Wouldn’t it be great, to call up your buds who have the 360 in the media cabinet, while you are at work on your PC for a quick match during lunch? Well, besides your boss maybe not liking it, I think I speak for most when I say it’s a golden idea. Now, we do not have specific information that deems this dream coming true just yet, however we have tons of speculation and sources are leading us to believe that this may become a reality in the near future.
It seems Microsoft has been beta testing the “Windows Metro” experience with UI changes, 10 times more often on the gaming platform then their own PC based operating systems. Where is Microsoft to go in the future? Well, if you ask me… I would tell you, the next smart move would be for them to finally integrate cross platform play. For one, this would be a first in history involving consoles and a bold move to attract plenty of hype and attention for Microsoft. Now, if you think about this, why would they do it? How would it affect the developers , of the games, and does anyone lose?
Well, in theory I am willing to bet that most of us, do not know very many who often buy a game for more than one platform. You are either a 360 Fan, PS3 Fan, PC Fan, Apple Fan and so on. As my theory develops, it seems that everyone would be set to gain, and lose nothing.
Developers would be able to appeal to more market share, as more gamers would be able to play MORE friends than ever, game sales would increase as it would be more likely that gamers would be able to then pick a game , not based on the platform, but on the game itself thus bridging the gap between choices. This would also increase the likely hood of more developer influx into the XBox Live Games market place on Windows 8 and XBox 360 at the same time. Wouldn’t it be great to develop an app, that has native support for two devices? Oh, oops it’s already been done by Apple ( who said that ? ), but… Microsoft needs this, badly.
Microsoft’s already elite online multi-player market share dominates any other, and this would then take them even further creating a very hard to catch up scenario with any competing platforms. We know that Microsoft has been thinking outside of the “Box” and has very large potential for what should and could be their next big move, while everyone is distracted about upcoming Windows 8 features and the somewhat pointless questions of “why are they going with ARM support, or why are they leaving legacy support, etc” of what they have been promoting. We will touch into Windows 8 Preview in an upcoming post to explain all of this shortly.
While I see a lot of potential with Windows 8. It leads me to believe that Microsoft has this big “plan” up their sleeves, that not many critics are focused in on. If Microsoft would just poo, or get off the pot on this topic then we may have a lot more fans excited about Windows 8 than what seems to be currently. I am not suggesting for a single moment that Windows 8, is only about gaming, but in fact a step in the right direction yet not perfect. Then again, what OS is perfect?
