News

There is good news for consumers, but some pretty bad news for content owners as the High Court in the European Union has declared that it is legal for someone to sell their software licenses to another person. The caveat is that they (the original purchaser) must uninstall or otherwise deactivate their copy first. This is sure to annoy many software companies that felt the resale of these items was a violation of their copyright (as it cut them out of the resale).

Although we have made multiple references to the fact that Microsoft’s marketing team is possibly the worst in the world (ok maybe not the worst, but really close to it) we did not expect to hear about Microsoft actually managing to kill of an entire online marketing company because they did not know what they are doing. Unfortunately that is exactly what has happened and it is going to cost Microsoft something on the order of $6.3 Billion.

Microsoft is working the Windows 8 angle in a very surprising way. Instead of their usual “if you just bought Windows” upgrade specials they are actually offering a promotion where anyone with a valid “consumer” license of Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 can get an upgrade for only $39.99. Yep, you heard right; Microsoft is practically giving away Windows 8 if you want to upgrade.

It looks like Sony is gearing up to fight Microsoft head to head in the cloud gaming business. We have heard today that hot on the heels of Google’s I/O Developer conference Gaikai, Inc. is being bought out by Sony. For those of you that either missed Google I/O or have no idea who Gaikai is we can fill you in on a few details. Gaikai is a leading company in cloud based gaming. Cloud gaming is becoming a big push with many game publishing companies as they feel that it helps to cut down on piracy as well as capitalize on the revenue stream of monthly payments like Netflix, Hulu and even HBO are doing now.