Sony PSP Go

Sorry to say, but you can’t surprise people with your press conferences if people already know what you are going to announce in them.

Microsoft seemed to do the same on this Monday, as well knew that the company was about to release a motion sensitive control system, but something was quite surprising despite all this, as none was aware how polished that new product could be. Yup, it’s true Project Natal was really surprising at its unveiling.

Now it’s Sony that looking to get some spotlight at E3 and just like always the pressure is mounting on and on. It’s, indeed, a bitter pill for Sony to sustain its PS3 success even after attaining such a great next-gen level in gaming consoles.

Now the speculations are about a more compact and slimmer PS3, but right at that moment it doesn’t seem to happen. However, PSP Go or PlayStation Portable as it is being named has been utterly revamped and now its going to get somewhat sliding shape that might be reckoned as the best shot from Sony to sustain its mojo.

There are also rumors that Sony will come up with a new sort of motion-sensitive controller at E3.

When it comes to the games, it is not clear yet what Sony is going to show off, but the God of War title is certain.

Source: Cnet News

This statement was given by Rota while giving an over view of his new high definition of DivX codec; DivX7. The new DivX7 technology enables that it can encode you HD files. Note that these files can only be played on DivX certified players. Or devices that are compatible with DivX can use these files.

DivX codec become popular due to its ability to compress large files/ lengthy video segments into small sizes. Amazingly, the quality of the video does not impair. The technology used by Rota is said to be stolen from Microsoft’s MPEG-4.

Regarding consoles, at this time only Sony has signed up with DivX to be an official compliant for its PS3. It is looked forward whether any other console manufacturers would step forward to work with DivX. On part of DivX, Microsoft will be happily welcomed in this connection.

Vashist-Rota says, “When it comes to DivX branding, we have had a hard time with Microsoft. Obviously we would love for some sort of partnership to happen”.

Market analysts have an opinion that the collaboration of both Microsoft and DivX, if happens, will be beneficial for both, as more than 100 million are registered with DivX.

The story released today has Jonathan Miller, former CEO of AOL, out to pitch private equity fund for raising $28 – $30 billion in an attempt to acquire Yahoo.

Miller, in association with his partner at Velocity Interactive Group, Ross Levinsohn, was also holding the center stage in the weekend story released by The Times.

Sources reveal that while Levinsohn & Miller have been maintaining regular contacts with Microsoft & Yahoo shareholders and executives for months in regards to the future of Yahoo, they haven’t yet made any discussions with private equity funds for raising capital in order to take over the organization.

Levinsohn & Miller, with other partners of Velocity, have been busy in raising a $300m fund over the period of last year. And with the reports, they have only received commitment for $150m. So, try to raise $30b for taking over Yahoo appears more than far-fetched.

Another reason, which confirms the story to be incorrect, is that the story makes little sense – Miller’s bounded with AOL by a non-compete agreement. It prohibits him to serve as employee or board member of particular companies, which include Yahoo!. In fact, this non-compete agreement is amongst the reasons why he wasn’t able to join the board at Yahoo last summer. This agreement wouldn’t terminate until coming March. Henceforth, getting into any term deals with Yahoo! is impossible, especially without explicit consent of AOL. They weren’t in the position to give the permission last summer. There’s no ground for believing that they’ll allow it now.

As a consequence to WSJ’s story – there was a jump in Yahoo’s stock by around 11.7%, prior to coming down at the end. Investors lost huge sum and SEC will be interested in knowing the source of this news.

The Comscore released figures for August doesn’t give a nice reading for Google’s major search rivals including Yahoo and Microsoft.

In the US, almost sixty-three percent web searches are made via Google while Yahoo with its 19.6 per cent searches is languishing far behind. In Yahoo searches, there is a fall of almost 1% on data from July.

On the other hand, Microsoft’s Live search fell almost 0.6 percent (lesser than Yahoo’s figure) with 8.3 percent web searches.

The figures were quite encouraging for Ask and AOL who got slight gains of 0.3% and 0.1 % respectively.

In the United States, almost 11.7 billion ‘core’ searches are performed and it remains one of the most competitive markets due to Yahoo’s legacy.

In UK, for example, search figures for the month of July showed that Google led the market with its 75.3 % share, but in Asian countries, the story is totally different where Google has a 33 % share and Baidu.com 27.4%.

