Xbox 360
The Xbox Companion app, available now in preview form in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, provides an integration point with Microsoft’s best-selling video game console and entertainment device. Similar to the Xbox Companion app for Windows Phone, this new Metro-style app lets you browse and interact with content in Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE-based online markets.
more The deeper I dive into Windows 8’s App Previews, the stranger it gets. There are half-complete apps, semi-useless apps, apps that promote commerce over your local content, and apps that make no sense at all. And then there’s Xbox LIVE Games, which seems to break every rule in the book. It’s fun, but bizarre.
more Since releasing its Metro-style Xbox 360 Dashboard Update last fall, Microsoft has bolstered its console's entertainment services many times, most recently adding XFINITY TV, HBO GO, and MLB TV to the lineup. Despite some egregious hoops to jump through, the Xbox 360 is suddenly the top choice for the living room hub.
more Microsoft is in the process of consolidating all of its somewhat separate online accounts--Windows Live ID, Xbox LIVE, Zune and Zune Pass, and many more--into a single aggregate account it will call Microsoft Your Account. Kudos to my Windows Secrets co-author Rafael Rivera for uncovering this change.
more Microsoft has delivered its improved Kinect for Windows, a motion sensor device that aims to bring Kinect entertainment to the PC masses. But unlike its Xbox 360 forefather, the Kinect for Windows comes sans any utilities or games. So for now at least, it's a plaything for developers only.
more In a special live event Monday night, Mary Jo Foley and I did our best "Mystery Science Theater 3000" imitation and provided color commentary to Microsoft's final Consumer Electronics Show keynote address. Microsoft discussed Windows Phone, Windows 7, Windows 8, Xbox 360, and Kinect during the speech.
more In this fourth and final look at the Fall 2011 Dashboard Update for the Xbox 360, I examine the new TV and entertainment services that Microsoft and its partners are adding to Xbox LIVE, a move that finally puts the software giant's console over the top as a living room set-top box.
more In the third part of my review of Microsoft's latest Dashboard Update for the Xbox 360, I focus on three new features--Beacons, new cloud storage features, and Windows Phone integration--that are important to furthering Microsoft's goal to make the console a cohesive, integrated part of a wider ecosystem of products.
more With its Fall 2011 Dashboard Update, Microsoft has thoroughly overhauled the Xbox 360's software underpinnings, providing new platform-level capabilities to the Dashboard and all of the apps that run on top of that platform. Key among these capabilities is new Bing search integration and improved Kinect motion and voice control functionality.
more Microsoft this week released its Xbox Companion App for Windows Phone 7.5, which can be used as a remote control for your Xbox 360-based entertainment, and as a mobile hub for discovering more about all of the content that can flow through this console, including games, TV shows and movies, and music.
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