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The last week or so has been filled with information from Microsoft. One of the cooler things to happen came out during the keynote presentation at TechEd Middle East in Dubai. The softie Eric Rudder played the same Indiana Jones style game on a Windows computer, a Windows Phone 7 phone, AND an Xbox 360. Gaming is about to get to blow up and MS is making it’s power play.

Not only is the game itself playable on all three platforms, but the session is maintained when you move from each device: if you’re playing on your Xbox and have to run out the door, you’ll be on the same level when you fire it up on your Windows Phone 7 Series phone. Basically, you’ll never have an excuse not to be gaming.

This all seems utterly wicked from a technology perspective and simultaneously devastating from a “get anything done/have a social life” angle. I can’t imagine a game like… Civilizations… where you have that “just one more turn” mentality!!!

MSMobiles say they have the low down on Microsoft’s Mobile World Congress announcements, and what they leaked makes quite a bit of sense.

First the bits we think we know already:

Windows Mobile 7 will be introduced with Zune, Xbox, Bing integration. It will feature a new kernel,Games and Music improvements and a new user interface, based on Windows Presentation Foundation. Development will take place in the latest version of Visual Studio.

Now the new bits:

Clearly in a direct response to Nokia and Android, Windows Mobile (not sure which version) will come with free navigation (presumably turn by turn). Also clearly in a response to all the open source mobile OS’s, Windows Mobile 6.X will be free to developing markets.

As mentioned above, these changes make perfect sense, and shows a Microsoft prepared to respond much more rapidly than before to changes in the mobile market.

Read more at MSMobiles.com here.

As hardcore gamers play existing video games, casual gamers are taking over the whole video game console market in the U.S. ahead of the summer season (my dad even has a Wii!). Recently released figures by NPD Group indicate not only increase in the general spending on video entertainment, but also overwhelming advantage of Nintendo gaming platform over the Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation.

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The new software update allows gamers to buy new musical tracks, released weekly, without having to use the Xbox Live front end. The store is no more and no less than a full-fledged music service for Rock Band; you can browse available songs by artist, by song title, and later, by album. Many of the tracks are shown with album art, the name of the CD they’ve been taken from, as well as detailed information about how difficult each song is to play on each of the game’s four instruments. A preview function is also available, allowing gamers to hear each song before they pay the dollar or two to download the tracks for use in the game.Couple of important points… if you didn’t catch it this means you can do all of this within the game, AND you can preview the song before you buy it. That’s something I always thought was lacking from RB.

This is a new way to get at a demographic that doesn’t seem to see the worth of paying for music: add the same song they’re willing to download for free into Rock Band or Guitar Hero and see people pay $2 and up for the track. Put a set of three songs by new bands together one week for a lower price, and gamers looking for new content will try them out, allowing you to spread the word about new artists. Gamers are a prime market for music and this is a way to get them more involved in new bands.

It seems like somebody finally gets it. Music sales are in sharp decline because for years now the cost to MAKE music has dropped substantially, people are tired of being raped on the cost of music and would rather just steal it. Here’s a cool idea, provide the music in a way the consumer can interact with it! Kudos… I can’t wait to download more tunes.

There’s been a lot of buzz going around about the latest XBox 360 Dashboard update that will be hitting the streets soon. Most noteable was the expanded Friends List, which will allow you to see more info about the person as well as THEIR friends. Basically, social networking is coming to XBox live. Sounds like a neat idea to me.

The feature I’m most looking forward to is the ability to change the Windows LIVE ID associated with and Xbox LIVE account. The description pretty much says it all, but choosing this option changes the Windows Live ID associated with your Xbox LIVE account. It will also transfer all your Microsoft points to the new Windows Live ID as well. Here are some screen shots that show what this looks like in the dash. I won’t go into detail, but I had an ooooold Xbox.com account from back in the day. I also had a local profile with a GameScore on it. Thing is… these two profiles were named the same. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to create a new XBox Live profile on my XBox 360 and then associate those points with the new local profile. It was like pulling teeth. What I have now is a GamerTag with my nick, but it’s associated with an Windows Live ID other than the one I normally use (for MSIM, etc). So this will be uber handy for me. I can take my current profile and associate it with my current email address and finally everything will be unified! woot!