Displaying items by tag: Xbox

Microsoft’s Windows Phone Developer Conference will be kicking off tomorrow (June 20-21) in San Francisco and there are those in the media that feel we might see Windows Phone 8 Officially launched. On the surface (no pun intended) this would make sense especially right after Microsoft announced their own home grown tablet yesterday. This announcement has sent something of a cold shiver through Microsoft’s partners as many feel they are no competing directly with them for sales.

After the leak (and subsequent removal) of an alleged set of documents showing Microsoft’s plans for the next generation of Xbox (the Xbox 720?) complete with a 2013 launch timeframe we have started to try and piece together what is going on and if there is any credibility to the original posting. The original presentation appears to have been prepared in 2010 (again if they are real) and outline some very interesting inclusions for the gaming console. Some of these have actually appeared recently (like Smart Glass) while others are things we already know Microsoft to be working on. We should probably start off by saying that we do think the posted documents are real, but that they represent a direction that Microsoft has probably changed since these were produced.

It seems that Microsoft might actually be listening to some of the criticism that has been flowing about their next generation operating systems. A few days ago we reported that Microsoft had made the decision to ship Visual Studio Express 2012 with support for Metro Apps only. This upset a large portion of the development community and was lambasted across the internet as a very dumb move.

As consumers are becoming less and less enchanted with their wireless carriers we are now hearing that Microsoft is trying to take a leaf from their book of tricks. With a wireless provider the way to get people in the door is to offer great phones (like the iPhone, Google Nexus, Galaxy III Etc) for amazing prices, but then to require a two year commitment for service. This is exactly what Microsoft might be doing with the next round or XboX hardware.

With all of the hubbub about Spotify and other new music services it seems that Microsoft would like to get in on some of that MP3 love. To do this they are launching a new $10 Zune Pass service. Now, this is not a price reduction, but it is a new level of service. With the $15 price tag you get unlimited downloads, complete with DRM, and 10 song credits per month. You can use these to download DRM free songs that you can use in almost any way you like.

With the new $10 plan you get the same unlimited downloads, but you lose out on the 10 song credits. We are fairly certain that this will not bring in a ton of new Zune owners, but it certainly is a step in the right direction for Microsoft at this point. This news was accompanied by a rumor that Microsoft will be adding more video services to the Xbox 360. Some of the ones that are being tossed around are Comcast, HBO Go, Crackle and many more. The thing that makes this even more interesting is that is Microsoft is working on this for the XboX 360 then it is already planning to drop these into Windows 8’s Media Center.

Now I wonder if I can get confirmation on that Microsoft Run Media Service that I was hearing about. Maybe this report is not so much Microsoft adding these services in but offering an aggregation service for these and dropping this into Windows and the Xbox… Remember, Microsoft has already said they are working toward integrating Xbox and Windows, so this idea is not that far-fetched. We will work to find out more on this.

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Not all that long ago I was in a discussion about the future of the XboX 360- console. I mentioned that Microsoft would be smart if they integrated the Console environment into Windows. Now at the time I had also heard some rumors about this happening so I was playing with something of a stacked deck. The talk had been going on for some time that Microsoft needed to combine the Xbox 360, XboX Live and Windows Live for Games into a more seamless object.

Well as one of the final items during the Build 2011 conference Microsoft showed off a very early demo of this exact thing. They demonstrated XboX Live running on Windows 8. This was demonstrated by Microsoft’s Avi Ben-Menahem who also stated that they are trying to bring “everything you know and love on Xbox 360 and Xbox Live to Windows”.  The demo was pretty slick even though it only touched the tip of what could be possible with this new OS and interface. You even have the possibility of turn-based gaming between a PC and an XboX or an XboX and a Phone…

Now we need to get confirmation on that next gen console from MS (complete with a metro based UI) and we will be all set.

Check out the video below;



Source GeekWire

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If anyone has ever really thought that console gaming is better than the PC then here is one to put a nice monkey wrench into that thought machine. As we see the installers for PC games getting larger and extending into more DVDs we find that the console gamers are hitting something of a wall. You see even with Bluray you have a finite amount of space to stuff everything in.  This means that as graphics and other objects in a game grow you lose out in many other ways. Bulky AI code gets slimmed down, expansive maps get trimmed.