As was revealed by the Major earlier this week, Windows 8 touts heavy Xbox Live integration among its Metro layer's key features, but beyond the fact that it exists, little else was mentioned about the PC implementation of the console ecosystem. Thankfully, Microsoft's Build 2011 developer's conference has shed some light on the app, and it's pretty darn Xbox Live-y from what we can tell.

The app utilizes the Metro UI found on Windows Phone devices and features pretty much what you'd expect: friends lists, leaderboards, fauxhawk-sportin' avatars, etc. Music and Video tabs were spotted but not demoed, and while real-time cross-platform multiplayer is still anyone's guess, Microsoft did laud the architecture's asynchronous multiplayer "between two Windows PCs, between Windows and a phone or between Windows and the Xbox 360." Pretty slick stuff for those out there who've had to suffer the slings and arrows of Games for Windows Live.


http://www.joystiq.com/2011/09/17/xbox-live-for-windows-8-shown-at-build-2011-is-basically-xbox-l/

Posted: Sep 16, 2011 7:43 pm