Category: From Our Sites

Microsoft MVPs have just about a month until they’re summoned for in-depth conversations with product teams and comradery in the form of late night drinking with yours truly among others. If you’re making the pilgrimage to the Microsoft 2013 MVP Global Summit, how’s about you throw a song into Consumer Camp’s 3rd Annual MVP Summit Playlist?

After filling out a short survey, you can add your favorite songs to the playlist and let everyone know just how hip to the Justin Beiber game you really are, (or not). You’ll have to hurry to get in as many songs as possible though, the group’s director, Marques Lyons plans on closing submissions on February 4th.

I plan adding a little Justin Timberlake to the playlist. I mean, you can’t go wrong with anything from FutureSex/LoveSounds, can you?

Just incase you weren’t already preparing your wallet for the impending shellacking that it’s sure to get from this spring’s newest games and their accompanying licensed accessories, comes yet another reason for you Lara Croft fans to start stacking your “paper”.  Accompanying Tomb Raider’s launch will be a matching Xbox 360 Wireless controller.

Announced via press release this afternoon via MajorNelson, the Xbox 360 TOMB RAIDER™ Limited Edition Wireless Controller will ship for $59.99 along side the latest gaming adventure to feature Lara Croft on March 5 at participating retailers.

 

Nothing says success like cold hard numbers and the folks for Redmond seem to be delivering the goods -to the tune of 60 million Windows 8 licenses.

That 60 million number, which was announced today on the Windows Team Blog by Brandon LeBlanc, matches the sales trajectory of Windows 8′s predecessor Windows 7 and should go a little way towards relaxing fears that Microsoft’s latest and greatest operating system is doing as well in the sales department as the company had hoped.

When we heard through the grapevine that Windows Phone 8 would be getting some love from the United States’ third largest wireless carrier today, we were gitty to say the least.

Through a press release this afternoon, Sprint announced that they’d be adding new Windows Phones from both Samsung and HTC while trumpeting their longstanding “strong relationship with Microsoft”. If you’re reading this and you’re thinking we’ve just told you a whole lot of nothing, you’ve caught us. Sprint’s press release makes no mention the name or anything from the feature sheet for either of these new devices except to say that both devise will include 3G and 4GLTE Radios, and include dual cameras for video chat, expandable memory, and dual-core processors.

Sprint has a somewhat checkered past with Windows Phone, partially because they’ve only offered the HTC Arrive a full six months after it was originally slated, and partially because of them choosing to only launch the HTC Arrive . This new round of devices should launch “before summer”.

Move over Major Nelson, there’s a another official blog on the scene, and they’re all about promoting Xbox LIVE Arcade 24/7.

The Xbox LIVE Arcade focused, PlayXBLA  is being expanded this year with a new community forum area for readers to converse among themselves, more live game streaming with the relaunch of it’s Twich.TV channel and a new podcast coming soon.

PlayXBLA, much like MajorNelson is all about promoting the latest and greatest in content available via the Xbox services and features Alex and Vulcan as they talk about forthcoming titles and their favorites from the current catalog of games available to users.

 

Microsoft is finally taking steps to improve the experience of those users of Xbox LIVE who travel and would like to take their LIVE account with them.

According to tips sent to Neowin, Starting this month users will be able to circumvent the rather exhausting process of moving the localized account from region to region and instead be taken through an automated system that should make the process as quick as a few mouse clicks. Unfortunately if their tipster is to believed, (and we think it makes perfect sense), you won’t be able to take access to any content when you’ve switched an account to another region -instead only your cache of Microsoft Points, achievements, tenure, and Gold subscription will be able to go on holiday with you.

Right now, we’ve heard no confirmation on this from the folks in Redmond but you can bet we will the moment we hear anything more.

On this day three years ago Travis announced that he would be joining follow Zune followers Jason Dunn, Marques Lyons, Andrea Avellan, Paul Colligan, Corey Shuster, Neville Williams, Grahm Skee, Harvey Cute and Jonathan Hefner as Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals who’d been awarded for their contributions to the Zune Community. It was one of the biggest moments for ZuneSpring. It changed the way we approached the site and the way we approached everything about the product itself.

It’s my pleasure to announce that as of January 1st I’ve been allowed to continue my work in the Xbox community with Allyn Creel, Grahm Skee, Alexndre Mescherinoff, Daylon Furlough, James McCormick, Stephen Cameron, Rick Kim, Martina Niebuhr, Yu Jeong Kim, Nicholas Puleo, Helene Wilson, Lisa Bidder, Neville Williams, Marques Lyons, Zach Wigal, Mohd Nizam, Morten Skou, Edward Webb, Trina Finton, Rick Wallace, Nori Fox, David Lync, Mark Libman, Jose Cerqueira Barros Jr, Frederik De Breuck, Chris Brown, Bandee Adams, Dario Zgrablic, William Devereux, Cody Sanchex, John Kiewswetter, Kartik Mudgal, Zac Pratt, Luigi Violin, Kirby Yablonski, and Oscar Diaz in the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional program.

I’d like to thank each and every one of you for your continued support. I’ve got big plans for the site this year and starting out the 2013 this way is a hell of a motivator. Back in 2010 I said, “Here’s to ZuneSpring, and the people who make it better each and everyday, here’s to you dear Zune owner. I work for you, what’s next boss?”

I’m once again humbled, and ready to do your bidding, Dear Reader. What’s next?

Across this great planet of ours, humans are putting down their late morning coffee, giving up their last vestiges of Holiday 2012 and being forced back into that hell we all call work, just to earn a bottom dollar. What can you do to protect your self from this, that most ghastly of prisons? If you’ve got an Xbox LIVE account, you could take advantage of discounted Season Passes on your favorite CBS shows and waste those afternoon hours like they’re still of the Yuletide variety.

Those who do chose to do so can pick up the entire currently running seasons of How I Met Your Mother for $39.99, Elementary for $24.99, Hawaii Five-0 for $29.99, and NCIS for $34.99.

Now, we can’t guarantee that this will stop the steady rise of the End of the Holidays Menace forever, but at least you can access to a few good laughs as a consolation prize if it doesn’t work.

Well would you look at that, we made it through Holiday 2012. We’re slowly kicking tires and relighting fires around here so it’ll be a few hours before we’re back to normal operations so sit tight; the first news, reviews, and editorials of 2013 are on their way.

What do you get when you take grab Bill Pullman from Independence Day, Jenna Elfman of Dharma and Greg, and the most powerful office in country? We’d say you get a pretty watchable comedy, though you don’t have to take our word for it. Right now you can download the pilot episode of NBC’s new White House focused drama 1600 Penn for free in the Xbox Video Store.