- Author: admin
- Filed under: Microsoft
- Date: Feb 9,2010
The military currently trains its soldiers using PCs, but they were interested in switching to the Xbox 360 for a number of reasons. Unfortunately, Microsoft was not too interested in helping them out.
According to Danger Room, Microsoft refused to sell consoles to Roger Smith, chief technology officer for PEO STRI, the Army command responsible for purchasing training equipment. Why wouldn’t Microsoft sell them consoles? Well, according to Smith, three reasons:
* Microsoft was afraid that the military would buy up lots of Xbox 360s, but would buy only one game for each of them, so MS wouldn’t make much money off of the games.
* that a big military purchase would create a shortage of Xbox 360s.
* that if the Xbox became an Army training device, it would taint its reputation. Microsoft was concerned that “do we want the Xbox 360 to be seen as having the flavor of a weapon? Do we want Mom and Dad knowing that their kid is buying the same game console as the military trains the SEALs and Rangers on?” Smith told me during an interview for Training & Simulation Journal.
When asked about this, a Microsoft rep claimed to have no knowledge of that conversation and suggested the Army uses the XNA Game Studio development tools. Sure, Microsoft. But they didn’t say they were opposed to working with the Army. Read the rest of this entry »
We’ve had a pretty clear indication that Microsoft would have plenty to say about Windows Mobile 7 at MWC this month, and it looks like we now have the first significant batch of rumored details ahead of the presumed launch.
While nothing is close to being confirmed just yet, PPCGeeks has received what it describes as some “truly amazing information” about what’s now apparently known as Windows Phone 7, and it certainly paints an interesting picture.
According to the site, Windows Phone 7 will sport an interface that’s “very similar” to the Zune HD, along with a complete revamp of the start screen, and a UI (codenamed METRO) that’s described as “very clean,” “soulful,” and “alive.”
Perhaps just as notably, the OS supposedly won’t support multitasking, with applications instead simply pausing themselves when in the background (there will be support for push notifications, though). Read the rest of this entry »
Many of you may have been impressed with the quality of games on the Apple iPhone, yet a mobile chip maker known as ARM says that we will soon be able to have Xbox quality gameplay available on cell phones. Cell phones that only cost about $100 dollars.
The new ARM Mali-200 and Mali-400 processors will be released around winter of 2009, and they should be in cell phones on the market within a few months after that.
The company has already ported Project Gotham Racer to work with their new processors. According to them, “Performance-wise, it runs like the original Xbox, but feature-wise it looks like an Xbox 360 title.” Read the rest of this entry »
