Will you pay for games and apps 3 times ?
In a demo a Tech.Ed Middle East, Eric Rudder showed how a single project (in this case a game) could be published and run on 3 entirely different platforms. Running on Windows, Xbox and Windows Phone 7 which all have different input mechanisms – keyboard and mouse, controller, touch-screen and accelerometer, this begins to get very interesting.
This gets a whole lot more awesome when you find out that your game/app can sync across platforms. So hit the save point on the Xbox, run out the door and continue playing on your phone. Someone should sort through the old beyond 2000 footage, this technology is probably in there somewhere. It sounds like futuristic and probably will be some ways off before you get a triple-platform app in your hand.
My biggest question out of this is the pricing model. Are we expected to buy the game 3 times to get ultra-portability ? It’s important to also recognise that this isn’t functionality everyone wants. So building it into the price of the first purchase will hurt those who only want it on one platform. For the right price, those that want ultra-portability should pay for that feature, but at a subsidised price. Maybe after the primary purchase, you could then pickup the same app/game on the other platforms for 5-10% of the original cost. I think that’s a model that would work.
For a $100 Xbox 360 game, you should be able to get the PC version for an additional $10 and maybe an additional $5 for the mobile version. Currently pricing models don’t recognise that people game in different places, when in reality that’s very true. Imagine if you didn’t have to make the console vs PC choice, but could have the game on both for an affordable price. Crazy thought right ?
More @ Engadget
Review: Microsoft Arc Keyboard and Mouse
Keyboard
The Microsoft Arc Keyboard is unique in its styling and configuration. The name arc comes from the keyboards arc shape, curing up in the center which has 2 benefits, the first is that it’s supposed to match the natural configuration of the human hands, as well as being able to rest comfortably on your knees if used in a home entertainment scenario.
Typing on the keyboard does take some time to adjust to, especially after having the muscle memory established on flat, laptop-style keyboards. Over the course of a few days your hands adjust and typing is fine. Note: I am a touch typist, if your a hunt and peck style typist, this really won’t be an issue. Part of the adjustment comes from the increased distance between keys. The Arc keyboard has chicklet style keys, similar to that of recent apple products, the difference being that the keys are higher. This means the gap between keys is deep, this can prevent you from free flowing from one key to another.
After first opening the box, you’ll notice this keyboard is small and light. Microsoft have had to make some serious sacrifices to reach this form factor. There’s no num pad which isn’t uncommon in laptops, but is rare for a desktop keyboard. There’s also a condensed navigation section, with the up, down, left right keys being condensed into a single 4-way key. This takes a bit of getting used to.
Looking to the top of the keyboard, there left hand side contains the standard F1-F6 keys, but to access F7-F12, you’ll need to hold the function key. Move across you’ll find Home(/Printscreen), End, Page up, Page down, then media controls, which are incredibly responsive, then top right is a decent sized Delete key. Great for correcting mistakes without looking. 
Mouse
Designed for portability the Microsoft Arc Mouse folds in half for easier travel. In it’s folded mode, it’d easily fit in your pocket, but before taking your mouse on the road, just snap the USB Bluetooth module in the underside of the mouse. After using the mouse for the best part of a week, I’d have to say the arc is simply too high to be comfortable and the back button is way to far forward to be accessible. Overall the mouse works great, it’s super sensitive which is great when gaming, but even in general desktop use. I run 2 monitors running 1920×1200 resolution, so moving from one side to the other can require quite a lot of physical movement with some mice. With a sensitive mouse like this, I actually had to turn the mouse speed down and can now move across the 3840 pixels with a slight move of the wrist.
Connectivity
What was surprising to me is that the keyboard and mouse need their own separate USB Bluetooth module, taking up 2 of your USB ports. Sure a wired solution would have the same requirement, however there are other Microsoft keyboard and mouse solutions that have a single USB dongle. Admittedly the Arc system is easier, just plug in and go, rather than have to sync each device.
Gallery
Device Stage
If your not familiar with it, Windows 7 comes with a new feature called Device Stage. Designed to be an attractive, functional interface into new devices connected to your system. Unfortunately there’s very few devices that currently support Device Stage. The Microsoft Arc Keyboard and Mouse does support Device Stage, a welcome addition, and naturally you’d expect the company to support it’s own hardware. Lets hope more hardware manufacturers adopt Device Stage in the near future.
Update
After testing the Arc keyboard with the Xbox 360 I found a weird glitch. Whilst the keyboard works great in the standard Xbox 360 interface, it fails in Media Center. Strangely only the left and right functions work, up and down does nothing. This is possibly due to the keyboard combining the 4 arrow keys into a single key.
Disclaimer
After posting on twitter that my Microsoft Explorer 3.0 mouse had died, I received an email from Microsoft. They offered to replace the mouse and after further discussions sent me through a Microsoft Arc and Keyboard.
More info @ Microsoft Hardware
Windows Azure announced for Australia
Update
The Windows Azure platform will be available in Australia in April 2010.
Update 2
Microsoft are not announcing Australian pricing today. Which begs the question, what’s the point ? The price is the single critical piece of information that will affect businesses decision to move to Azure or not.
