E3 2011: Microsoft

While I whooped and cried with glee over the amazing stuff being shown at the Moscone Center by Apple, down the coast in Los Angeles another mega event was unfolding.  The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is the world’s largest gaming trade show.  Anyone who’s anyone in the gaming industry comes to this show and advertises their new wares.  Leading the way are always the console makers, who have their own press conferences to usher in the trade show.  This morning Microsoft started first and gave us a good showing of new games for Kinect and traditional controls alike.  Here’s the break down.

Starting off the conference was the full unveiling of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.  A lot of questions remained about the fate of this series after developer Infinity Ward experienced a mass-exodus of its founders and key developers.  Still, parent company Activision has trudged on and asked subsidiary development house Sledgehammer Games to assist the remnant of IW with their latest game in the Modern Warfare trilogy.  Over all, the game looks great.  It plays with the same visceral pace and quality of previous installments while kicking the action up several notches.  Battles take place in New York City and pack tons of action and explosions.  This is the game Michael Bay would direct and that’s not a problem.  I’ll buy it.

Still, most of the day was devoted to Microsoft’s advanced motion tracking camera, the Kinect.  This is the third year in a row Microsoft has tried to win consumers over.  Is it winning?  Ehhh, maybe.  The Kinect has sold a ridiculous amount, but the question remains how many consumers really like the thing. Microsoft showed off the obligatory child games like a Disneyland IP and a Sesame Street-based game.  They look… cute.  However, there are more gritty Kinect games coming down the pipeline.  Crytek, the uber-developer responsible for Crysis, Far Cry, and the infamously powerful CryEngine, showed off Ryse.  It seems to be a pretty standard sword game using Kinect to let you manipulate attacks.  It looks gorgeous but also uninspired.  Kinda like a home console version of the iOS game Infinity Blade.  Peter Molyneux and Loin Head Studios showed off a Kinect version of Fable.  It seems like little else than an on-rails hack-and-slash as well but Molyneux has long been obsessed with Kinect so at least he’s giving us product.  A couple more pretty unremarkable Kinect games soon gave way to something actually interesting: Mass Effect 3 will support Kinect.  Motion tracking is not being used, but the game will take advantage of Kinect’s microphone.  Now you can verbally command your squad and select conversations options with your voice. It’s a subtle integration that have been done with a headset, but Mass Effect 3 still looks awesome.

A couple of things have made me very interested in Kinect though, despite these ho-hum games.  Firstly is Minecraft.  This indie game has made major ways in the past year for its incredibly simple and expansive game play.  You basically build an entire world from blocks and these blocks have certain attributes.  The things created this game range from 1:1 scales of the starship Enterprise to a virtual CPU built from electrically sensitive block material.  Minecraft is coming to the 360, in HD, and with Kinect support.  That is awesome and I would be very interested in Kinect for that reason alone.  Other appealing enhancements include a refreshed UI for this fall, known as Next Xbox Experience (NXE) 2.0.  The new UI pulls more from the Metro design language and emphasizes navigation with Kinect.  Buying an expensive peripheral for UI navigation may seem stupid, but it also has deep voice search integration with Bing and that’s pretty cool.  This voice search is great for videos since now voice search will pull videos from Netflix, Hulu, and Youtube.  If you’re in certain markets, the 360 can be a TV tuner with a subscription to certain IPTV providers.  It’s not in the US yet, but chances are that AT&T will come onboard.

Wrapping up the day brought non-Kinect games.  First was the reboot of Tomb Raider – a beloved series from the 90s that fell on hard times.  The game looked great, sporting a younger, more gritty and chiefly more realistic looking Lara Croft.  Time will tell if it really plays well.  Microsoft’s failed surprise (their website leaked the game minutes before the conference) game was Halo 4.  Yes, Master Chief is back for a second trilogy.  Bungie is not involved in this outing however, instead handing the reigns to 343 Industries – Microsoft’s internal Halo studio.  Only a teaser trailer was announced but it seems that this trilogy will deal with the mysteries of the Forerunners that built the halo rings.  An interesting idea no doubt and even though they’re beating this franchise to death…. I’ll buy it.  Oh, and there’s an HD remake of the original Halo using the engine from Reach.

And yet for some reason, Microsoft was completely silent about their new cloud storage system.  Announced as an after thought in a press release, the new service will allow gamers to sync their game saves to the cloud and log into their account from any 360.  That’s a great feature and it makes little sense that they didn’t bring it up in the event.  Overall the Microsoft conference was not bad but it still seems like Microsoft doesn’t know what they want from Kinect.  I’m personally pretty tired of them trying to justify the peripheral after 3 years, but I guess you do what you can to pay the bills.

