WP7 Games News

OpenXLive : a unified Social Gaming solution for indie WP7 games

by Saijo George on February 15, 2011

openXLive

OpenXLive is a new service that has just been released by Fulcrum Mobile Networks, Inc and according to them its the first 3rd party gaming social network platform on Windows Phone 7. Well other than XBox live which is a invite only club for premium titles OpenXLive promises to offer a unified Social Gaming for indie WP7 games and that sounds like a great plan to us. We all have heard about OpenFeint and Plus+ on iOS and now there is OpenXLive for WP7 Gamers. OpenXLive offers gaming and SNS services for Windows Phone 7 XNA games ( no word on silverlight support at this stage ). OpenXLive allows developers to add gaming and social network features, such as leaderboard and achievement, into their games with minimal additional programming. The best part is you can get a username on OpenXLive and all your high score will be tied to that username across all games that support OpenXLive… sounds good to me.

OpenXLive Features

According to the developer : Open XLive offers Windows Phone 7 game player community, which is similar to Xbox Live, but provides better supports on both website and in game SNS experience. Developers will find it much easier adding SNS ( Social Network Service ) features into their games; they don’t have to develop SNS user interfaces, but rather, these are part of Open XLive.

I am no developer but would love to hear what Windows Phone 7 game developers think about this new service, would you consider adding this to your game ? There is no pricing info mentioned on the site but the devs have informed us this is a free service for every developers. The games section contains logo from angry Birds and Halo ( those are just test data according to the devs and will be removed soon .. :) )

More Info : openxlive.com

Demo Video : ( has some NSFW Images ) youtube

Derik Palacino

It’s a good service and I used it until XPG Live launched. They support WP7 and several other platforms in case you want to expand into iOS, Droid or BlackBerry later. Check ‘em out @ http://www.xpglive.com.
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http://twitter.com/iBenian iBe

Great idea! I’m so happy to see it already being implemented. I was thinking of creating my own live services for my own games. But for free games, that’s really not worth. So hopefully, they’ll keep the service free or it’s still not going to make sense for free game developers which are increasing..
- Openxlive
  
  Hi iBe,
  We promise to keep free forever.
  Thanks
  
  OpenXLive
Almighty Steve

iPhone has better solution like OpenFeint and frankly I dont know why people develop for Windows Mobile , the platform sucks.
- http://twitter.com/CZGames Cheese Zombie Games
  
  Thats funny, I say the same thing about Android and iPhone!
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DiNoGames

The idea is good. I have my own DB etc for my games (Beanstalk Tale, Fingerball…) but I think I would consider switching to this solution if there are other games on the list AND if it turns out to be a long range stable solution. I don’t want to make my games dependend on a solutions that might be thrown away by the developer in three months. I guess thats the most difficult part of the devs. Convince the other devs that this is a solution that will last a long time and will not vanish all of the sudden.
- Openxlive
  
  Hi DiNoGames, Thanks for your feedback. We prepare this service for individual developers and small team. They have not time to maintain a server. We provide two way :
  1, Add OpenXLive features to existing XNA games.
  http://wiki.openxlive.com/Tutorial-1-OpenXLive-Getting-Started.ashx
  2, Create a new XNA game with OpenXLive features.
  http://wiki.openxlive.com/Tutorial-2-Using-OpenXLive-Wizard.ashx
  
  We hope the two way is easy for your games. This is just a beta version. If you have any question and suggest, let me know. My email is Openxlive@gmail.com.
  
  Thanks
  
  OpenXLive Team
- Openxlive
  
  BTW, we will maintain the service long time, because we have enough confidence for WP7 and OpenXLive. We are a company for this service.
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Marios

That sounds like a good idea since we indies do not have access to Live services. I am developing a similar system for my games, called VortexLink the first version of which is already in MonsterUp 1.4 supporting leaderboards. If openxlive is free it might catch on with developers who want to offer these services to their users. I have a small doubt about the name though, since Live might be a trademark of Microsoft’s.
- http://www.bestwp7games.com/ Saijo George
  
  VortexLink is that a private solution for your games or do you plan to go public with it ?
- Openxlive
  
  Hi Marios,
  Thanks for your feedback, we hope for you share MonsterUp with us. we will double check about Live trademark.
  Thanks
  
  OpenXLive Team
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Ronny-Gydar/692510358 Ronny Gydar
    
    Is there technically any reason for not being able to communicate with this service from an WP7 Silverlight application?
    
    Can I not just include your libraries, and what ever XNA-libraries it requires, in an existing Silverlight game?
    
    I ask since I have a WP7 game written in Silverlight with online features (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvmsa2fV4gg), that I would not mind also linking into this service so that gamers can also benefit from the achievements so forth. My Silverlight game use for examle XNA-libraries for among other sound effects.
    
    If Silverlight is not possible (I do not know what XNA-libraries is required of course), is that planned?
    
    /RONNY GYDAR
    - Openxlive
      
      Hi Ronny,
      Thanks for your suggest, because XNA UI is more difficulty than silverlight, so we build XNA UI first. We will create Silverlight UI next step. In fact, OpenXLive have two assembly: OpenXLive.dll and OpenXLive.Form.dll. OpenXLive.dll have not include any XNA features. We will publish the doc ASAP. If you are interested in , you can make Silverlight UI by yourself.
      Thanks
      
      OpenXLive
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Ronny-Gydar/692510358 Ronny Gydar
        
        Thanks for response!
        
        Did not even think about that there was any UI involved…just assumed that that part I had to do myself, as I do today…which I prob still can from what you say. But then I understand more the XNA-requirement
        
        I will look into this at one of my future releases.
      - Openxlive
        
        Hi Ronny,
        I have write a sample code of Silverlight for OpenXLive. Just complete leaderboard feature. We promise provide Silverlight UI for all features as sample code. Please look for download link for below link:
        http://forums.openxlive.com/Board/ViewThread?ThreadID=20
        Thanks for your suggest
        
        OpenXLive

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