Microsoft News Tracker

Not every Microsoft announcement at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show made the Bill Gates keynote.

From the Microsoft Hardware group (i.e. the part of Entertainment & Devices that makes money but gets no buzz):

Microsoft Hardware’s Innovative Industry Firsts Earn Top CES Honors

This week at the 2007 International CES in Las Vegas, Microsoft Corp. will showcase its award-winning peripherals, the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 and the Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000, both named CES Innovations 2007 Design and Engineering Awards Honorees on the basis of their innovative designs and advancements in peripheral engineering…

Microsoft’s Upgraded Fingerprint Reader Makes Windows Vista Features More Convenient

…Microsoft Corp. announced the availability of the Microsoft Fingerprint Reader with software updates from DigitalPersona Inc., for Windows Vista compatibility, offering users the convenience of replacing their passwords with their fingerprint…

Microsoft and Razer Launch Cutting-Edge Gaming Keyboard

HD DVD related:

Microsoft Technology Brings HD DVD to the Mainstream

Microsoft Corp. showcased the growing momentum behind HD DVD through its contribution of core technologies. Microsoft helped deliver the highest-quality video with the VC-1 codec, advanced interactivity with HDi™, and a streamlined and affordable platform for player manufacturers through the use of Microsoft Windows CE 6.0.

Microsoft and Broadcom Deliver Combined Hardware and Software Platform for More Cost-Efficient HD DVD Players

Microsoft Corp. and Broadcom Corp. announced a joint effort to support a hardware and software reference design for more cost-efficient HD DVD playback. The new platform uses Microsoft Windows CE 6.0 and Broadcom’s BCM7440 system-on-chip solution, allowing consumer electronics manufacturers, original design manufacturers and systems integrators to more easily and affordably deliver HD DVD playback. Several of the more innovative, high volume electronics companies that plan to use this new hardware and software platform to speed the production of HD DVD players include Lite-On IT Corp. and Zhenjiang Jiangkui Group Co. Ltd./ED Digital.

MSN Direct:

MSN Direct Goes High Def with Clear Channel

Microsoft Corp. and Clear Channel Radio today announced at the 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that they have executed a collaborative agreement to build a nationwide data delivery service using HD Radio technology, providing personalized and localized content to a variety of HD Radio receivers. This initiative will be branded MSN Direct HD, an extension of Microsoft’s existing MSN Direct service, which currently transmits a variety of information including traffic, weather, movie times, sports, and stocks to Smart Watches, weather stations, Global Positioning System navigation devices and small home appliances.

Microsoft SPOT Initiative Accelerates With Addition of MSN Direct to Navigation Devices

Microsoft Corp.’s Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT) Group announced the availability of MSN Direct navigation services and announced that Garmin International Inc. will be the first to offer the new MSN Direct service to Global Positioning System (GPS) devices. Customers will be able to receive dynamic local information, including weather condition and traffic updates, movies listings, and gas prices.

Microsoft SPOT also announced plans to work with future versions of Microsoft Streets & Trips and Pharos Science & Applications Inc. to offer MSN Direct Navigation Services to their devices. In addition, Microsoft SPOT is working with Centrality Communications Inc. to integrate MSN Direct with its GPS reference designs…

Just as Microsoft announced at CES that they had met their Xbox 360 ship target, so did Sony for the PS3:

The most widely watched report on holiday video game sales is not due until Thursday, but early hints suggest that it may hold a few surprises.

Sony said Sunday that between the late-November debut of the PlayStation 3 and the end of the year, it had shipped one million of the new consoles to the United States. It said it still expected to ship six million consoles to retailers worldwide by the end of March.

The figure of six million in particular was surprising to analysts in the video game industry who have said that Sony faced challenges in manufacturing enough consoles. They have also questioned whether the price of the PlayStation 3 — $600 for the high-end version — would scare mainstream consumers. Analysts had expected Sony to ship four million to five million consoles.

“It sounds like they really are ramping up production,” said Paul-Jon McNealy, an analyst with American Technology Research. “They’ve gotten their feet underneath them.”

The NPD report will be interesting, but recall that it is only for retail store sales in North America. More projections:

The company expects to sell 13-15 million Xbox 360s by the end of its fiscal year in June, Microsoft spokesman David Hufford said.

