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Originally Posted by IGN.com Microsoft is treating the launch of its Windows Phone 7 operating system, backed by Xbox Live, as a portable gaming console. Though Microsoft is relying on third-party manufacturers to make the hardware, the operating system and Xbox Live enabled games are not being put on the back burner. The philosophy carries through from the top down, including an internal first-party division of Microsoft Games Studio dedicated to mobile games and a minimum hardware spec sheet for phone manufacturers that will ensure all games and applications will run the same. "We want to give our hardware partners a chance to differentiate themselves, and a lot of people like to have choice in their handset…but we want to make sure when people build apps or games for the phone that it's going to behave the same on every phone," said Brian Seitz, senior marketing manager for Windows Phone 7. "It helps having a constant hardware platform that is a minimum guaranteed hardware set when you're developing games with XNA," added Kevin Unangst, senior director of PC and mobile gaming at Microsoft. Those minimum hardware specs include a powerful processor, 256 MB of RAM, 802.11 b/g wireless, a 4 point multi-touch screen and a sensory array (A-GPS, accelerometer, compass, proximity and light). WVGA screens will be used at launch with the option of HVGA coming later. Unangst continued, "We're looking at this like: Call it like a console launch. It's really like our portable console launch in that there's a constant hardware set, we're specifically choosing the content we want, and it's about bringing all of those service features over."