Windows Phone helping to grow console Xbox Live, not the other way around
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At the recent Game Developer Conference Microsoft’s Rob Copeland, Group Program Manager, Windows Graphics, revealed that 80% of Xbox Live users on Windows Phone do not have Xbox Live accounts on the Xbox Console.
Xbox Live was expected to be a major draw for console gamers to Windows Phone 7, but it appears from that statistic that that strategy has failed, and most users are choosing Windows Phones for other reasons.
That does not however mean that Windows Phone 7 users do not wish to game. According to Copeland 70% of Windows Phone users have downloaded an Xbox Live game, and the top 20 apps by revenue are all Xbox Live games.
Part of the reason Windows Phone 7 may not have attracted console gamers has been the lack of any real integration between the two except for gamer score and social features. This is however slowly changing, with the recently Xbox Companion app and cross-platform games such as the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog game, which will allow gamers to have their position on the phone and continue playing on the console being high profile examples.
The hallmark however of Xbox console gaming has however always been real-time multi-player gaming, an area where Microsoft has so far completely failed to capitalize on with Windows Phone .
