Live Anywhere

Live Anywhere is an initiative launched by Microsoft for networking Windows, Xbox 360 and the Microsoft Zune MP3 player.

History

Live Anywhere was unveiled at the E3 trade show in November 1999 as a future part of the Windows Vista operating system from Bill Gates.

In May 2006, it was presented at E3 as a link between Xbox 360, mobile phone and PC.

The Live Anywhere technology was introduced with the release of Windows Vista on 30 January 2007 and supported by Shadowrun for the first time.

Success & Failure

Meanwhile, the initiative can be viewed as a failure, because the advertised features of Microsoft as a cross-platform multiplayer in Halo 2 were not implemented, only a handful of games support Live Anywhere, and Microsoft itself no longer uses the term.

Overall, only the following Xbox 360 titles offer a cross-platform multiplayer:

- Shadowrun (2007)

- BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger (2010)

In addition, to enable playing together with owners of the PC version of the upcoming Xbox version of the Independent game Minecraft, with this feature, however, was no longer advertised here with the concept of Live Anywhere.

Although advertised as the main feature cross-platform multiplayer was hardly used, the actual idea behind Live Anywhere, namely the networking of PC and Xbox 360, but has largely been implemented. So there with Games for Windows Live is a Windows counterpart to Xbox Live, with both platforms share the account, ie an Xbox Live account is also a Games for Windows Live account. In addition there are cross-platform friends lists, chat, and achievements. In addition, both platforms use Microsoft Points to pay for game content.