Apple may have the iPhone, but the iPhone doesn’t have the Xbox. Today, Microsoft leveraged their most compelling entertainment asset, the Xbox 360, into Windows Phone 7 Series. But what does this mean, practically speaking?

(Note: If you don’t understand what the heck Windows Phone 7 is, read this first.)

Here’s the official word from Microsoft on how WP7 will incorporate Xbox Live.

“Games—This hub delivers the first and only official Xbox LIVE experience on a phone, including Xbox LIVE games, Spotlight feed and the ability to see a gamer’s avatar, Achievements and gamer profile. With more than 23 million active members around the world, Xbox LIVE unlocks a world of friends, games and entertainment on Xbox 360, and now also on Windows Phone 7 Series.”

What we saw in Microsoft’s demo today fleshes that concept out a bit. There will be a Spotlight section, with your Xbox Live avatar and notice of friends’ achievements. And of course, there will be games—”premium titles” with achievements and multiplayer connected to other cellphones, PCs and Xbox 360 consoles.

Don’t let the simple interface fool you. Xbox Live on a phone is more than having your avatar on one more screen because of the three types of games I believe we’ll see on Windows Phone 7.

The Three Games of Windows 7 Phone

The first type of game will be a lot like an iPhone title. Powerful pocket hardware will push impressive graphics (that make the PSP and DS look sad). That’s a simple idea that I know all of you can wrap your heads around.

Now, some of these games may be released cross-platform, as Microsoft teased today. They’ll be what I classify as the second type of gaming on Windows Phone 7—casual, connected titles that allow anyone with a Live account to join in (no matter if they’re on a WP7, 360 or PC). You won’t see the most beautiful XBLA titles on the phone, of course, but something like Worms? Why not? A buy it once, play it anywhere model would make this type of game incredibly enticing. UPDATE: It appears that Windows Phone 7 will run XNA framework, meaning it should be (theoretically) compatible with the Xbox 360’s XNA games.

The third type of game—the one that will appeal most to the hardcore gamers—is the Xbox 360 expanded title, something unmentioned by Microsoft but that I see coming a mile away. Imagine a minigame accompaniment to Halo that could unlock more content/resources/anything. Now imagine that such a game is driven by some of the most powerful handheld processors in the world. (You should be picturing something that looks a lot like Call of Duty’s Nazi Zombies on the iPhone.) But with the iPhone, Nazi Zombies never leaves your phone—nothing about it will affect your Call of Duty experience on your home console.

Such no longer needs to be the case when the game is connected to Live. AAA franchises can make their way to the mobile space with Microsoft in a way that they never could with Apple. Put differently, pocketable games can have console-level repercussions.

Microsoft’s Mobile Trump Card: Nobody Else Has an Xbox Live…Not Really

While the iPhone is a treasure trove of pocketable amusements, they’re pretty much self-contained entities working in a closed box. Sadly, pretty much the same thing can be said about the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP. Nintendo and Sony have both experimented with connecting their mobile and home platforms on a title-by-title basis (and no doubt, the PSP’s early promise of Remote Play still sounds like a revolutionary idea today), but neither company has been all that successful in bridging the gap to create a seamless digital experience.

Plus, let’s face it, neither Sony nor Nintendo is relevant in the smartphone business—the present and future of pocket gaming. And while the iPhone is tough competition, it’s one phone. Windows Phone 7 Series is a specification (that includes baseline hardware specs and software specs) for many phones that could potentially be on many carriers.

Imagine if Nintendo let any willing manufacturer integrate Wii/DS services. That’s essentially what Microsoft is doing here.

But when it really comes down to it, is Microsoft selling us the Xbox 360 experience on cellphones, or are they pitching putting cellphone games on the Xbox 360? And will anyone want to create original, non-ported content for the Windows 7 Phone Series when there are 75 million iPhones and iPod touches out there already?

Time will tell. Despite what promises to be the most full-featured mobile gaming platform of all time, Microsoft must woo developers to create compelling mobile content before any of this matters.

It’s astounding that until this moment, three years after the iPhone, the biggest software company in the world basically didn’t compete in mobile. Windows Phone 7 Series is more than the Microsoft smartphone we’ve been waiting for. Everything’s different now. More »

Look, it’s pretty clear that Windows Mobile 7 will be revealed by Microsoft at Mobile World Congress. We’ve been feeding on a veritable feast of WinMo7 rumors for several months now all pointing to Steve Ballmer’s keynote scheduled for 3PM Barcelona time (9AM in New York). Now Adobe has issued a statement apparently confirming what we’ve already heard: Windows Mobile 7 will not support Flash. Unfortunately, the actual quote carried by Phone Scoop doesn’t mention Windows Phone 7:

“Microsoft and Adobe are working closely together. While the newest version of Windows Phone won’t support Flash at initial availability, both companies are working to include a browser plug-in for the full Flash player in future versions of Windows Phone. More details will be shared at Microsoft MIX next month.”

