Displaying items by tag: Xbox

Looks like Microsoft is seriously trying to boost sales of their peripherals, they have announced their Essentials Pack (wireless gamepad, HDMI cable, remote control and 3 months of Xbox Live Gold) for $79.99. In addition they will also cut down the price on Kinect. This device that allows you to make your body a controller has become very popular in a last few years since Nintendo launched Wii, and this price drop is sure to attract more new customers to this type of gaming.

A while ago we posted an article describing the alleged Xbox 720 “Durango” developer’s console, and the efforts being made by a certain person to sell the console on the Assemblers Game Forum. Last night someone did in fact sell the console to a very fortunate soul on EBay for a final price of $20,100 USD. The question is; how likely is it that this is the actual console and not some opportunistic scam?

Microsoft is no stranger to controversy and throughout its history has made some pretty bad decisions that still come back to haunt them. Now, it seems that Microsoft might be getting ready to make an error that will trump all of the others in its past. We are talking about Windows 8 and the say that Microsoft appears to be closing in its ecosystem and also the platform as a whole. This move to a closed system has not only raised concerns with end users, but also with developers who see the move as a serious issue.

With all of the focus on the Samsung V Apple case recently there have been some interesting happenings in the Microsoft house that many of you might find interesting. It seems that Microsoft has made a few interesting moves lately; at least one that they obviously regret and a couple that they hope will help their position with their partners and their upcoming release of Windows 8. As most of you already know Windows 8 is set for release in October of this year and should hit the market with a healthy selection of products which are designed just for the new cloud based and touch centric OS.

Information about the next-gen xbox console has been leaked, giving a pretty good representation of what we can expect from Microsoft for their next system. Somebody using the alias DaE tried to sell the console, code named “Durango”, for a large price of $10,000 on the Assemblers Game Forum last weekend, but their posting was quickly deleted and their rights to post on the forum were revoked.

Microsoft’s Xbox Live network is down and many are not happy about this as the service has been down since around 11:00 am today (July 6th 2012). This issue appears to be affecting users of the Xbox Gaming Consoles, Zune players and also the websites for Both Xbox Live and Zune. We have a feeling that the issue is probably due to upgrades or updates that are in progress as Microsoft nears the launch of their new Windows 8 OS with its integrated features.

****** Updated both the Xbox Live and Zune Services are back online ******

We all know that Microsoft is pushing a combined ecosystem with their move into Windows 8. This is something that has both good and bad parts to it (we have covered the bad at length so we will not go into too much detail here). On the good side there is the interoperability that may want from their collection of devices. People really do want the same experience on their mobile products (tablets, phones etc.) as they have on their desktop. Both Apple and Microsoft have been working towards this, but as of right now it looks like Microsoft will get there first with an operating system that has a similar look and feel across multiple platforms.

Ok, it seems that no matter what we do, we keep getting pulled back to this topic. We have to say this in plain and simple terms. Microsoft did not develop surface due to lack of confidence in their partners. This is a ridiculous notion to present and it is one that keeps popping up in the news. I am not even sure how this rumor got started as to say that Microsoft wanted to show their partners how to build a tablet is sort of comical considering their past hardware efforts. It will end up hurting Windows 8 sales as well as Microsoft parnter sales.

In our continuing coverage of Microsoft and their push to the cloud with their next generation of Windows we are hearing something that we expected people (consumers, analysts and journalists) to pick up on long ago. Microsoft has had a tradition of thinking “if we build it they will come”. This is mostly due to their heavy footprint in the marketplace. Let’s face it; Windows is the most widely used operating system in the world by a longshot while the Xbox is the most popular (in terms of sales) gaming console. The problem for Microsoft is that many consumers have bought into the push that hardware manufacturers (and yes software developers) have been touting “good enough” and the popular myth of “you can always upgrade”.

Ok so here we are with part two of the Windows Phone 8 information. Microsoft has released the list of phone makers that will be supporting Windows Phone 8 at launch (still listed as “this fall”). The list was surprisingly short with only Nokia, Samsung, Huawei and HTC on the list. HTC is interesting as they were not allowed to make a Windows RT tablet which is what Windows Phone 8 gets the majority of its structure from. In addition to the listing of phone makers, Microsoft also announced that the SoC supplier would be Qualcomm which suggests that we are looking at a controlled BOM for the first round of phones.