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Windows 8 (Don’t Pay Attention to the Windows Behind the Curtain)

Microsoft is rarely a company I associate with stylish design and forward-thinking enhancements.  Until Vista gave Windows a bit of a visual pick-me-up, the only adjective I could give to Microsoft’s operating system was “drab”.  I mean XP was ugly, it just wasn’t anything to be proud of.  Yet over the past few years, Microsoft has made some good steps in improving their aesthetic.  Still, even with a new coat of paint, you can always see the old, sometimes dysfunctional, UI paradigms in place.  And then all of a sudden comes “Metro”, this whole new UI design for Windows Phone 7.  It’s classy, minimal, uses space efficiently, and most of all unique.  Metro was this side of Microsoft we had never seen before.  One that could appeal to young, artistic types in the way OS X and iOS have.  Metro has spread into the “oh-yeah-that-thing” Zune and the 360’s latest UI update but I always craved to see Microsoft do a thorough reworking of Windows to make it really cohesive and feel new.

Well, enter Windows 8

Microsoft Buys Skype, Just For the Hell of It?

File this one under “Out of Nowhere” but Microsoft has bought Skype, the number one video conferencing firm in the world, for a cool $8.5 Billion.  Google tried to pick up Skype back in 2009, but it looks like Microsoft has succeeded where the Search giant failed.  The problem is, we don’t really know why Microsoft bought Skype.  Redmont has shown little interest in a video conference infrastructure over the years, and most of its “chat” infrastructure under MSN has long become irrelevant.  Perhaps this is an attempt for Microsoft to revamp that long unimportant section of its online services?

More likely this is about Apple and Facetime.  The Mac maker announced Facetime last year at the same time as the iPhone 4 as an open standard for video chat between mobile devices and computers.  Since then, no other companies have adopted Facetime but Apple has begun to push the technology by renaming the iSight cameras “Facetime HD” cameras.  Even if Facetime is lacking support (and 3G connection), it’s a burgeoning and capable standard that could become prevalent in the future for iOS and OS X.  Having Skype gives Microsoft a capable fighter against Facetime and Google Voice and Talk in Windows Phone 7.  As of right now, the mobile OS lacks any video chat standard.  While a Skype application could be made, direct integration of the service into the OS could be more useful.

Plus, we could see Skype support on the Xbox 360.  Kinect has a powerful set of cameras and already has video chat support between Xboxes. Skype would allow for communication between mobile phones and computers from the Xbox as well.  Of course, all of this could have been done by simply making a deal with Skype.  An $8.5 Billion acquisition seems a bit much for what will be a pretty peripheral set of enhancements to Microsoft’s hardware and software.  Skype is one of the youngest and freshest faces in the tech industry.  Seeing them get swallowed up by something like Microsoft is just unfortunate.

Why Microsoft spent this much for what could have been done in a deal is beyond me.  Maybe they’re just on a power trip.

Briefly: Windows Phone 7 Improvements

The mobile scene has been on fire in the past week or so, and all of this has culminated at the Mobile World Congress going on now in Barcelona.  Today, Microsoft head Steve Ballmer presented the latest updates to the Windows Phone 7 operating system, coming in March.  Much like Apple finally implemented, WP7 now has 3rd party multitasking – via a card system very much like webOS – and copy/paste.  Why these features weren’t there in the first place is beyond me, but at least it didn’t take three (or four) iterations to include these features…. Apple.  Along for the ride as well is a new browser using the much faster and more modern IE9 underpinnings (allowing for hardware acceleration), Twitter integration and finally support for CDMA (Verizon and Sprint customers).

It’s good to see Microsoft being pretty quick with updates.  I said from the beginning that the only way Microsoft could be successful was by issuing updates often, showing that they are constantly improving the platform.  These updates should placate those who felt WP7 was lacking a bit.

And The Platform Crumbles: Nokia Jumps to Windows Phone 7

Man, I am so bad at this.  Every time a company is floundering with their platform, I tell them to endure, but they always jump the ship.  First Palm and now Nokia.  Am I just naive or plain stupid (don’t answer that).  Still, two days ago I discussed the failure of Nokia’s venerable (though antiquated) Symbian OS.  The system is old and needs help.  Nokia needs help as they struggle between a rock (Symbian) and a hard place (the still to come MeeGo).  I maintained that Symbian could be modernized and MeeGo could be accelerated to market.  My hope was that Nokia could maintain the platform they started for the industry’s sake, in the name of diversity.

