Microsoft Releases Official Xbox App for iOS
There’s now an official Xbox Live app for iOS users out there.
Take your Xbox LIVE experience wherever you go with the My Xbox LIVE app. Track and compare your achievements, connect with your Xbox LIVE friends, and change up your 3D Avatar. Review all your recent great games you and your friends love to play and compare achievements with them. Jump into our games hub to learn about the latest LIVE games and apps. Access Xbox Spotlight feeds, get breaking news from Xbox LIVE, game tips and tricks, gamer spotlight and much more.
It’s a good start and it’s behind the Windows Phone experience, which is proper. If you want the real deal join the ecosystem but it’s a good first step. They now have an Xbox Live HUB of their own.
Microsoft has finally realized that they need to use the good will they get from one line to entice people to like them as a whole and look at the Metro goodness in the app. I approve.
You can download it here.
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I agree, but still a bit frustrated that I can’t use this as a selling point on WP7 to people anymore
I agree, but still a bit frustrated that I can’t use this as a selling point on WP7 to people anymore
Well its able to set beacons while WP7 cant so cant see this as enticing anyone. Just another reason not to buy a WP7 device.
So true, but just like the WP demo weblink, some users may just wander across the road to see what else they may be missing out on. Actually I think it’s a great strategy. If you can’t beat em’, embrace them.
I agree with you. This is good strategy by Microsoft. Since XBox Live gets updated frequently, the sweetness of Metro UI will be used tempt the Windows 3.1 UI clone (grid of icons) users. The only thing left is update it regularly and expose more and more of Metro UI language/style on it more and more.
I think it’s a good move on MS’s part for the reason I’ll explain below (which is probably just an expansion of what Ram was saying).
One of the biggest complaints I hear from Apple fans is that they can’t ever understand how to do stuff when they use an OS created by someone other than Apple. They then point to their frustration as evidence of Apple’s superior intuitiveness when it’s likely instead that their intuitions and expectations were shaped by the Apple ecosystem. Any new interface will be frustrating until you develop a sense of how it organizes itself. Until then, your guesses about where to find a feature you want but haven’t used before will be pretty lousy, and the basic commands to navigate the system are awkward appendages instead of extensions of your will.
That’s what makes this offering by MS a good move. By familiarizing iOS users with the Metro look, feel, and mechanics, they’re reducing resistance to an unfamiliar interface, which will result in a more favorable impression of Microsoft’s OSes if an iOS user gives them a look-see. It’s a whole lot easier to generate word-of-mouth buzz for an OS if you’re starting from a point of “I love my iPhone, but the [Windows Phone] wasn’t that bad” than if you start from “The [Windows Phone] is awful! I couldn’t figure any of it out even after spending ten minutes with it in the store!” In my opinion, this aspect of MS’s iOS application offerings is even more important than showing off how slick the Metro interface is.