Prices of Gaming Consoles To Drop Soon?

I know this would come as a shock more than a surprise to many avid gamers. Analysts are predicting the prices of all the leading consoles – PS3, Xbox and Wii to go down this year. The one leading in this row is Microsoft who definitely wishes to implement some price cuts as analysts report. This can be attributed to the fact that Xbox was not a big favourite among gamers during Christmas. Although Microsoft apparently posted a 21 percent increase in the revenues of XBox during the last three months of the previous year, it is likely that the price of Xbox would be cut down from 400$ to 300$.

If XBox were to go ahead with this move after a decline in sales (which could happen any time after June), the other big gaming corporations would automatically follow suit. Although Sony might want to reduce the price of PS3 consoles readily, Nintendo is likely to wait on Wii’s price cut for it is also launching 3DS, the costliest portable entertainment console ever.

Nokia and Microsoft Partnership To Be Announced Next Week ?

We reported yesterday about the possibility of a partnership between Nokia and Microsoft happening. Looks like, there is going to be an official announcement from the two corporate giants apparently on the 11th of February which is actually the Capital Markets Day. Nokia and Microsoft would be having a partnership for the third time if this new one is to happen , with the previous two being in 2007 and 2009.

The Finnish company Nokia, once the mobile market giant (from nineties till early 21st century) is looking for a resurgence as far as its Symbian and Meego operating systems are concerned. So, a partnership with MS which has alos launched its Windows 7 phone could come in handy to face the stiff competition from Android and Apple.

The earlier partnerships have not yielded anything worthwhile, so let us hope that this partnership can get third time lucky.

Will A Nokia And Microsoft Partnership Happen?

Will a Nokia and Microsoft Partnership Happen? This is the question that all the market giants are waiting for an answer to. The question is in even more relevance now that a London based banking analyst has written to Nokia asking them to abandon their Meego OS and join hands with MS to link their phones with Windows 7 phones. The Finnish company which enjoyed its share of success during the nineties and the early part of the 21st century has been on a downhill slide ever since the launch of Apple’s iPhones and Google’s Android powered smartphones.

On the other hand, MS which tried to launch its own tablets during the early part of the first decade had failed miserably, but luckily for them, the Windows 7 phone has received positive reviews. But, they are a long way behind Apple and Google already. The Mobile World Congress which would be happening soon is a good place for these two giants to make a statement about their partnership.

Google v Bing – Is Bing Plagiarising?

The Google v Bing thing is getting nastier by day. Google’s search fellow Amit Singhal has tweeted that Bing was simply lifting Google’s results. Well, it can’t get any nastier, can it? Now, Google has accused Microsoft of plagiarising their results – an intellectual property theft which is a very serious crime. Looks like there is going to be a “Social Network” kind of thing brewing between the two giants of computing.

Most would want to argue that this is just a publicity stunt by Google. But, looking ar it from an academic perspective, it can also be intellectual irritation that has prompted Amit Singhal to complain in his tweet. Also, Google is still the leading search engine in the world and still maintains its upper hand over most of its competitors.

May be it’s time that the intellectuals at Miscrosoft should go back to universities again to get lessons about plagiarism.

Hogging The Limelight of Android 3.0 – Is Apple Doing A Microsoft?

With both Samsung and Motorola ready to unveil their next Android 3.0 Honeycomb sensations in the next couple of weeks, we begin to get leaked news from various sources reporting the launch of iPad 2 and the iPhone 5. If we observe carefully, we can observe a kind of ‘Microsoftism’ in these tactics. Back in the nineties, Microsoft was always leaking news about a compelling upcoming product of theirs a day or two before IBM or Novell had a launch planned. To be honest, this actually works wonderfully well, especially for Apple’s merchandise.

One would certainly want to wait another month or two to get his/her hands on an iPad 2 rather than an Android. But, all said and done, Google is enjoying a dream run with their Android OS and the results are evident with Android overtaking Symbian as the world’s most popular phone OS.