But it did not come to pass.  Today Nokia announced a convergence deal with Microsoft.  Windows Phone 7 has become the primary mobile platform of Nokia’s future mobile handsets.  As for Symbian, it’s dead.  Technically, Symbian is now a “franchise platform” which Nokia will license out to other handset makers, but by and large Symbian will wither and die against more modern choices.  It’s depressing to see such a hallmark OS go the way of the Dodo, but then it was on its last legs.  As for once-promising MeeGo, which Nokia assured us was the future of the company?  It’s now an “opportunity to learn” and nothing more than that.  They might get a device out by the end of the year, but there are no plans to make it into a larger platform.  Instead, it will be an experimental platform like Maemo was for the N900 in 2009.  Everything is going Windows Phone 7 in the mainstream.

The choice of Windows Phone 7 is strange though.  Microsoft’s revamped mobile OS has yet to make major in-roads against Android or iOS.  Some estimates have it selling less than 2 million units since its release in October of last year.  Wouldn’t it make more sense for Nokia to jump on board a more mature and popular OS like Android?  I chalk it up to three things.  1) Money.  Microsoft has been trying to woo handset makers to their platform for a while.  As the mid-90s adage goes: “If you build it, they will come.”  Microsoft probably saw Nokia’s problems from a mile away and offered them a big incentive to partner up.  2) Opportunity.  Android has already saturated the market with hundreds of identical devices and consumers have made their choice about the most desirable models now.  Nokia has an excellent chance to get in on the ground floor of Windows Phone 7 and become a preeminent device maker.  Plus, if Nokia ever wants to gain access to the US market, using the Windows branding is not a bad way to do that.  And 3) Relationship.  Nokia’s CEO is Stephen Elop who worked for Microsoft before joining Nokia in these turbulent times.  That relationship must have made this move far easier.

So while Nokia has gotten a new lease on life with Windows Phone 7, it’s Microsoft that really wins in the exchange.  According to the deal, Nokia’s Ovi app store – Nokia’s Symbian app distribution system – will be integrated into the Windows Phone Marketplace, bringing some new developers and apps into the fold of Microsoft’s small app count.  The Ovi maps, one of the better parts of Symbian, is being integrated into Bing and should improve the map experience.  But most of all, if Nokia continues to make their handsets with the same finesse and style of the N8 and E7, Microsoft will finally have some AAA devices to carry Windows Phone 7.  Until now, most Windows Phone 7 phones were relatively similar, with none standing out from the crowd.  Having devices with the gorgeous design and stunning features Nokia is known for will help move Windows Phone 7 significantly.  I’d even take a look at Windows Phone 7 if I could run it on something like an N8.

As deals go, this one has a lot of promise.  Microsoft getting veteran mobile phone maker Nokia is a big name for their platform.  And Nokia gets to start anew with an up and coming platform that seems pretty competent.  This past week has been huge for the mobile phone sector.  First the resurrection of webOS, and now Nokia gets another shot at prosperity.

Oh, also…. Nokia fired 1000 people.  Not so good at all for a company that comprises over 3% of Finland’s GDP.  My heart goes out to the unfortunate workers who have lost their job, and I wish them luck in further endeavors.

CES 2011 Feature: Windows Goes ARM with Nvidia Tagging Along

Since the dawn of Windows it has forever been linked with Intel.  The two entities have been indispensable to each other for decades: the IBM PC clones craze of the 80s and 90s was completely run by DOS and Windows 95, all depending on the x86 architecture to run the software.  Without the union of Intel and Windows, neither would have become the giants they are today.  Indeed “Wintel”, as the union was referred to, has become the success story of the past 30 years.  But time trudges on.  AMD’s adoption of the x86 architecture pioneered by Intel now makes the phrase misleading (Winamd?) and numerous other architectures have become prevalent in the consumer space.

None is more synonymous with consumer electronics than Advanced RISC Machines – the ARM architecture that I so often speak of.  Originally developed by Acorn as a RISC replacement for the legendary 6502 chip used in their computer line, the ARM architecture flourished after Apple teamed with Acorn to develop a low power, RISC solution for the Newton PDA in the 90s.  The architecture has become the most widespread chip series in the world, featured in more devices than Intel, AMD, or IBM’s offerings due to their small power usage and massive scalability.  Over the years, ARM has grown from a bare-bones architecture into a robust series of multi-use application processors.  The “Cortex” series has brought multimedia power to smartphones, tablets and TVs, while legacy ARM parts find their ways into feature phones and game systems like the Nintendo DS.

