Until Sauron devises the One Service to connect all mobile games, we've had to make do with a patchwork quilt of systems to serve up achievements, leaderboards, friend notifications and the like. There's GameCenter for iOS, Google Play Games for Android, and products like OpenKit attempting to cover all the bases.But a familiar face with plenty of resources at its disposal might be entering the fray. Sources have told The Verge that Microsoft is looking to expand Xbox Live to offer mobile games some of the same features the service has provided to console games, even going so far as to create job posts looking for developers to aid in the initiative.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could earn Xbox Live achievement points in an iOS game? Well, Merry Christmas. Wordament, a Windows Phone game that recently made the jump to iOS, is letting players earn Xbox-style achievements as they play. What's next? Dogs and cats living together?
In the world of video games, free-to-play has fast emerged as a juggernaut. The majority of the top twenty grossing iOS titles, for example, don't have any price of admission to start. Over 70% of revenue in mobile comes from in-app payments within zero dollar games. It's quickly becoming the train you either get on, or from which you get out of the way. Microsoft, it seems, is hopping aboard.
E3 week kicked off earlier today with the annual Microsoft press conference, though if we're being frank, it didn't really set a great tone for the next year in video games. Maybe I'm just getting old, but everything they showed felt like more of the same. More Halo, more Gears of War, more Fable - more… well, everything.
Given their recent display of copious spending, it's no surprise that social games empire Zynga will stop at nothing in order to increase their company's already enormous reach. Given their history of spending sprees and expansion over the past few years, it's almost surprising that it's taken them until now to begin to hint at expanding to the home console market.
Microsoft has made no secret of how it wants to tie its Metro interface across as many devices as possible. At the moment, these devices include the Xbox 360 and Windows Phones, but rumor has it that Microsoft is getting ready to launch Xbox Live titles on iOS and Android smartphones.