According to internal VGChartz estimates, sales of Microsoft's Kinect sensor passed the 4 million unit mark as of last week (week ending December 11th). This puts Kinect on pace to sell over 6 million units by the end of the year. Xbox 360 hardware sales have seen a significant lift since the launch of Kinect with around 40% of all Kinect sensor sales worldwide coming via units bundled with Xbox360 hardware - clearly showing that Kinect has been selling outside of the existing Xbox360 userbase.

In the same timeframe from launch, Nintendo's Wii managed to sell 2.9 million units and Sony's PlayStation Move sold just over 900,000 units (camera + at least one Move controller) - less than 1/4 of the sales of Kinect. Despite the shortages experienced by Nintendo in 2006 and despite a far more aggressive marketing push than Sony had with Move and the effect of holiday boosts (which Move did not have in the initial 6 weeks), Kinect still looks to be the clear winner of the "motion wars" at this early stage. A...

What? It took two full months for someone to make a Kinect sex game? C'mon, porn industry -- you generally move faster than that!

Joking aside (or maybe not), you read that right: There are sex games in the works for Kinect, Microsoft's new motion sensor for the Xbox 360. ThriXXX, maker of such titles as "3D SexVilla2," "Fetish 3D" and "3D Slut," is working on technology for its games that allows people to, um, interact with virtual women through motion gestures and voice commands via Kinect.

"The Kinect controller is astonishing...

Microsoft is working to improve the accuracy of Xbox 360 motion-sensing add-on Kinect so that it could detect finger movement and hand rotation, Eurogamer understands.

Microsoft's Kinect team is said to be working "very hard" on a switching or compression technology that will allow a greater amount of data to pass through Kinect to the Xbox 360 console.

Kinect features are dictated by firmware so that they can be added and upgraded over time.

The depth sensor used by Kinect is also dictated by firmware – it is currently set at a 30 frames per second limit and a 320x240 resolution limit.

At a 640x480 resolution, however, Kinect could begin to detect fingers and hand rotation – an effective quadrupling of its accuracy.

Read More: EUROGAMER





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Federal authorities in the first-of-its-kind game-console–modding criminal trial abruptly dropped their prosecution here Thursday, “based on fairness and justice.”

“The government has decided to dismiss the indictment,” prosecutor Allen Chiu told the judge shortly before the jury was to be seated on the third day of trial.

The announcement came a day after a whirlwind of legal jockeying in the case against defendant Matthew Crippen, a 28-year-old Southern California man. The government charged that Crippen, a hotel car-parking manager, ran a small business from his Anaheim home modifying the firmware on Xbox 360 optical drives to make them capable of running pirated or unauthorized games.

Read More: WIRED

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The iPad was crowned the fastest-adopted consumer electronic device ever last month, stealing the title from the once-coveted DVD player. Records are made to be broken, though, and the Microsoft Kinect has already come out of the gate twice as fast. Notably, Microsoft predicted back in September that it would sell more Kinects than Apple is selling iPads.

25 days after its launch, Microsoft said today that it has sold 2.5 million motion-detecting...

Microsoft has officially launched their Xbox LIVE Rewards program today. The program is open to all Xbox LIVE members, both paid and free.

Though the program is open to the Silver Xbox LIVE members, the Gold Xbox LIVE members will be able to take advantage of more opportunities to earn reward points. Users will earn points for things like purchasing an Xbox Live Gold membership, or purchase game and movies from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. According to USA Today, Microsoft will also be offering surveys and promotions to help users earn more points. Read More: Neowin

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OK, the chances of the next XBox being called 720 are 50:50 at best but, for now, at least you all know what we’re talking about. While the name and final design for the box and packaging might still be up in the air, the internals appear to have been locked down. KitGuru investigates.

Microsoft launched its original little black XBox in 2001. Famously, the press sheets on the chairs at the seats in the announcement hall had AMD specifications the evening before, but Intel ones the morning of the actual launch. nVidia was always a lock on the graphics etc, but last minute dealing had meant the CPU was a Pentium surprise for most people.



Read More: KitGuru

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About half of Microsoft's 25 million Xbox Live members worldwide are Gold subscribers.  Speaking at the Credit Suisse Annual Technology Conference in Phoenix, Ariz. this morning, Microsoft's Dennis Durkin, head of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, reaffirmed the importance of Xbox Live for keeping its audience engaged on the Xbox 360 console.  "Of our 25 million members, about half of them are subscribers to the business and pay us about $60 a year for that," Durkin stated. "So it's a very large business for us and for our partners."

