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Microsoft announces Windows Phone 7 Series dev partners and details apps: Sling, Pandora, Foursquare and Xbox gaming (video!)

Author: admin
Filed under: Mobile Phones, Software
Date: Mar 15,2010

Microsoft just dropped its first press release of MIX 10 on us, and in addition to detailing the Sliverlight and XNA-based Windows Phone 7 Series development situation, we’ve also got a list of launch software partners and some screenshots of apps in action.

There’s some heavy hitters here, and everything from games to enterprise apps are represented — notables include the Associated Press, Citrix, EA Mobile, Foursquare, Namco, Pangeonce, Pandora, Seesmic, Shazam, and Sling. We’re slated to see some demos of these in action, we’ll let you know how things look. Full list after the break.

It’s clear that the AP app developers are hewing very closely to the UI paradigms of WP7S with a multi-panel system that lets you jump through various news stories and topics. Joe Belfiore touted the ability to view photos and video (utilizing some pretty slick animations) and also showed off breaking news alerts which allow you to jump to news stories as they break. We also saw a sneak preview of the monetization scheme for the AP, an animated, fly-over Ford ad that was actually a little troubling — think annoying Flash ads… but in your apps and on your handset.

We also saw a prototype Netflix app, which was a bit of an unexpected surprise, and now we’re checking out Foursquare.

All of these apps feature the “app bar” at the bottom of the screen, which places options in the same place in every app. Foursquare is pretty much Foursquare, only integrated with Bing maps. Next up was Shazam, which works.. exactly like Shazam, only with the slick WP7S Metro UI.

Joe also demoed the Hush Hush application, which is a digital diary that incorporates links, photos, and video along with text entries.

The look and feel of the app is decidedly different than what we’ve seen in Windows Phone 7, taking a more real-world approach to the fit and finish, replete with page turn animations, serifed fonts, and soft, creamy looking simulated paper.

Now we’re seeing the MLS app, which is going to be the main demo for push notifications. MLS will have live stats, real time scores, and live clips of games in progress.

You can set up notifications within app for things like your favorite team scoring a goal or winning a match, and the notification pops down from the top of the screen.

You can then click on the notification and it’ll switch you back to the MLS app. Yeah, it’s a lot like the iPhone’s model with app-to-app switching — we’ll have to see how this works with multiple apps open.

Next up is an app called Marionette, which lets you skin an avatar and dress it — ha, they’re using Steve Ballmer! You can also put in audio clips and animate the mouth, Terence and Philip-style — they sped up Ballmer saying “developers.” Pretty funny stuff.

Now we’re seeing Seesmic, which is the same Silverlight code that runs on Windows and the Mac. Again, it’s very similar to what you’d expect, just wrapped up in the WP7S UI.

We saw a function of what the platform can do with extensible applications that plug into the native components of the device. In this case, a photo editing extension that interfaces with the photo viewer on the device, allowing you to edit and tweak images within the gallery.

Think plugins for Firefox and you’ll be close to what these elements can do — actually a thrilling concept considering how closed off most native smartphone applications feel comparatively.

After a quick demo of a custom app that fired a t-shirt cannon, Major Nelson has taken the stage to demo some games. He played with Goo Splat for a second — it was ported over from the Zune HD — before opening Battle Punks to show XBL integration.

(He called it a “virtual button masher” — ha!) Now he’s doing the demo we saw last week of the same game running on a PC, the 360, and then the phone.

Finally, Joe showed off The Harvest, a 3D Xbox title for Windows Phone 7 Series devices. We saw some of this game at GDC, but we got a much better look here at MIX.

The game looks incredibly slick with a Diablo-esque feel, and not only does it feature full 3D, destructible environments, but it ties perfectly into Xbox Live including achievements and full gamerscore and leaderboard integration.

We were a little blown away by how much it looks and feels like an Xbox title. This could certainly be a game changer as far as the smartphone race is concerned — bringing a comparable, connected Xbox experience to a mobile device will be incredibly enticing to end users, especially those already plugged into the company’s gaming ecosystem.