However, some investors criticized the firm on not to agreeing a $47.5bn buyout offer from Microsoft.

During the meeting, a shareholder Eric Jackson of Ironfire Capital asked Chairman Roy Bostock to step down from the post.

“Bostock must do an honorable thing and resign from the board,” stated Eric Jackson, an investor from Ironfire Capital.

Eric also accused that Bostock overplaying his hand with Microsoft.

Mr Bostock said that there was a great deal of misunderstanding the way Yahoo dealt with the software giant.

“The process of dealing with Microsoft was controlled by the board right from the beginning,” Bostock said.

More than 80% shareholders voted in favor of Bostock re-election.

The billionaire investor Carl Ichan didn’t attend the meeting as he was threatened to replace the board at the annual general meeting.

After getting an offer of two seats for his two nominees on an enlarged Yahoo broad, Ichan changed his mind some time back.

In January this year, Microsoft offered a buyout to Yahoo and at last ended the talks in May after the rejection of an improved offer by Yahoo.

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It’s not surprising at all that Microsoft is recommending users against taking a pass on vista. Microsoft is supporting business users to migrate to Vista sooner as it is a part of a new white paper to influence business users who are considering when and whether to shift to Windows Vista.

The white paper “The Business Value of Windows Vista: Five Reasons to set up now” just repeats the business features Microsoft developed into Vista and emphasizes some of the new installed tools and case-study examples of the companies who moved to Vista, otherwise, it doesn’t comprise numerous new data.

According to Lee Nicholls, Director of Global Solutions with Getronics, “One can’t disagree with Microsoft’s compatibility warning”. Global Solutions with Getronics is Microsoft’s incorporate partner and sells a lot in the financial services and manufacturing industries.
Nicholls adds that “Based on what Microsoft finishes up providing in terms of new migration and operation tools, there can be still less compatibility in XP and Windows 7”
There can be a big gap between Windows XP and Windows 7 but from Vista to windows 7 this gap is fairly minor. Even if this Windows 7 is a superset of windows Vista, yet it is not something worth waiting for” Nicholls said.

Microsoft also gave a timing argument to induce business customers to have an upgrade now. In this connection, Microsoft also pointed to a Gartner Group’s report “Don’t Skip Windows Vista entirely”

It’s being recommended by Getronics to customers that it will not be worth spending their whole IT budget to pay to extend their support for Windows XP.

Related links

Waiting For Windows 7 

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In the United States, Microsoft has decided to greatly reduce the price of the high end version known as Vista Ultimate. The price of Vista Ultimate has fallen to $219 from a previous retail price of $299. Additionally, prices for the popular Home Premium addition are also being reduced from $159 to $129. As you can see, these are no small price reductions.

Windows Vista was finally released in January of 2007 to much anticipation. Since being released, Vista has sold well over 100 million copies. With that being said, the main reason for this is that the operating system is installed on most of the PCs on the market. When it comes to retail sales, Vista is much more sluggish. In fact, when compared to the sales of XP over the same timeline, Vista is lagging well behind.

One of the reasons for the lack of retail sales is that many experts and industry professionals have been critical of the new operating system. In fact, many users have decided to ditch Vista altogether and install XP on their computer. This is not good news for Microsoft.

Microsoft officials feel that lowering the price of Windows Vista will make it more accessible to the masses. While they will lose money on each sale in the retail marketplace, the company feels that this revenue will be made up in PC sales when buyers decide to upgrade thanks to a lower price.

It is safe to say that Microsoft priced Vista too high upon its initial release. Although it has taken more than a year to slash the prices, the company finally seems to be on the right track. They are hoping that this price reduction will increase sales across the board.

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Although this news is moving into the public eye once again, it stems from a 2004 ruling. Generally speaking, Microsoft is being fined because they neglected to share information with its competition on how to interoperate with its many software applications.

Once the court ordered that Microsoft share this information, they did comply. With that being said, the company charged royalty rates to those who accessed the information. While there is nothing wrong with this, the court agreed that the royalty rates were entirely too high.

Neelie Kroes, the European Union Competition Commissioner said, “Microsoft was the first company in 50 years of EU competition policy that the Commission has had to fine for failure to comply with an antitrust decision. I hope that today’s decision closes a dark chapter in Microsoft’s record of non-compliance with the Commission’s March 2004 decision.” As you can see, Microsoft is treading in unfamiliar territory. They are the first company to get hit with this type of fine, and hopefully they will be the last.

