Originally Posted by
jdevenberg You are correct about live tiles, but I do not think they replace a notification center, they should supplement one. For example, I don't want to have to pin every turn based game I download to my start screen, but if I don't and I don't see my notification (like if the phone is in my pocket or I am at work), then I have to go and open every single game to see if it is my turn or not. If Windows Phone had a notification center, all these notifications would show up there. For example, I play Words With Friends, Words By Post, and Draw Something. Your Xbox Tile doesn't show notifications and I don't like pinning games to the Start screen, so I have to periodically open each of these three apps to see if I have a turn waiting or not.
People with multiple email accounts may also like a notification center. For example, I have an old Gmail address i don't use anymore. I don't like unified inboxes, so I don't use that. I almost never get emails at the Gmail account so I don't want to have a tile pinned for it, but my grandparents and a few other older relatives who aren't very computer savvy (so I don't want to burden them with having to edit contacts) still email me on it periodically. It would be great if there were a notification center to show me I had emails in that account instead of me having to remember to check it since I use it so rarely that an email can easily sit there for a week or more without me remembering to check it.
I won't disagree but I think differently. For your examples I guess the notification center would solve problems that could be better handled elsewhere. If you have a mailbox which you're not using anymore, it would be better having its emails forwarded to your new email address, right? The notification center is not solving the problem, just making it less annoying to you. Forwarding is damn easy with all major email services.
The games, I'm not playing any but as you said the Xbox doesn't show notification counts and it should. The possibility is already there, it's up to Microsoft (or the game developers, not sure in this case) to properly implement it. And on the back of the tile it could display your current game turns.
There's a valid point for apps that are not pinned to the start screen. I'm particularly not thrilled about it because I'm using all the apps I have installed almost on a daily basis. So if it's not on the start, it's not very important, and if it's not important I don't mind being notified about something a few hours or even days after it has happened. The less information being thrown at me, the better - but that's just me.
I'm not against a notification center, my point was that in the vast majority of cases the Live Tiles do the same job. I think if one is deeply missing it, it's just because he's used to having one on iOS or Android.
