Microsoft held its keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show this morning and announced a slew of products that you’ve already seen before.
Microsoft’s keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada was highly anticipated. Would they announce a new tablet PC to combat Apple’s rumored product? Would they blow up the gaming world with some hot new game title or an amazing new peripheral? Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, took the stage and described all of Microsoft’s previous accomplishments without announcing a lot of new information. The only news was a new Halo game and the release date for Natal, both of which will aim for a release during the holiday season in 2010.
The speech largely focused on what had already been accomplished. Here are some bullet points from Microsoft’s press release which coincided with the address:
Xbox sold more than 10 million consoles last year and we have now sold 39 million Xbox 360s around the world.
Xbox LIVE enjoyed its biggest week ever at Christmas time, with a new member joining every second.
During this time, Xbox LIVE saw a record peak of more than 2.2 million people using the service at the same time – up 47% over the same period last year.
As for new announcements, the motion capture system Natal will drop in Q4 of 2010, in time for the holidays. Microsoft is also proud of their current 2010 lineup for the Xbox 360, including Splinter Cell Conviction, Crackdown 2, Mass Effect 2, and Alan Wake. For the holidays, Fable 3 will be coming out and a bit of surprise, a new entry into the Halo franchise, Halo Reach.
“What Star Wars is to film and what Harry Potter is to fantasy books, Halo is to the gaming industry,” said Robbie Bach, Microsoft’s president for entertainment and devices.
In general though, those who saw Microsoft’s presentation were underwhelmed. “We were really bored by it,” said Paul Miller from Engadget. “This is CES, and you’re looking for what’s new. For them to show us a bunch of products and functions that we’d already seen, it just seemed like a waste of time.”
Source: CNN
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