In my view, this deal is all about buying brand awareness. Despite the fact that Microsoft have similar technology in their Live Messenger products for consumers, Live Messenger is not top of mind for consumers when they want to place a VOIP voice or video call. If Microsoft spent the time and money to integrate Live Messenger video/voice into their product lines such as Xbox and Windows Phone, they wouldn’t see the return on that because most people would just say “but all my friends are on Skype!” and would not use it.

By purchasing Skype, Microsoft can integrate it into all their products (including their business-focused Lync) and have a built-in user base and user mind-share. It will sell more products because people who already use Skype will consider purchasing an Xbox, Windows Phone, etc. because they’ll realize that they can use Skype to connect to all their friends and family by using it.

Additionally, when the LTE networks really start to come online and become the primary network being used by the operators, Microsoft will have a big hammer to swing as the owner of the most prevalent VOIP technology with the largest existing userbase. They can license that technology to the carriers for use as their VOIP technology that will be riding on top of LTE (and future networks).

All in all a very smart move in my opinion. It’s likely not a huge direct revenue generator, but a revenue enabler across their whole range of products and services.

I decided to wait a little while before I posted my thoughts on Microsoft’s announcement of Windows Phone 7 Series.  I wanted to give myself a little time to digest all the coverage.  I also wanted to gather my thoughts on what we know and what is still up in the air.

For those that haven’t seen the new interface yet (where have you been?), here’s a quick video intro:

I’m not going to go very in depth in this post because many other sites have covered what we know with extreme depth and clarity.  If you’re looking for an in depth article with very good analysis, see this Engadget article.  For my part, I’m simply going to cover things from my personal perspective, picking out the things that I really like or things that I think will really apply to my life.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m typically not the type of gamer that picks up a game, plays it for a week or two, then moves on to the next game.  I either play it a few times and put it away because it’s not for me, or I play it for a really long time.

My previous obsession on the Xbox 360 was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (COD4), so it makes sense that when Call of Duty: World at War (COD:WW) came out, I picked it up immediately. My comments in this post are going to be regarding the multiplayer play, as this is what I primarily play.

While I truly love Call of Duty 4, there were a few things that needed some tweaking in the game.  One of the biggest issues was the “assist” point system in multiplayer.  If you hit an enemy and another player on your team finishes him off, you get an assist.  In COD4 you received the same number of points for that assist regardless of if you did the most damage to him or only hit him once.  In COD:WW, they’ve adjusted this mechanism to give assists a sliding scale of points based on damage, a good solution to an annoying issue.

There are various other changes in COD:WW that make it a better game from a multiplayer standpoint.  The maps are more finely detailed in both appearance and layout.  They’ve included the ability to drive tanks on some of the maps, which adds a completely new element to the game that’s pretty interesting.  I’m glad they limited to only certain maps and didn’t completely overwhelm the game with vehicles.

Some of the gripes I had with COD4 still remain in COD:WW.  There are a lot of times during multiplayer play that it seems to go a bit out of sync. I’m not talking about lag.  I’m talking about an opponent killing you while you’re putting a clip of rounds into him and then the replay video showing him shooting you while you’re looking a different direction or just coming around the corner.

Sometimes those issues get really frustrating when you’re having a bad day, but all in all the game is extremely fun to play.  I’m sure I’ll be playing it for quite a while until something new with great multiplayer comes along.  If you have any thoughts on new Xbox 360 multiplayer games coming out I should be on the lookout for, let me know!