find a great deal more information on developing with XNA.
I’m excited to finally be able to talk to you all about XNA Game Studio 4.0 and Windows Phone 7 Series. If you’re new to XNA Game Studio learn more at http://creators.xna.com and get some details from http://ShawnHargreaves.com who has a great collection of information to get you started.
Finally, I’ll point you to an earlier post I did about our Windows Phone sessions at GDC. The short form is that we have the following four sessions, information about which can be found here:
- Developing Games for Windows Phone 7 Series*
- High Performance 3D Games on Windows Phone 7 Series*
- Development and Debugging Tools for Windows Phone 7 Series*
- Bringing the Best of Xbox LIVE to Windows Phone 7 Series*
* These sessions are repeated during the main conference Thursday March 11th through Saturday March 13th.
Off to a busy day of meetings and sessions! About to see Gareth Davis of Facebook at his “How Friends Change Everything” session – will be interesting to see how Facebook is thinking about Social Gaming.
Just saw David Pogue tweet about an Rube Goldberg music video by OK Go and wanted to share. Love this sort of thing! Thanks David!
Went down to San Francisco yesterday to attend a dinner where Charlie Kindle walked a few industry folks around how we approached building Windows Phone, as well as some of the ramifications for software development that fall out of that. Although I’ll point you to Charlie’s blog for some more thoughts, the big thing I want to highlight is that we’ve stepped into a brave new world. Windows Phone was built from the ground up with a focus on the end-user experience, and this focus gave us the opportunity to revisit every aspect of the Windows Phone platform, from hardware, software, and services to the applications platform partners would be able to use to develop apps. That said, stepping into this brave new world also requires change – and it’s significant. To quote Charlie:
For us, the cost of going from good to great is a clean break from the past. To enable the fantastic user experiences you’ve seen in the Windows Phone 7 Series demos so far we’ve had to break from the past. To meet the goals above we’ve had to change how phone apps were written. As a result previous Windows mobile applications will not run on Windows Phone 7 Series.
The expertise and familiarity with our tools is not lost. If you are a .NET developer today your skills and much of your code will move forward. If you are Silverlight or XNA developer today you’re gonna be really happy.
As we move into a connected, cloud-based world, partners have asked us for ways to more easily reuse their code and leverage that work across all of the connected platforms they’re now being asked to support. From the games perspective, partners are thinking about how to build and create games for consoles, the PC, web browsers, and mobile devices such as Zune and now Windows Phone. They’re looking to deploy their apps across all of these platforms, with as little additional work as possible to do so (such as UI or interface changes between platforms). To enable this we decided to break away from the past and focus on a few, core, well-established development platforms that deliver on that ask. Over the last few years we took steps in this direction by enabling the XNA Framework on the Xbox 360, PC, and Zune. Today we announced that we’re also extending the XNA Framework to Windows Phone, as well as enabling Silverlight application development.
We will be talking more about how to use the XNA Framework for games at GDC next week, and we will go into much more depth on both the XNA Framework and Silverlight the following week at MIX in Las Vegas. If you have any interest in developing applications for Windows Phone 7 Series devices, I strongly encourage you to attend MIX. In addition, keep an eye on the following blogs for additional details in the coming weeks:
- Michael Klucher – XNA Game Development and Design
- Shawn Hargreaves – XNA Coding and Optimization
- Anad Iyer – Silverlight Application Development
- Christian Schormann – Silverlight and Tools
I’ll be at GDC all next week, and then heading to Vegas for MIX the week afterward. Please let me know if you’re attending – love to meet up with some of you and get your thoughts!
It’s been a few days since we announced that we’ll be bringing Xbox LIVE to Windows Phone 7 Series. To recap, we stated that starting this holiday you’ll be able to:
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Collect Achievements and build your Gamerscore
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View Xbox LIVE leaderboards
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See your Xbox LIVE Avatar
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Access Spotlight feeds, including the latest tips and tricks, game news, updates and more
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Add Xbox LIVE friends to your friends list while out on the go
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Play turn-based (asynchronous) multiplayer games
We’re curious what you think! Anything strike you as particularly exciting? What sorts of Xbox LIVE-enabled experiences would you like to see us enable in the future? What questions do you have?
Although I won’t be able to answer all of your questions at this point in time, we should hopefully be able to address some of them. And I can tell you the product teams who are building the product will be reviewing your feedback as well, so it’s a great opportunity to speak up! Finally, though I am happy to also discuss on Twitter (via my Ozymandias account), please be sure to leave your comment here on the blog so the product team can access your feedback!
All that said, this is a public forum, and you should assume that anything you post might be read or used by pretty much anyone on the net, including Microsoft. Short form, if you think you have a killer idea that you want to go make a business from, you should not post it here. Otherwise, we look forward to the conversation!
We’ve announced Windows Phone 7 Series with Xbox LIVE, and also pointed folks to MIX10 to learn about developing applications for the platform. But what about games, those most exalted of applications? To cut to the chase, if you’ve got game, you’ll want to head to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and attend these sessions:
- Developing Games for Windows Phone 7 Series*
- High Performance 3D Games on Windows Phone 7 Series*
- Development and Debugging Tools for Windows Phone 7 Series*
- Bringing the Best of Xbox LIVE to Windows Phone 7 Series*
* These sessions are repeated during the main conference Thursday March 11th through Saturday March 13th.
You can also find some more information on both GDC and MIX from Michael Klucher and Shawn Hargreaves – well worth following in the months ahead! I’ll be at the show as well – love to chat if you’re going!