Read More: IGN



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Microsoft announced it has sold 2.5 million Kinect units worldwide in the first 25 days on sale.  Microsoft said it expects to sell a total of 5 million Kinects before the end of this calendar year. Through the first 10 days since its launch on Nov. 4, Kinect sold one million units.  "We are thrilled about the consumer response to Kinect, and are working hard with our retail and manufacturing partners to expedite production and shipments of Kinect to restock shelves as fast as possible to keep up with demand," said Don Mattrick, president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft.  "With sales already exceeding two and a half million units in just 25 days, we are on pace to reach our forecast of 5 million units sold to consumers this holiday."

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Microsoft Corp is about to jump back into the TV game. Only this time, it may aim at cable, satellite and phone companies.

The software powerhouse has held talks with TV networks to create a new subscription-based TV service on its Xbox gaming console that would rival efforts by Google Inc, Apple Inc and Netflix Inc, sources told Reuters.

Microsoft's latest explorations after investments in MSNBC and WebTV come as efforts to redefine living room entertainment have accelerated in the past year, with technology companies seeking to offer lower cost alternatives to pricey pay-TV subscriptions.

Read More: Yahoo





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A new Kinect hack by a group of students at MIT Media Lab allows you to control Windows 7 and even browsers using only your hands. The Star Wars force-like gesture movements can navigate web pages, your operating system and even potentially control...

Despite rumors that Microsoft’s Silverlight platform was going to be left behind based on IE9′s push for HTML 5, the Silverlight team is still hard at work on bringing the web technology to all platforms.

Microsoft has put out a job advertisement asking for a software development engineer to help bring the technology to Microsoft’s Xbox 360. Silverlight has been put into full use on Microsoft’s own site and is finding a place among the web media world. The technology is also the developmental basis of Windows Phone 7, although only applications, not the web plugins run Silverlight.

...

Kinect for Xbox 360 that brings controller-free gaming to the living room got an enthralling response of over 1 million units sold...

Kinect Controls Windows 7



Interactive Puppet Prototype with Xbox Kinect



Kinect Augmented Reality hack with Doom 3 character



Object recognition using Kinect on the PC







...

The much-awaited Facebook email service (Project Titan) was finally announced on Monday. Facebook email is actually part of a larger, simplified communication system called Facebook Messages. Facebook Messages will have email, SMS, chat conversations with your Facebook friends under one thread.



I have to respectfully disagree with my colleague, Nikhil Pradhan, and his views on how Facebook email could actually beat Gmail -- but in all fairness, his article was written before Facebook's email announcement. Although Facebook email (and Facebook Messages) definitely has convergence and simplicity of use going for it, but from the evidence of Facebook's...

Remedy’s seeking a motion control programmer for its “AAA console project” for 360, to work on “next iteration of Remedy’s unique game engine that was previously used in Alan Wake.”

The job ad’s here.

...

Though Kinect has been a big success for Microsoft since...

Microsoft has re-launched the Games for Windows Marketplace along with an update for the Games for Windows Marketplace Client. The main update today comes in the form of the brand new Games for Windows Marketplace, which has become...

The million mark is a big milestone in sales, and today Microsoft announced that its Kinect system has joined the list of products to get there in short order.

The $150 motion...

Remember the user interface in Minority Report? Now it all seems to be a reality with Microsoft Kinect.



Just too cool! 

Chris Erickson’s brother found himself without the use of his right arm following a tragic accident, but that hasn’t stopped him from enjoying Xbox 360 Kinect games.

Here we see one of the direct benefits of controller-free gaming. He might not do quite as well with some of the more limb-intensive Kinect games like Dance Central, but Chris’ brother seems to make do in Kinect Adventures, and he doesn’t seem to have any problems with Sonic Free Riders, outside of some menu navigation.

Before I picked up my own Kinect this past weekend I was one of the folks who wondered...

The story of developmentally disabled child finally playing videogames with his father is enough to warm my cold, black heart.

Out all of the news that’s come to light since Kinect launched last week, this is the story that has affected me the most. John Yan, owner of Gaming Nexus, was unimpressed with the games available for Microsoft’s new motion control system, but he went ahead and bought it anyway. As he was hooking it up, his four year old son was extremely interested in playing Kinect Adventures because the box looked fun. The catch is that John’s son has autism, and while he often wants to play videogames, the boy is frustrated by manipulating the Xbox 360 controller. Even though John’s son repeatedly says, “I want to play with you, Daddy,” he usually just ends up watching his father play. That is, until they got Kinect.

...

Imagine Microsoft Kinect reaching...

