There's been quite a bit of buzz around the blogospheres and news outlets for mobile, games, and especially mobile games. The issue is the contradictory reports on the state of mobile games from competing analyst groups M:Metrics and Telephia. For a good recap of the controversy, look at this summary by Steve Palley over at Gamasutra.
I bring this up to contextualize a BBC article I want to cite. The BBC looks only at the M:Metrics report, making it a bit one-sided. So, ignore that part of the article.
The really interesting part, especially in the context of Cross Gamer, is the following quote from Bill Gates about "Platform Integration:"
Platform intergration
When it comes to gameplay most of us treat the mobile as a standalone device, but not if Bill Gates has his way.
He says: "You can start a game on Xbox, continue it on the phone, there are games that will work that way. Schedule things to happen from your phone; a download that you might want to set up on a different device."
In Microsoft's vision a racing game might be played on the Xbox 360, edited on the PC and tweaked on the phone.
That's what I'm talking about! (Though, I'm not sure "tweaking" is the most compelling interaction one can have on a phone.) It's very exciting to see high-profile, big-money interest in gaming across platforms. Of course, Microsoft is the only company that can pull this off without extensive collaboration (full disclosure: I interned at Microsoft in '03). They will still have to cooperate with carriers though (the new "last mile?").
I picked that quote from the BBC article because it summarized the goal of cross gaming nicely. The news originally broke back at E3 when Microsoft announced Live Anywhere. This initiative seems to focus primarily on connecting the XBox and Windows Vista, with mobile currently less emphasized. For a great write-up of the E3 presentation along with screenshots of the mobile user interface, check out this summary by Paul Miller over at engadget.
