Xbox Live Version of Wordament Available April 25 For Free

If you haven’t played Wordament for Windows Phone yet then you’re really missing something (unless you’ve been playing it on Windows 8 in which case it’s ok). Anyway, on their blog they’ve just announced that the real time word search game is going to become an Xbox Live title as of April 25. If you notice it’s already categorized in the Xbox Live category in marketplace but the update isn’t live yet. They haven’t gone through the official new feature list but one great update is the move to Xbox Live Gamertags. The current system relies on names that you create when you sign on. This new system is a lot better because Gamertags are more wide spread and consistent. They are also going to release separate language editions so that people in different languages can play against others in their native language. And all of this is free. I guess when you release a game that’s built by MS employees and hosted on MS’s Azure that sort of comes with the territory. My instinct is that it continues to serve ads (like Shuffle Party) because to run a game that relies on real time game play requires a constant source of funds and not one time costs. Anyway, here’s their blog release in full:

We are really proud to announce the launch date for the next release of Wordament! Although the Wordament service updates daily, the app on Windows Phone hasn’t changed since September 2011. That’s a long time! And we’ve been busy. This is going to be a big update. So big, in fact, that we are planning to spend the next 10 days telling you about the new features, with one new post each day. Today we are announcing two important events:

• April 25^th, 2012 – Wordament on Xbox LIVE will be available world-wide in the Windows Phone Marketplace for free. That’s just over a week away!
• April 26^th, 2012 – We will be hosting an evening Wordament Tournament and open house at the Microsoft Store at the Bellevue Square Mall in Bellevue, WA.

Wordament on Xbox LIVE

We are very happy with all the work that has gone into this new update for Wordament. This free release updates and replaces the current version that you have and adds a number of fun and top player-requested features. The most notable change is that we are retiring our screen name system and moving exclusively to Xbox LIVE Gamertags. Screen names have served us well to this point, but we have out grown them in many ways. Xbox LIVE has a great identity system in place and we think that Wordament works great with it. So starting April 25^th, when you sign into Wordament, it will use your Xbox LIVE Gamertag only. That means you need to go and secure a free, Xbox LIVE account for your phone, if you haven’t done so already.

Also, at launch we will be rolling out a really exciting new feature: Language Editions. Each Edition will feature puzzles in a specific language. On the 25^th, we will be releasing the new English Edition and we will be opening up the Spanish Edition BETA. Each Edition has its own set of stats and leaderboards where you can compete to be a champ in all of the typical categories: including Best of and Top Players. Over the next couple months we will be rolling out additional Editions for Dutch, Swedish, French, German, and Italian. We are marking these new Editions as BETA until we feel that we have reached the quality, playability, and fun that we’ve achieved in the English Edition’s puzzles that we all play today. So please send us your feedback when you play in the new BETA Editions.

There is a lot more to talk about when it comes to Wordament on Xbox LIVE and we will be writing posts about all of the new features over the coming days leading up to launch.

Party time!

You’ve asked for another Wordament Tournament, and what better way to celebrate than with our new, free update! On April 26^th the whole Wordament crew will be at the Microsoft Store at the Bellevue Square Mall running a Wordament Tournament complete with food, giveaways, and prizes. We will announce all the details in a few days. We would love to see you there!

Lastly, thank you for playing Wordament! Without the support and enthusiasm we receive from the community we would never have been able to build this new Xbox LIVE release. We hope you enjoy playing it as much as we enjoy making it.