E3 2010: Microsoft

So E3 has started off today and Microsoft ushered in the show with their press conference this morning.  I watched the commercial-free presentation this afternoon on Spike TV, so I had a pretty good seat to all the action.  Not a ton of different stuff was announced today, but a lot of a few things.

To start off the show, Microsoft gave the obligatory nod to the more hardcore audience with debuts of new games for the console.  Among these was a demo of Gears of War 3, a trailer of Halo Reach using real-time footage, a formal announcement of Fable 3, and the announcement of an exclusive new game from Crytek, the makers of Crysis, that will arrive later next year.  Konami also showed off a trailer for their Xbox exclusive Metal Gear Solid: Rising, which uses heavy sword combat.  To me it looks like another hack-n-slash game, but Konami seems to be showing off how accurate and detailed the cutting mechanics are (they showed Raiden cutting a water melon in half, followed by quartering it and making even smaller slices).  It’s cool technology, but given how deep older MGS games were, this may come off as a little shallow.

Of course, the big part of the show was Microsoft’s final unveiling of “Kinect” (neé Natal), their new 3D motion sensing camera system that allow for full body tracking.  Does it work?  Yes, actually surprisingly well and as close to 1:1 as I’ve ever seen.  However, in terms of software, I was left feeling pretty unconvinced, and at times groaning with displeasure.  It’s no secret that Microsoft wants to appeal to the casual audience with motion control, just like Nintendo did with the Wii.  Unfortunately, when ever game companies try to show off casual games, I always feel like I’m being treated like a child.  It was no different today.  All the demos of the various Kinect games seemed to play up obnoxious amounts of campiness, with creepily over enthusiastic people demonstrating the games, most of which didn’t look that fun.  The sports game seemed like a more physically involving version of Wii Sports, a game that is really old news.  The “adventure” game in particular made me cringe at the high-pitch shrieking of the two women playing the game, as they white-water rafted together.  The virtual pet game was the real strange one.  Kinect’s camera directly links to the AI of a virtual pet, which can see you with the Kinect’s camera and understand voice commands and any movements you make.  You can pet your… pet, throw a bone or what have you, make him/her play dead or sit, and even hide from your pet if you’re into that kind of teasing.  While the AI and interaction with the hardware was really cool, the demo left a bad taste in my mouth.  Some child was up there, playing with her pet tiger, Skittles, but she was far too into the experience. Worse was when she was petting the carnivorous feline.  While it looks fine when you see the virtual hands on-screen caressing your young jungle cat, back in the real world you’re still groping the air and shouting at your TV.  It’s just extra weird.

Luckily, not all of the games were bad.  Microsoft did show off a version of Forza Motorsport that could actually use the technology well.  Steering your car requires you to simply hold your hands out at 10-and-2, while there is a mode that allows you to virtually walk around your car by walking around in your room and letting Kinect track you.  It’s cool stuff like that, the integration of this technology into established mainstream games, that may allow Kinect to be more successful.  Ubisoft also showed off a fitness game that seems to do a lot more than stuff like Wii Fit did by allowing for full body tracking.  It literally scans your body by measuring height, shape, and abilities to modify menus and exercises to your needs.  The software actually does really impressive body tracking to see if your form is correct and to measure your pace.  These advancements should make the software more effective than Nintendo’s offerings.

Though the software was a little lack luster, the real thing I like about Kinect is the modified UI it offers.  When you launch the 360 with Kinect umm…. connected, all you have to do is wave at your system to launch the Kinect UI, which tracks your movements to open up Netflix, Facebook, the Zune store, games, or Last.fm.  Not only that, but it has really good voice activation.  Simply say: “Xbox”, followed by a command like “play” or “Zune”, and the system will launch that application or do the commanded action.  Voice and motion-based navigation is far more interesting to me than the games showed off, which is kind of sad.  Another cool feature was video chat, which works like you’d expect.  One very cool, though eerie, feature is that Kinect locks on to your skeleton, so if you stray from the center of the camera, the Kinect will actually follow you.  It’s cool, but the fact that it can move on its own…. yikes.

So Kinect was a big part of the show.  Overall, I wasn’t convinced.  But in the end, it might just be cool enough to pick up if it doesn’t cost a lot.  One last cool thing: a redesigned Xbox.  This one is smaller, sharper in design, runs cooler, and is very quiet.  It’s about time Microsoft realized that they needed to heavily redesign the system in order to end all the RRoDs.  The console now has integrated 802.11n and a 250GB HDD.  I’ll take it.

