40 Days #6: Release the Windows Mobile Xbox Live client already!

Of the big three hardware makers, Microsoft is the only one getting spanked in the mobile integration area. Sony has the PSP acting as a remote window into a PS3 partner. Nintendo offers some games that include gameplay integration between the Wii and a DS. Microsoft...has no mobile gaming device, so I guess I shouldn't really complain about a lack of integration, right? Wrong!

Look, I understand that the Zune itself will probably never be a gaming device. That it would be very difficult to come out and try to compete with Sony and especially Nintendo in the handheld gaming market. All that is fine and good.

However, almost two years ago Microsoft announced its Live Anywhere vision - a vision that so far hasn't extended past the PC and the Games for Windows Live initiative. At the same time, about a year and a half ago, Microsoft demonstrated a Windows Mobile client. It seemed to work pretty well. Didn't Microsoft promise? Come on, there are pictures of the thing!

The one part of the functionality that has been demonstrated, which can be safely cut for now is the actual gaming on this mobile client. I don't think that's necessary right now, and Microsoft doesn't need an N-Gage. What we do need is a reliable Windows Mobile (and eventually probably S60, to snag the Nokia folks) client that can accomplish the following:

• Sign in to the service and support presence, including a new location - the mobile device.
• Work with gamer profile, edit picture, motto, zone, bio. Personal picture can be snapped using the phone's camera.
• Manage friends list, including browsing, adding, and deleting. Adding friends by beaming a gamer card over infrared or Bluetooth (as mentioned in the many previews) seems ambitious, but would be neat.
• View achievements and gamerscore.
• Compare games and achievements with those of other gamers.
• Work with the inbox, including viewing and sending messages. Voice messages should be possible in both directions, since the current Windows Live Messenger mobile client can send audio clips, for example. If video messages were viewable, that would be gravy.

The one other feature seen in the previews - the ability to remotely queue up downloads on the 360 - would be fantastic and would put Microsoft on par with Sony's PSP/PS3 integration, but it would also require some substantial dashboard/infrastructure changes, which I will look at a little later in this series. But let's remain optimistic, and chalk this up for the 2.0 release. Finally, the client would need to be lean, run in the background, and handle data connection problems by gracefully retrying and reconnecting to the service.

What surprises me is that this client is taking so long to materialize. After all, Microsoft is obviously capable of putting out some pretty decent mobile clients for its services: the Windows Mobile Live Search client is very useful and works well, and the just released MSN Direct client seems promising. So they obviously know how to put these things together, which makes it pretty reasonable to believe this stuff was really working almost two years ago. So why not release a simple version with just some of the features, label it perpetually in beta, and slowly build up?

I wonder if part of the hold up is that the Xbox Live team hasn't quite figured out how to handle concurrent gamer profile activity on both the 360 and a mobile device, since simultaneous sign-ons in those two locations would be necessary for some of the more advanced features to work. Of course, you can currently sign into Xbox.com and your console at the same time, but that's a little different. Maybe they need to talk to the Windows Live Messenger team, who might know something about concurrent logons.