A couple of big announcements coming in from Gamescom 2010 in Cologne, Germany, one from In addition to unveiling the first (of many more to come, we expect) titles for Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7, Microsoft announced two new big franchises for Games for Windows…Live: Age of Empires Online and Microsoft Flight.
First off, we’ll tip our hat to Engadget and point you over there for all the latest news on Xbox Live games on Windows Phone 7, or check out Microsoft’s press release. Suffice to say there are a lot of them, with more to come, and although we’re not seeing real-time multi-player on the Windows Phone 7 (yet), the games look great. Here’s a little teaser video from Engadget:
And if that weren’t enough, tonight (pacific time, Tuesday morning in Cologne, if we’re reading our clocks correctly), Microsoft also announced three new franchises for Games for Windows Live, Age of Empires Online, Microsoft Flight, and Fable.
(here’s the “sign up for the beta” link).
Unfortunately the Microsoft Flight link doesn’t appear to be live at the moment, we’re very excited to see how Microsoft has evolved its Flight Simulator franchise after cutting the developer team for it last year in a “cost cutting move”.
All in all a big day for Microsoft and online gaming, both mobile and PC based. This is one area where Microsoft should have a decided advantage over both Google and Apple, who are both scrambling to build out gaming strategies of their own.