Displaying items by tag: Windows RT

The Windows Store has over 20,000 applications as announced by the Win App Update on their twitter feed. Of this number, according to the unofficial data, 87% are free of charge. Speaking at a London Game Conference, a Microsoft marketing manager Andrew Webber revealed another fact -  until recently the Windows Store had fewer than 1,500 games (at the time of writing the text 1,615), in the category of racing there are only 13 of them.

If Microsoft was hoping for Windows 8 to pour out of the stores like water they might be in for a big surprise. According to initial retail store estimates the sales of Windows 8, while better than Windows 7 during the same time frame, are not as good as Microsoft would have liked. Most analysts are showing stores meeting expectation in Windows 8 OS and hardware sales, but nothing extraordinary. What makes this very interesting is that many devices are out of stock including Microsoft’s ARM –Based Surface tablet. From a logistical standpoint this would not appear to make much sense unless these products were not seeded heavily.

Microsoft's console, the Xbox 360 has achieved a great milestone. They managed to sell 70 million consoles since the launch back in November 2005. This news comes from Microsoft’s fiscal first quarter (July 2012-September 2012) report and it shows Xbox post total revenue of $1.95 billion. This is just a small decrease of 1% from the last year. They managed to sell 1.7 million Xbox 360s worldwide during the last fiscal quarter, which is 29% lower than the last year, making it around 600,000 units less.

Ever since the launch of the Surface tablet Microsoft has been going back and forth about their intentions with the new device. At one point Steve Ballmer made the statement that it was just intended as a “design point” to show the potential of Windows 8. He later made sales claims about the new devices and now could be starting to tell the truth about the direction that Microsoft is taking (one that we called some time ago). Ballmer is now saying that people will come to view Microsoft as a “devices-and-services company”. As it stands right now Microsoft will probably not be making all of the devices they would like to and Ballmer knows he has to walk a fine line between pushing Microsoft hardware and keeping the OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) happy.

As many analysts are trying to make claims at the number of units the unannounced iPhone and rumored 7-inch, iPad Mini will sell we have something a little more real for the consumer. Amazon has introduced us to the next generation of Kindle Fire Tablets. It was not that long ago that Amazon made quite a splash with their Kindle Fire tablet despite many feeling it would not do that well once the “newness” wore off. Following on the heels of that success Amazon has decided to up their game a little in response to not only Apple, but also Windows RT and even other Android Tablets.

As we have been working with Windows 8 and Windows 2012 server we have become increasingly concerned about security. Although Microsoft has claimed that they have improved security through items like the locked UEFI boot process there are still glaring omissions in security that keep popping up very recently it was noted that despite the claims from Microsoft of a more secure login process the password hint is exposed in the SID database and easily recovered remotely. We also found that users’ contact lists are also left in the open (and in plain text) and available to anyone that can gain remote elevated privileges; which is what almost all Viruses and Malware try to do.

A couple of days ago we covered some interesting news about EA and what appear to be steps to set themselves up for a buyout. In the original article we talked about the fact that they are buying back their own stock from investors as well as trimming down staff which puts them at a lower financial liability. At the same time they were doing all of this EA was talking up the future of mobile gaming especially in conjunction with the Windows 8 ecosystem. This happened in conjunction with OnLive selling to an unnamed company. Now we are hearing that EA owned mobile gaming company PopCap is cutting roughly 12% of the staff in North America.

The other day Microsoft decided to make an official announcement of the OEM partners that will be supporting Windows RT for the October 26th launch party. The list is pretty much what we described before and shows Lenovo, Asus, Dell and Samsung.  Acer, HP, Toshiba, Motorola, HTC and more will be passing on this (Motorola and HTC not by choice …). Of that list HP, Acer, and Toshiba will still work to release Intel based tablets running Windows 8 by the official launch date. The list has been dwindling since Steve Ballmer first made his proclamation that there would be 20+ tablets running Windows RT for the launch.

Recently there was a report that Microsoft might sell the Surface RT for $199. This report raised even more ire from long-time partner Acer who basically begged Microsoft not to sell Surface at anywhere near that price. The question on everyone’s mind of course is, are these reports are true. We took a look at the reports and then compared it to what we know about Microsoft’s MO and found a rather interesting connection that could indicate the reports are almost correct.

Remember how we told you that Microsoft was going to pull out all of the PR and marketing tricks they can muster to try and convince people that Windows 8 is a good thing? Well now they are trying to counter the effects of the recent comments by top names in gaming; most notably Gabe Newell of Valve and John Carmack of id. If you do not remember what these two said we will boil it down here. Gabe Newell stated that Windows 8 was a “catastrophe” which John Carmack stated there was “no reason to upgrade”.