Why I Hate the KIN

Last month Microsoft unveiled their long rumored “Project Pink.”  Long thought to be a “Zune Phone”, what Microsoft instead announced was the KIN, a new mobile phone platform that seemed sort of… misplaced. The KIN is neither a smartphone, nor a “feature phone” as we now refer to most basic phones, but rather a kind of “in-between” phone.  It does more than your basic phone but a lot less than something like Android or the iPhone.  The two devices, called creatively KIN 1 and KIN 2, were strange-looking and unique to say the least.  But what was it about the KIN that made it different?  Microsoft has billed the KIN as a phone for social networkers.  For people who want to consume media and information in the easiest way possible.  The KIN’s Windows CE software is designed to aggregate information coming in from Facebook, Twitter, Email and text messaging, all on one screen.  Besides from that, the KIN has little other features to distinguish itself.  And I don’t like that.

Probably the biggest indication of who Microsoft is marketing this phone to was from the announcement video.  It showed off obnoxious, ridiculous examples of my generation – people who seemed like caricatures of Jersey Shore, if that was even possible.  To say I am not a fan of these “bros” and – you know I don’t even have an appropriate name for the female variation (leave me a good one in the comments) – is an understatement.  But I hate worse how they use technology.  Don’t get me wrong, the consumption of media is a god-given right.  But I hate how people of my generation use the internet for its lowest common denominator functions.  We now live in a world of text message junkies and Crackberries – people who can’t be separated from always being plugged in.  Not even for news or business, but just to know “what’s up” with their friends, who broke up with who, and what’s the latest fashion.  It seems like the internet has just become a giant version of high school with these people.  I would hope that this adolescent use of the internet and personal devices will disappear with maturity, but seeing as how the older generations have too invaded Facebook and opened Twitter accounts, I kind of doubt that.

That is the kind of consumerist, mindless use of technology that the KIN represents and why I dislike it.  The KIN’s design focuses around the aggregation of social media – the constant feed of information not for knowledge, but to have the inside scoop on celebrities and gossip.  The KIN lacks any form of app store or expanded functionality like Android, iPhone, or Windows Mobile 7.  While these software platforms are measured by their expansibility, their usefulness as a utility and appliance, the KIN has none of these advantages and rather is like an IV of internet crack.

Just so we’re clear that’s Devil’s Advocate and hyperbole.  The KIN in no way represents the downfall of humanity and there is nothing inherently wrong with it.  My true issue is that it is so limited and inherently handicaps the user to only enjoy the social media abilities of mobile devices.  Whereas other devices live on their expandable use, the KIN will remain boring.  There’s nothing to distinguish itself from other devices besides its strange form factor.  And for that reason, it will fail.  Do yourself a favor, don’t even consider buying a KIN.  You would be much wiser to buy a phone with greater abilities than simply helping your media addictions.  If you need a good phone on the cheap, might I recommend a Palm Pixi or Blackberry Pearl or iPhone 3G?  There are better options out there in smartphones.  The KIN is, quite succinctly, stupid.

No Matter Who Wins, We Win

Two weeks ago Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone Series 7, the next generation of their mobile phone software formerly known as Windows Mobile.  The unveiling was a revelation to the masses: Microsoft actually gets it now.  Windows Mobile had been a slow, outdated and frustrating operating system.  Once the gold standard of smartphone OSes, it had completely fallen to the wayside against others like the iPhone, Blackberry, Android, WebOS and even Symbian.  Instead of being that gold standard, Windows Mobile is now a budget OS used on the most basic and generic of smartphones.  Most companies use their own skin UIs in order to hide the dated style of the OS.  HTC is one such company that has a large amount of WinMo devices, but has masked the OS’s poor design with their own UI and plug-ins.

This all changed with Windows Phone 7.  The UI is clean, minimalist, completely focused on touch mechanics and made for a far more strict set of modern hardware.  Microsoft pulled a drastic 180 on our expectations for the new OS.  It shows that Microsoft has really taken to heart the efforts made by Apple and Google to make more streamlined interfaces.  Arguably, Microsoft has done an even more adept job than Apple or Google at making such a visually appealing design and integrating function.  Much of this has been done by taking lessons Microsoft learned from the Zune HD, which though based on Windows Mobile 6.5, uses a very unique and wonderful interface unlike generic WinMo phones.  You can see the differences between the new OS and the old for yourself: