On the phone

Unlike Nintendo and Sony consoles, sadly you've never been able to take your Xbox games on the go with you, something even Dreamcast offered over 10 years ago. Now with Windows Phone 7 devices and Xbox 360 you're able to access select content wherever you are, something we recently got chance to try out with Kinectimals and Windows Phone 7 at a recent Xbox UK preview event.

We were shown the new HTC Titan phone running Kinectimals, with a familiar line-up of content: raise a cat and teach it tricks, with support for augmented reality features using the phone's camera too. It was certainly pretty, and the touch controls worked well, but playing on the road is only half the story.

From the mobile game's menu you can generate a QR code for your pet and all its information: its name, colouration and the tricks it knows. On the Xbox 360, select the Scan Stone and hold your phone's QR code close to Kinect: the sensor scans it and transports your pet onto the TV. It's quick and impressive, and transferring the opposite way works just as well. It also appears you can generate a 12-digit code for your pet, though we weren't able to see this working.

While Nintendo and Sony can offer similar experiences with their own portable consoles, neither can do so with mobile phones, and this could prove to be an ace up Microsoft's sleeve: with Windows Phone growing its market share, the possibility for cross-platform connectivity is obvious.

Of course, this is only the outer edge of possibilities when it comes to Kinect and Windows Phone 7, but there were no other examples of the two working together on show. It's another intriguing display of the sensor's growing importance to Microsoft, and we'd be extremely surprised not to see more collaborations between Windows Phone and Kinect in the future.