Happy New Year everyone! Yes it’s our first post in some time and our first post of the new year which once again finds us in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. We’re here at the Hilton attending the CES Pre-Keynote being presented by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer. There’s still about 15 minutes to go before the keynote begins – plus they’re asking the press not to use wireless so this means the writeup won’t hit the Internet waves until much later tonight (Sorry the pics will come later on).
6:18pm
They’re showing off commercials now – one of Microsoft Windows Phone 7 and one of the Microsoft Store (I’ve yet to check out the store myself.. one of these days maybe). You know, if it wasn’t for the Apple iPhone, I would be all over Windows Phone 7. Then again if Verizon doesn’t come out with the Apple iPhone, I might just decide to switch to a Windows Phone 7 device given my utter hatred for AT&T right now.
Sigh – another delay with the start of the pre-keynote. Wouldn’t it be nice if the pre-keynote actually started on time?
6:38pm
The pre-keynote is finally starting up and leading the way is of course Gary Shapiro. He’s out spewing some facts and numbers about CES. Basically, the economy is starting to come back and many new products will be on display here including over 20,000 new products from 2700 companies. Shapiro is also plugging his new book called “The Comeback”
And now, it’s Ballmer time!
Ballmer starts off by reviewing some of the successes of 2010 for Microsoft and gives a big thanks to all the customers of Microsoft.
The three most important consumer devices – the TV, Windows Phone, and PCs.
TV:
* Ballmer starts off with a review of the Xbox successes in home entertainment including the games, Xbox LIVE and of course KINECT.
* With KINECT for the Xbox 360 the broad world of entertainment opens up to the entire family. With KINECT, you are the controller.
* Xbox 360. Xbox Live, and Kinect made 2010 the biggest year of Xbox history
And now..
Ron Forbes from the Interactive Entertainment Biz comes on stage to show off what you can do with KINECT now and in the future.
* Zune: Watch movies in full 1080p with 5.1 surround sound. It;s available in 20 countries. Use KINECT to control your movie viewing experience within Zune. Ron now shows off controller free access to more than 11 million songs in the Zune catalog
* Netflix: Two years, Xbox was the 1st console to bring Netflix to the living room. This spring, Microsoft will bring KINECT to the Netflix.
* Hulu Plus is coming to Xbox and KINECT later this spring!
* Controller free Zune, Netflix, and Hulu Plus!
Ballmer comes back on stage.. as an avatar.
So why an avatar? Ballmer shows off Avatar KINECT. Avatar KINECT leverages KINECT to track your body movements, facial expressions and movements – with your Xbox LIVE avatar mimicking those movements. Raise your eyebrow and your avatar does it too. Body and facial tracking brought to a whole new level. Avatar KINECT will be coming this Spring for free for all Xbox LIVE Gold members.
* 30 million Xbox LIVE members now.
* Xbox console sales have been #1 for the last 6 months here in the US
* 50 million units of Xbox worldwide
* Microsoft sold over 8 million KINECT sensors worldwide in the first 60 days
Ballmer moves to Xbox LIVE on Windows Phone 7.
* Fable is coming to Windows Phone 7.
A quick video showcasing some of the games coming to Windows Phone 7 this year
* Rise of Glory
Zombies!!
* PAC MAN
* Halo Waypoint
* Fruit Ninja
* Tetris
* Asteroids Deluxe
* Assassins Creed
* Pocket God
* Monopoly
* PES 2011
* The Sims 3
* Need for Speed undercover
* and much much more
Windows Phone 7
* 9 phones across 60 mobile operators in 30 countries
* 5500 apps available for Windows Phone customers
* 100 new apps every day
* More than half of customers download a new app everyday
* More than 20K developers registered
* 9 out of every 10 Windows Phone customers at AT&T would recommend the product to others
* A series of updates will be coming out over the next few months
* Copy and Paste is coming
* Optimizations for loading and switching apps
* Sprint and Verizon network phones coming in 1st half 2011
Liz Sloan from the Windows Phone Team comes on stage
* Liz will show 7 great things about Windows Phone 7 (there’s really nothing different here)
* Camera: Pocket to picture in seconds. Every Windows Phone 7 has a dedicated camera button. Button works even when the screen is locked.
* Glance and Go: Lock screen shows all the important information you need while you’re on the go. Start screen also shows all this information. As you all know, the start screen is composed of Live Tiles.
* Voice Search: Voice recognition used to perform search queries.
* Bing to the phone: (if this matter to any of you).
* Hubs: The stuff you care about in one place
* (Shoot.. forgot what the 6th item is.. but I think it was apps..)
* Xbox LIVE on the phone
Ballmer comes back on stage to talk about one last thing – Windows PC.
* Windows 7 PCs are the fastest selling PCs in history.
* 7 copies are sold every second
* Internet Explorer 9 beta in the hands of 20 million users
* Windows Live has 5000 million users
* More new innovative hardware PC designs this year than ever before
Mike Angiulo from the Windows Team comes on stage to show off some of the new Windows PCs
Mike shows off some of the latest new PCs including systems showcasing Intel and AMD’s latest processors.
A brand new version of Microsoft Surface. Microsoft worked with Samsung.
* It’s only four inches thin.
* Biggest piece of gorilla glass bonded to an LCD ever
* Pixel sense – new technology which uses infrared sensors all across the screen. Vision based interaction
* Surface can now be used as a kiosk – it’s no longer just a table
* New lower price – surface pc should be available in many more places
To wrap things up, Microsoft demo’d the next major version of Windows which will add support for System on a Chip (SoC) systems – both x86 and ARM.