Of course, the “newest version of Windows Phone” is technically 6.5.3 — a WinMo update recently announced (but hasn’t shipped) and presumably still works with Flash 10.1 beta (but isn’t guaranteed). And since we can’t find the Adobe statement on any of its usual press channels, we can’t say for sure this quote is related to Windows Mobile 7. Still, we don’t doubt the accuracy of Phone Scoop so don’t get your hopes up for Flash in the initial builds of Windows Mobile 7 Windows Phone 7 Series devices.

Update: Sorry kids, we have independent confirmation: Windows Phone 7 will not support Flash at initial launch.

Adobe confirms no Flash in Windows Mobile 7 (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The WSJ has confirmed that Mic will introduce their newest mobile phone OS on Monday at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona. WinMo 6.5 is dead; long live Windows Phone 7.

The announcement will almost certainly come during Steve Ballmer’s Windows Phone press conference, scheduled for 3pm local time. According to the WSJ, Windows Phone 7 will have an entirely new user interface that closely resembles that of Zune. This backs up what we’d heard from a tipster last month.

Apparently, Windows Phone 7 will look to fix the mistakes of WinMos past by working more closely with OEMs:

With Windows Mobile 7, similarly, Microsoft has gotten more involved in hardware design by creating detailed plans for a small number of handset “chassis” on top of which hardware manufactures can build their devices, people familiar with the effort said. The idea behind the plan, these people said, is to limit the wild variation in quality of Windows phones and to make it easier for independent application developers to write software that runs well on them.

One of those devices to run off of Windows Phone 7 is expected to be Microsoft’s Project Pink/Zune phone, although that handset’s considered unlikely to be part of next week’s announcement.

It’s still going to be some time before we see any Windows Phone 7 devices on the market, but it’s good to see Microsoft getting in gear to replace the inexcusable WinMo 6.5. [WSJ]

Another week, another treat from our mole: Windows Mobile 7, which we should see for the first time at Mobile World Congress next month, is intended for release before the holiday season of 2010—not 2011. And there’s more.

For a release to follow a debut by six months or more isn’t unprecedented for Microsoft, where long public beta testing periods have become the norm, if not the rule. And a late 2010 release is in line with older estimates, which have been recently derailed by claims that it would be pushed off until 2011. Even more interesting, though, is that the OS still seems to be in a state of flux. Here’s what we’ve heard:

• It’ll be shown at MWC, but don’t expect Microsoft to give a firm release date estimate—they’re not ready for that yet. LG slipped up and hinted at a September release for their first Windows Mobile 7 phones, but it sounds doubtful that anyone’s release dates are set in stone—and they’ll likely have to toe Microsoft’s line, since with WinMo 6.5, Microsoft’s been enforcing a hard, unified launch date for Windows Phones; something they never really did before.

• Contrary to Eldar Murtazin’s report that Windows Mobile 6.x apps won’t work on the OS, we hear that they will. Our info implies a promise of support though—not necessarily out-of-the-box, native compatibility—which could mean anything from an emulator (like webOS’s Classic app) to a set of streamlined porting tools for devs. Regardless, this isn’t really the kind of thing someone could deduce from playing with a device for a few minutes, which is what Eldar appears to have done.

• Speaking of apps, we should expect an SDK for the new OS to be available as early as June, giving devs a little lead time to have apps ready for the new OS. This implies that the platform will be markedly different than 6.x, which pretty much everyone has been assuming all along anyway.

• It doesn’t look quite like any of the renders or mockups we’ve seen floating around. There are some aesthetic similarities to some of the early renders, but they’re not pronounced enough to say that it looks like anything that’s already been “leaked.”

• The new input system, which we initially called “Natal-like,” is more of a complex gesture system than a whole new way of interacting with the phone. There is a motion sensing element, but it’s a close-quarters, proximity-sensing type thing, and only used for certain gestures: pinch zooming, rotation, twisting, etc. This was also described to us as resembling a tech demo, so it may not be a banner feature for the OS, but rather something that Microsoft is toying with behind the scenes.

• It’s being kept secret in a way that’s somewhat rare for Microsoft. It’s only being shown to people immediately concerned with the project within the company, and evidently to a small group of journalists as well. It’s Zune-HD-level secrecy, which is to say, pretty high.

That’s all we’ve got for now, and with Mobile World Congress creeping closer by the minute, it’d be safe to assume we’ll learn more before the big unveil. We’ll keep digging, but as always, if you know anything, let us know.