Win Phone 7 Games Include Achievements, Avatars, Gamertags [Gdc]

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets...40x_unlock.jpg Windows Phone 7 games will include the ability to unlock achievements on a phone as well as pulling in a user's gamertag, 2D avatar and even let gamer's know when it's their turn to play.
This will all come thanks to an update to XNA Game Studio 4.0 being unveiled at the Game Developers Conference today, Microsoft's Michael Klucher writes on his blog.
The lead program manager at microsoft, Klucher said he will be in San Francisco this week to talk about the things that the latest build of XNA can do for developers and their games.
And that includes quite a bit of cross-Xbox 360 support.
"The other key component of XNA Game Studio 4.0 that we've enabled exclusively for Xbox partners is Xbox LIVE and a premium gaming experience on Windows Phone 7 Series,' he writes. "Through the Gamer Services API's you can pull in a user's Gamertag and 2D Avatar as part of the game experience, unlock achievements on the platform, and leverage notifications for asynchronous turn based gaming."
That's the good news. The bad news?
It sounds like Microsoft still doesn't have a whole lot of interest in pushing the Zune as a gaming platform. In the same blog post, Klucher urges developers to "migrate" their Zune games over the to Windows Phone 7 Series platform. He doesn't, urge anyone to continue making games for the Zune, though.
Check back later today to read about our meeting with the Windows Phone 7 Series folks and what else we learned about the new mobile gaming platform.
Achievement Unlocked: XNA Game Studio 4.0 for Windows Phone [Klucher.com]


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