Both Sony and Nintendo are projecting selling 6 million consoles by the end of March. Sony expects to start shipping the PS3 to Europe sometime that month as well.

Update: Todd Tanner at Neowin points to VG Charts which estimates total next gen console sales at:

• Microsoft Xbox 360 - 8.34m
• Nintendo Wii - 4.00m
• Sony PS3 - 1.41m

Update: Microsoft’s Peter Moore summarizes Xbox 360 market data and John Porcaro nicely bulletizes it.

CNET UK’s Crave blog sums up Bill Gate’s keynote at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show quite nicely:

The Gates soft-shoe shuffle at CES kicks off the gadget show each year with the same forlorn regularity as a Windows blue screen of death. It’s comforting to watch Bill climb up to the stage, but prepare yourselves, people: this can’t go on for ever. Gates began his remarks by saying that next year’s keynote may well be his last.

This year’s keynote didn’t hold many too many surprises. There was the usual self-satisfied purring about what a long way we’ve all come, baby, in what Gates is now calling “the digital decade”. There was also some quite staggeringly unhip video showing what were supposed to be hip and cool consumers using Microsoft products to have connected experiences.

I always get a laugh out of the “digital future” concept demos they put poor Mr Gates through.  This year even he was laughing at the schtick where he, the world’s richest man, was reading interactive ads at a bus stop and checking out recipes projected on a kitchen counter after setting a forlorn bag of RFID tagged flour on it.

Also, someone please get Robbie Bach a public speaking coach - he seemed like a deer in the headlights. Of course, it is a trifle embarrassing to warmly endorse parental controls for gaming on Vista and then run a montage of games that mostly involved shooting other people.

The main event was news of a new home server as well as some cutesy Media Center PCs in quirky form factors (round and white anyone?). There was also the intriguing news that Microsoft will allow its Xbox 360 games console to act as a link to its Internet Television service, or IPTV.

And that’s about it in a nutshell. Some more details from the general press release and elsewhere:

• New Vista PC form factors - see the press release. These are presumably the result of Microsoft “helping out” the PC manufacturers on design. Also a couple of Vista Ultimate Extras (goodies you get for buying the pricey Ultimate version) were revealed.
• Exactly as leaked, the Xbox 360 made its 10 million ship target and will in future provide Microsoft TV IPTV set top box functionality. This feature plus the video download service announced in November (Lionsgate was announced as a new content provider) seem to me to be more selling points for the Xbox 360 than any real encroachment on the consumer electronics market. Also, the first fruits of Live Anywhere were demonstrated where Vista PC users can play online versus Xbox 360 users.
• The deal for Ford to offer Windows Automotive based car entertainment systems under the Sync brand came off as rumored.
• Finally, the rumored Windows Home Server (formerly codenamed Quattro) came to pass with Hewlett-Packard scheduled to be the first out of the gate to deliver one (HP MediaSmart Sever) in 2H2007. The details are rather sparse other than it sits on the customer’s home network and serves media files to Windows Media Connect supported devices as well as providing automated storage backup for the customer’s other client PCs. One novel note is that Microsoft will provide a free “personalized Internet address from Windows Live” so the data on the server can be accessed from anywhere, hopefully only by the owner. All this functionality can be purchased today from other vendors, so it will be interesting to see the price points for the Home Servers when they reach the market.

Update: Paul Thurrott has more details on the Windows Home Server including that it is based on Windows Server 2003 R2 and that the operating system can be purchased without hardware.

Update: A press release and Q&A for Windows Home Server have belatedly arrived. See also this post on the weblog of Microsoft’s Charlie Kindel, a member of the Home Server development team.

Clarification: Ken Fisher at Ars Technica:

One challenge facing Windows Home Server (WHS for short) is that it is an OEM-only product, meaning that you won’t be able to head out and buy WHS at your local retail joint. And much like Media Center in the early days, we don’t expect specialty shops to carry an OEM version of the software anytime soon. This is disappointing news, because the early-adopter segment isn’t particularly interested in paying top dollar for OEM creations when do-it-yourself delivers a better experience. That said, I discussed this briefly with a Microsoft representative who said that Microsoft is aware that there’s a big enthusiast crowd out there, and a retail release of the OS isn’t out of the question.