Windows Phones will become powerful remote controls for Xboxes thanks to the Xbox Companion app, which Microsoft demoed for the first time at Nokia World today.
Microsoft announced Xbox Companion earlier this month, but hadn't shown it off live before. The free app will come this winter with an upgrade to the Xbox software, said Microsoft's Windows Phone program manager, Joe Belfiore.
"It can detect that I'm the same user [on the phone and Xbox] and, if I'm on home Wi-Fi, it can put a movie on," he narrated.
In his demo, Belfiore called up the app, which offered various games and Zune to "quickplay." He didn't show any games where the phone was more than a basic controller for the Xbox, but at one point the phone's screen sprouted directional buttons and four action buttons.
Swiping to the right opened Bing, where Belfiore searched on the phone for content to play on the console. Belfiore found the movie Fast Five, which offered a synopsis, reviews, and three different ways to play it on the Xbox: through Zune, through Vudu, or through AT&T U-verse.
Click on the movie, and it loads through the Xbox onto your TV. Then the phone becomes a companion to the Xbox experience. The phone can show cast and crew information or related films available for download, and (probably more usefully) it provides pause, fast-forward, and rewind buttons for the film.
Separately, Microsoft posted a
video of a Windows Phone-enabled version of the Xbox game Kinectimals, which lets you play the game and transfer animals back and forth between the phone and the Xbox. The transfer is a little awkward, though: the phone displays a 2D barcode that the Kinect reads to download the data. "These screens are coming together," Belfiore said.