Now that the dirty games have started, the war is certainly going to spice up.

Microsoft To Sell Office for Mac on Mac App Store

The App store which was only available to iPhone, ipod and iPad users for a long time was opened for Mac users on the 6th of January, 2011. The Mac App store is already a huge hit and among the users of Mac which include Macbook, Macbook Air and Macbook Pro. The App store is a free to use store for all registered users where the user can find products for his/her Apple products. These products can be Apple’s own or various third party ones.

Now, it is rumored that even Microsoft is also targeting the MAc App Store to sell Office for Mac. This move by Microsoft comes after many third party developers have expressed their happiness about selling more products in three weeks than they did in entire 2010. Also, most Mac users are known to be buying products hosted on the App Store only. Many developers are still waiting for Apple’s approval to host their products on the store.

Better hurry MS.

Windows Phone 7 Mystery Data Upload Bug – Fix On The Way

A number of Windows Phone 7 users in the past month had reported about a mysterious bug on their handsets that caused unrequested consumption of massive levels of data. The complaints, nicknamed the Phantom data issue, prompted Redmond to have an immediate look into the issue.

The company has now issued a statement noting that they have managed to round upon the potential cause to a common “third party solution” that was seen to be consuming larger than expected levels of data. Microsoft is noted to be working with its partner to rectify the issue. No details were made available regarding the third party in question.

Microsoft has also additionally pointed out that the number of customers affected was not significantly high noting that a “low single-digit” percentage of Windows Phone customers were affected. We will update you when the aforementioned fix is released.

Microsoft Kinect For PC Coming Soon?

Developers could soon be bringing PC-based Kinect games if a new rumor is anything to go by. According to sources, Microsoft is working on building a Kinect SDK that it could release along with official drivers for Windows that can be used by developers to build PC-based Kinect applications. This is expected to take a few more months and the Kinect SDK is believed to be released as a Microsoft XNA “Community Technical Preview” beta.

Not just this. Microsoft could also be releasing a gesture-based control environment on its next generation Windows operating system. You might recall Windows 8 demos from early this month where the OS was demoed to work with potential integration with Kinect.

Of course, all of this is simply speculation at this point. But given Ballmer’s statements that his company would be integrating Kinect with PCs “in the right time“, we cannot wait to find out if we are already there.

Feature To Backup Windows Phone 7 Before Update Implemented

Microsoft is learned to have incorporated a feature on Windows Phone 7 handsets that will automatically backup all the content and data from the phone before a system update is performed. Speaking in a podcast, Matt Akers of the Microsoft Zune Software client team said,

“Any time that we prepare to do an update, which you guys will see soon, we will make a backup of your phone. The entire phone, everything on it.”

Akers has said that the backup will help users in seamlessly reverting back to the older firmware in case something was to go wrong during the update. The feature apparently has been incorporated on the Windows Phone 7 OS by default and should be seen in action when Microsoft rolls out its firmware update.

And that we hear is coming soon.

Windows 7 SP1 Release Date Today?

The first service pack of Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 could be made publicly available today as claimed by a Microsoft employee. Unfortunately, the service pack for both the editions of Windows has already been leaked online. The leaked version of the Windows 7 service pack RTM build is labelled 7601.17514.101119-1850 suggesting that the software was created on 19th November 2010. Microsoft Enterprise Services employee Alex Kibkalo has mentioned in one of his blog posts that SP1 would be publicly available on 15th January “Redmond Time“.

According to certain sources, the release mentioned in the blog post is only for OEMs as commented by Mr Kibkalo stating that SP1 could hit Windows Update in the next fortnight. A 15th January release of the service pack for just OEMs would mean that this will be the first time Microsoft has released a service pack on a weekend.

Service pack 1 brings in a lot of bug fixes along with several performance improvements like dynamic memory support to Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2. Also, we are likely to see RemoteFX which will add enhanced desktop virtualization aimed at giving the same experience to users as the ones sitting at a workstation.