Live Anywhere - the Next Big Step

It's funny that my gaming buddy Ken and I were just talking about this topic Tuesday night while playing WoW. Since building my new XP gaming rig, I've been listening to PC Gamer magazine's exceptionally well-done podcast. This morning, they posted the first of several special installments covering E3.

The biggest news, in my mind, was Live Anywhere. Big Bill himself showed up to discuss Microsoft's gameplan for the Xbox 360 and Windows gaming. One of the announcements introduced Live Anywhere, which will be a shared incarnation of Xbox Live, tying together the Xbox, Vista PC's, and mobile phones. OK, fine, Gamertags are cool and all, but that's not the extent of it.

The big surprise is totally integrated cross-platform gaming. That's right, PC and Xbox gamers will be able to play together for the first time, sharing all the great stat data, content distribution, and communication tools that are Xbox Live. Very, very cool. I'm feeling just a little better about dropping all this money on a new PC. :) Perhaps I won't even need to buy a 360? Except it looks like Forza Motorsport and Halo 3 are 360-only. Or maybe they are 360-only for now due to the Vista delay? Hmm...