Microsoft’s been touting Windows Phone 7’s Xbox Live functionality since day one, but it’s always felt just a little lacking. You can look at your cute little avatar and play games that bump up your gamerscore, but where’s the connectivity with the Xbox experience we saw in demos like this one?
It would appear the folks in Redmond aren’t quite there yet, but a demo at their GamesFest in Seattle on Monday morning shows us that the idea hasn’t fallen by the wayside yet.
Microsoft and the Kinectimals team showed off a novel method of moving a furry friend from within the Kinectimals Xbox game onto a Windows Phone. Players who have grown fond of the pets on their Xbox can have the game generate a QR code that can be scanned by the Kinectimals mobile app. While on the phone, players can take photos with the camera and strategically their pets in them for kicks.
When players grow tired of carrying their little digital tiger around, the app generates a similar QR code that gets scanned by the Kinect camera and the pet gets reimported into the game. Geekwire has the whole demo on video, for those having trouble imagining it:
The Kinectimals connection is part of Microsoft’s plans to strengthen the ties between their immensely popular Xbox Live platform and Windows Phone 7. Frankly, it’s about time: it’s one thing for Microsoft to use the Xbox Live brand to garner their mobile OS some gamer cred, but it’s nigh-useless if that experience doesn’t deliver. As WPcentral points out, the only other game before Kinectimals that featured any sort of integration with its home counterpart was Full House Poker, which allowed gamers to transfer their winnings between play sessions.
Between today’s demo and the concepts they’ve already come up with, Microsoft is looking at potentially owning a large part of the mobile gaming space if they can just get their A-game on.