LONDON, United Kingdom – Nokia Lumia phones come with some amazing features and functions. One of these features is the ability to interact with your Xbox 360 right from your Nokia Lumia smartphone using the Xbox Companion app. We spent some time with Krissy from Microsoft as she showed us how these interactions take place.
The Xbox 360 demo desk was set up with a large flat-screen, an Xbox and an Xbox 360 Kinect that sits atop the TV. Loaded up and ready-to-go was the Kinectimals game. A popular game where you can play with fluffy virtual animals, teaching them tricks with gestures. It’s a great family game.
Using the Nokia Lumia 710 (the same process applies on the Lumia 800), Krissy showed us how to create and personalize a virtual animal. After selecting the cheetah from one of the many, we then purchased some items from the games store within the game. After adding a leather collar and a trinket, our personalizing kitty was ready to play with.
You can play with your animal directly from within the Nokia Lumia phone itself, however, what’s great is that you can transfer that animal right onto your TV screen through your Xbox 360. There’s an option within the game that when selected displays a QR code. Pop this code in-front of the Xbox 360 Kinect and it will register your animal, transferring it to your Xbox 360 in an instant. From here, you can play with your animal as you would normally, in full-screen glory.
Now, if it’s more than gaming you want from your Xbox 360 and Nokia Lumia phone, you’ll now be able to watch films and listen to music, all controlled by your smartphone. Coming in the next couple of months, Xbox users will be able to download the system software that updates the dashboard look and feel, as well as giving you a whole heap of new features.
Upon activating the app in the Nokia Lumia phone, you can use Bing to search for any content. It’s simplicity to use means you can find any content by just typing in one single search term. For instance, you may want to search for “Fast”, this will search for music, games or movies associated with that word. Likely results will look something like this: “The Fast and Furious”, “Life in the Fast Lane”… etc.
There were limits to what they could show me on the demo stand, however we got the impression there was lots more to show, we look forward to finding out more.
Are you a gamer, a movie lover or just keen to try Xbox 360 on Nokia Lumia for yourself? Let us know, in the comments below.
image credit: Major Nelson
