Microsoft has said that sales of the Xbox 360 have doubled in the past two weeks, outselling Sony's PlayStation 3 by two-to-one.
According to Chart Track figures, sales were up 214 per cent in the past two weeks, in the wake of a price cut across the European region. "This data shows that the Xbox 360 trajectory continues upwards, and not just in the UK," said Chris Lewis, VP of Xbox in Europe.
Microsoft today unveiled three free downloadable add-ons for Windows Vista Ultimate, the first time in five months that the company has refreshed its "Ultimate Extras," once a chief selling point for the operating system's highest-priced edition.
The add-ons include a puzzle game, dubbed "Tinkers;" a Windows sound scheme based on the game; and new content for Dreamscape, a video-based screensaver.
Microsoft has been busy this year, rolling out Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 in a push to expand its presence in the corporate data center. To be successful, the company must overcome an economic environment that appears increasingly difficult as well as tough competition from rivals Oracle and VMware, among others
Last time CEO Steve Ballmer offered a tentative timeframe as to when he might retire from Microsoft, he put the date at ten years or so from now (around the time his youngest goes to college).
But now there’s a new date. And Ballmer may be sticking around a lot longer than many are thinking, or, in some cases, hoping.
Microsoft is cancelling its much-hyped Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates advertising campaign.
The company said that it would be ending the campaign in favor of two new advertising strategies designed to tout the benefits of Windows Vista and strike back at Apple's "Get a Mac" advertising campaign.
Microsoft is crossing the aisles to see the security process through from start to finish -- not just internally, but for outside software developers too. The company plans to export its Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) process to a greater extent by releasing tools and support to IT pros later this fall, Redmond said this week.
Microsoft yesterday released 21 additional versions of its Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 2, including editions in Czech, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish and other languages.
The company, however, declined to set a date for when it will automatically update Windows Vista systems that have a copy of IE8 Beta 1 already installed. According to Microsoft, the 21 new, fully-localized versions can be downloaded immediately. When it launched IE8 Beta 2 late last month, Microsoft shipped the browser only in English, Simplified Chinese, German and Japanese.
Thanks to Microsoft, I feel 10 years younger. Could this be 1998? It sure feels that way.
Microsoft is innovating around the Web browser again. I haven't witnessed this kind of focus, execution or communication since 1996-1998, when Microsoft waged the browser war against Netscape. And won.
Just ask anyone who's seen Spiderman 3: Good ideas seldom survive bad execution.
The developers at Microsoft had some great ideas while designing Vista, but poor implementation turned many of those great concepts into lousy, annoying features. To be fair, Vista inherited most of these well-intentioned flaws from earlier versions of Windows — but it either failed to fix them or didn't even try.
It’s emerged that Google’s Chrome browser, created using a host of open-source coding, actually includes Microsoft content. While it was used perfectly legally, Google made little mention of the Microsoft connection when launching Chrome.
It also turns out that Google may have looked through the coding behind Vista; confusingly enough the code was needed to make Chrome run safely in the service pack 2 edition of XP.
