No real-time Multiplayer games on Windows Phone 7 .. well not during launch at least

joystiq recently interviewed Xbox Live GM Ron Pessner and XNA Game Studio manager Michael Klucher about how games integrate into the mobile platform and what gamers and developers can expect in the future. And when asked about realtime multiplayer games on Windows Phone 7 they gave the following answer

Q : We’ve seen asynchronous multiplayer on the device. Are there any plans to support traditional real-time multiplayer?
A : No, it’s asynchronous, meaning it’s turn by turn. Given the phone is a device that goes in and out of connectivity and has different states. We thought asynchronous multiplayer was the right place to start for the phone platform. We think that’s a very good multiplayer experience and also one that will appeal to a broad set of game types and game players. I think it’s fair to say you could expect to see us consider other multiplayer type scenarios in our road map, but we’re focused on asynchronous multiplayer for the launch of Windows Phone 7 Series.

It is disappointing to learn that Real time Multiplayer wont be present in Windows Phone 7 for launch but I am fairly certain that they will include it in the future. So my hopes for a game like this Eliminate Pro on WP7 has to be put on hold for now.

On a positive note , MS is taking the issue of fragmentation very seriously .. In a perfect world this is what they want to achieve.. We certainly want to see an ecosystem where someone can say “hey, that’s a really cool game, I’d really like to get that,” and no matter what type of Windows Phone 7 Series device I have, I can have that same experience. That’s a very core value.

They also discussed about save states between the platforms, which is not a planned feature.

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Tagged as: multi-player game, windows mobile games, windows phone 7