Microsoft has officially launched their Azure platform in Australia. Azure offers Microsoft services in the cloud like Exchange, SQL, SharePoint as well as storage and application hosting to enterprises and startups.
Microsoft say the benefits to businesses that choose to use Windows Azure are:
- Bring your ideas to market faster and pay as you go
- Reduce costs of building and extending on-premises resources
- Reduce the effort and costs of IT management
- Respond quickly to changes in your business and customer needs
- Choose an on-premises or off-premises deployment model that best suits your needs.
- Scale your IT resources up and down based on your needs.
- Consume computing resources ONLY when the needs arise.
- Focus less energy on managing operational resources and constraints.
- Remove the need to manage hardware
- Use your existing development skills to build cloud applications
- Consistent development and management experience across on-premises and the cloud.
Windows Azure has been available in the US for months now, the important thing about today’s announcement is local, Australian servers. This becomes critical when it comes to speed, with businesses moving multiple gigabytes of data up and down from cloud services.
Watch the conversation on Twitter – #azureau
TiVo: Blockbuster I don’t love you anymore
Well only a few days after Valentines Day, we’ve got a breakup on our hands. This morning TiVo announced it will be discontinuing it’s Blockbuster movie rental service.
“Blockbuster Movie Service on TiVo will be permanently closing on Friday 5th March 2010”
There is some important information about the closure of the service.
- Existing customers will have the balance of their accounts refunded automatically.
- Blockbuster movie rentals will disappear from the TiVo interface.
- Movies will continue to be released up until the shutdown date.
The IPTV battle is a tough one that TiVo and CASPA On-Demand will really need to step it up, to have any chance at all. First of all there’s iTunes, with a massive library of content. But more importantly is the newest entrant..
Through the Zune Video Marketplace on Xbox 360 consoles, users can rent and buy movies in both SD and HD quality either by downloading first, but also streaming. The difference here is that Microsoft offers 1080p quality, 5.1 surround sound movies that start streaming instantly using their Smooth Streaming technology.
With the rapid adoption of large HDTVs, high definitely content is becoming a must for consumers. Neither CASPA or Blockbuster offers / offered a HD version. Also in Australia, the number of Xbox 360 owners, is many magnitudes the size of TiVo owners.
If you had to choose, what IPTV service would you use ?
Happy Birthday from Windows Live
As someone who lives in the Microsoft world, I like hundreds of millions of others, have Live Mail accounts. Part of my Live ID profile information is my birth date. It turns out my birthday is 2 days away and today I received ‘Happy Birthday from Windows Live’ email. A nice touch (with some marketing built in).
Not sure how long Microsoft has been doing this, but since signing up to hotmail in 2001, this is the first time I remember getting an email like this.
They were however beat by Boost Juice by a few days, which offer a free Boost Juice on member’s birthdays.
Windows Phones 7 Series get slick Zune UI
Microsoft have revealed Windows Phones 7 Series which contains a number of phones from a multiple manufacturers, but run a brand new interface. This group of devices run Windows Mobile 7 which as you’ll see from the screens below has drawn strongly on the popular ZuneHD user interface.
The home page (above) is made up of a number of ‘tiles’ that contain information from data sources online. Facebook, Xbox Live for example, as well as other updates like SMS, email, and phone calls. These are customisable so your experience with the phone suits the services you use most.
Naturally Microsoft have a key arm to their mobile strategy that has really been under-utilised. That is full Microsoft Office support on a mobile device. While today’s keynote was very consumer orientated, a more important play is the business market, which can also take advantage of SharePoint integrations.
In the Q&A after the keynote, it was confirmed by Steve Ballmer that devices will not ship with Adobe Flash support “out of the gate” but added, they are not against having it on Windows Phones. With many months between now and launch, I’d expect Adobe will work with Microsoft to make this happen before launch.
Windows Phone 7 Series devices will be out before Christmas this year.
You can watch the full MWC Microsoft keynote video here.
Australia Tax Surfaces – Microsoft Surface Australian release
After initially launching in April 2008, Microsoft’s multi-touch table, the Surface, has had a pretty quiet life to date. Here in Australia, there’d only been a couple of companies that’d gone to the expense of importing it. Today Microsoft are officially launching Microsoft Surface in Australia, with one very different spec – price.
I don’t remember a larger gap in the US-AUS price translation than this. In the US the retail Surface sells for US$12,500, yet somehow that number grew with a serious Australia-tax to A$21,000. We’re still waiting for a response form Microsoft to justify the dramatic difference in price.
Update
A Microsoft spokesperson says the Microsoft Surface price is a result of getting a new product into a new market. Sighting support, operational costs, certification and regulatory requirements as the reasons for the Australian cost.
If your in the development market, you’ll need to hand over A$24,000, compared to $US15,000 in the states. While the size and weight of this device would make for expensive shipping, it’s possible that importing from the US could be cheaper.. this is ridiculous.
We’re two and half years on since it’s release, components should be cheaper now, unfortunately this hasn’t correlated to the Australian prices. If this is another example of pricing technology based on what they think ‘the market will bear’, then they’re clearly wrong.
Surface is an amazing device, if it was offered at a sub-$10k price, thousands of business may be enticed to get one. But at the current price point, you’ll probably have to visit a casino to see one.
Watch the latest updates on the launch on twitter.