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    Xbox Live coming to Windows 8

    Xbox Live coming to Windows 8

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    There's not a lot of detail yet, but Microsoft's Major Nelson -- the longtime face of Xbox Live -- has confirmed in a blog post this afternoon that Windows 8 will be getting Xbox Live functionality. After the Metro UI, this would be the second major feature of Windows Phone to make the transition to Windows proper. Major Nelson mentions that it'll be "easy for developers to create games for Windows 8 that take advantage of the power of Xbox Live," so the impression we're getting is that there aren't any crazy plans to offer Xbox or Windows Phone game compatibility here -- it's just a slick interface into your avatar and profile along with some hooks for game devs to plug into the Xbox Live ecosystem. Intriguingly, there's passing mention of "roaming storage," which suggests that Microsoft may be rolling out cloud-based storage for saved games and the like to Windows 8, not just the Xbox console.

    Separately, we spoke to Steven Sinofsky today -- fresh off his BUILD keynote -- who mentioned that there's no cohesive story around Kinect in Windows 8 yet, though that'd clearly be something we'd want to see happen... especially seeing how there's a Kinect SDK for Windows out there. There's a BUILD session on Thursday morning covering development of Xbox Live-compatible games in Windows 8, so we're hanging tight for more details.

    Source: Major Nelson and Channel9, via Engadget