Microsoft News Tracker

The week is ending on a very odd note, as witness my two prior posts from today, but here are some more bizarre Microsoft happenings from this week:

The Odd Case of the Ubuntu Download. Ubuntu Linux mysteriously appeared on Windows Marketplace where it became a very popular download, then less mysteriously it disappeared.

The Expensive Case of the Grand Theft Auto IV Add-ons. Take Two Interactive’s CFO let slip in an earnings conference call that someone was paying an extravagant $50 million fee for “episodic” content in the Xbox 360 version of the upcoming GTA IV and then stonewalled on providing details. Microsoft finally confessed and expressed the hope that fees for the downloadable add-ons would recoup at least part of the expense.

The Strange Case of the Vanishing Vista Virtualization License. Microsoft primed the press for an announcement this week on relaxing the arbitrary licensing restrictions on running Vista in a virtual machine and then canceled the whole thing at the last minute. Microsoft isn’t talking and theories abound, but the suspicion is that while permitting  the lower cost versions of Vista to run in VMs would help Windows developers, Microsoft balked at helping non-Windows users (i.e. Linux or Macintosh) who would also benefit.