In 2004, Microsoft was fined more than $600 million for using its position in the market in an abusive manner. Additionally, the company was told at this time to supply the appropriate documentation to third parties such as developers and key rivals. Unfortunately, by July of 2006 Microsoft had yet to comply, and they were slapped with another fine; this time of $417.9 million.

Microsoft is not doing itself any favors by acting in this manner. While industry experts thought that they would learn their lesson in 2004, this did not happen. Perhaps this fine, weighing in at more than $1 billion, will make Microsoft realize that they are not above the law.

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Microsoft could not see a possible reason for increasing its bid for Yahoo. A reliable source had stated that Microsoft is not up to bidding against itself until Yahoo shows up and become willing to cooperate in the bargaining table. New York Times Deal Book had stated that Microsoft is willing to move forward with proxy battle with Yahoo.

Yahoo had remained silent since Microsoft’s offer had been made. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, until Yahoo makes a formal statement and responds to this issue, there is no point for Microsoft to increase its bid. This is similar to bidding against itself.

This formality that Microsoft is waiting for from Yahoo is quite questionable considering that its unsolicited bid which initially amounted to $44.6 billion equivalent to $31 per share had undervalued Yahoo. However, a formal move from Yahoo is most likely expected by the giant software company into order to have the ball back.

For formality’s sake, Microsoft is waiting to receive a letter of rejection coming from Yahoo’s side stating that its offer is being rejected because they believe that Yahoo has a far higher value than what is being offered. Microsoft made a statement in CNET.com that Yahoo should express its willingness to communicate and converse regarding the matter. Microsoft’s response will be available for them within 24 hours. Furthermore, Microsoft stated that they prefer the transaction to be done in a friendly manner.

A banker not involved with this transaction had stated that the probable reason why Yahoo is currently not releasing its statement is because it does not want to engage until it has completely explored and studied all of its other options.

An attorney who refused to be named could not determine strategic advantages with relevance to this action in order to forgo formal response. Moreover, Yahoo may be thinking that a formal letter is inappropriate at this point. 20 days had already passed since Microsoft had made its unsolicited offer.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is making strict considerations with regards to the retention of Yahoo employees which happened to be an important element of the deal.

One report came out stating that later this week; Microsoft had made plans of authorizing a proxy fight. Yahoo did not make any immediate comment on this next step expected from Microsoft.

Relevant Links:

• http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/may2007/db20070504_035238.htm

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This launch by Microsoft and Xbox builds a new generation of online community. Microsoft’s Chris Satchell released a statement on this new launch at the Game Developers’ Conference which was held in San Francisco. Satchell told amateur game developers that through this online service community, 10 million individuals will be able to play their games. Satchell also thinks of this new concept of gaming experience as every video gamer’s territory wherein they will be creating and managing their games while everyone is welcome to play them.

This system of game distribution will allow everybody to enjoy home-brewed games created by these amateur creators. Furthermore, Microsoft is set to release a sequel to Gears of War. This will surely cause a great deal of excitement among the avid followers of this popular game. Gears of War had been reported to earn 4.5 million dollars accounting for its phenomenal success.

Tools which are called XNA which opens great opportunities for amateur video game developers to brew games specifically for Xbox 360 and Windows are being distributed by Microsoft for free. However, the games cannot be shared yet as of now. As of the present, above 400 universities are currently utilizing the XNA tools. Based on reports, XNA package had already acquired an amazing number of downloads which was accounted to be more than 800,000 times.

Satchell describes this as democratisation, both of development as well as in the distribution. Head of Xbox Live services, John Schappert, mentioned that they want to unlock the potential in every game developer. They believe that there are thousands of amateur game creators / developers who deserve an opportunity to unleash their potentials and share the fruits of their skills and talents within a community that shares a common field of interest.

Moreover, Microsoft made an announcement regarding its plan to build a model for sharing revenues. This model is specifically for all the community games distributed by the amateur creators to Xbox Live online service. This launch by Microsoft and Xbox Live can serve as an inspiration for all game developers to further hone their abilities and release their potential in brewing games which can be enjoyed by players from all over the world.

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RELEVANT LINK: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7255866.stm