A lot of Gmail users are noticing a major drop in the performance of the user interface in the recent times. A small trick which can really help in slow connections:

1. Turn on Offline Gmail.
2. Turn on Flaky connection mode.
3. That’s it.

Source: http://www.saumyaaggarwal.com/2010/11/slow-gmail-just-follow-this-trick.html

The biggest search engine in the world has decided to take on the US government, suing it for anticompetitive practices. Certainly big news, it still isn’t much of a shocker, as Google seems to be rather justified in its stance. Google is suing the Department of Interior (DOI) for not considering Google Apps for its web-based document and messaging needs in its Request for Quotation, which stated that the solution had to be a part of the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite. This according to Google is “unduly restrictive of competition”, and an "arbitrary and capricious, and abuse of discretion, and otherwise contrary to law" requirement.



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When Microsoft first announced its motion-based interface two years ago, the company pitched a grandiose vision of a controller-free future in gaming. Along with a launch game lineup aimed largely toward the casual crowd...

Some have questioned how Kinect’s RGB camera, depth sensor and microphone can be as accurate as Microsoft claims. But what many don’t realise is that the device gets a helping hand – from a friendly face.

...

Microsoft Corp. boosted its forecast for the Kinect motion-control device for the Xbox gaming system to 5 million units this quarter, making it the biggest Xbox accessory debut in terms of sales.

Based on pre-sales, retail orders and consumer interest, the company expects to exceed a previous forecast for sales of 3 million units, Don Mattrick, president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, said in an interview today. The device, which lets players control games with motion and voice, goes on sale tomorrow.

Read More : Bloomberg

Diehard Xbox 360 gamers will be glad to hear that a new update for the Xbox 360 Dashboard is available. The update is released as of now and is being rolled out to the Live service. Users will be prompted to download the update when logging into Live service in the next few hours. The update is not geographically based according to Major Nelson and everyone will get the update.



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Taiwan-based optical lens maker Newmax Technology has become the only supplier of camera modules used in Microsoft Kinect sensors and will ship as many as 14 million units of these...

Remember when Oprah handed out free Kinects to her audience, causing her audience to completely lose its collective shit? Well, Ellen DeGeneres can whip the ladies into a lather too, courtesy of Harmonix’s Dance Central.

Ellen’s no stranger to breaking it down on her daytime show, nor is she averse to obvious product placement, as this Kinect demo illustrates. Dance Centraland Kinect both...

Xbox 360 revenues have risen 33 percent since this time last year, hitting $1.2 billion in the first quarter,Microsoft announced today....

Amazon U.S. and Best Buy‘s...

Microsoft has just announced the 17 games that will be available on launch day with Kinect for Xbox 360,...

Looks like Kinect is...

October began with news that Epic Games’ Gears of War 3 would not be hitting its previously scheduled April 5 deployment date. Instead, Epic and publisher Microsoft opted to push the game into late 2011,...

Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer admits that Kinect for Xbox 360 is the device that he is most keen on as the...

Opera has released its State of the Mobile Web, August 2010 report, which shows India has 3rd most Opera Mini users in the world. Since the month of August 2009, pages-per-view of opera mobile users in India has grown by 397 percent, while unique-users have grown by 339 percent. The State of the Mobile Web, August 2010 report also states that the page-views per user in India has grown to 405 and the average data transferred per user is 7MB.





"Growth of the mobile Web worldwide accelerated dramatically in August. These numbers are not limited to smartphones alone. The mobile Web was, and remains, a global phenomenon for people all over the world, on...

Google has probably made one of the toughest decision regarding Gmail by offering an option to disable conversations view. Conversations was one of the innovations of Gmail and it changed the way a lot of us deal with emails on a daily basis.



However, there are still users out there who prefer it the old way. Just like we have it on Yahoo and Hotmail and in most desktop clients. They took a long time to accept the demands and they have finally given in. Gmail now allows you to disable the conversations mode. You can have emails in your Gmail Inbox in the old style. The...

I took two sessions for Merawindows community to help it grow for technical students in North India region.

First session - 25th Sept, 2010 - Delhi College of Engineering (DTU)
Second Session - 26th Sept, 2010 - MSP NCR Recruitment - IMI, Delhi

The response from students was very good. I also distributed merawindows laptop stickers to all attendes. I hope we all can help grow Merawindows.

The browser company which has been taking a bit of hit these days in its main offering has come up with hottest mobile phone concept 'Seabird'.



The device aims to address some of the frustrations people have when interacting with small devices. "While mobile CPUs, connectivity and development platforms begin approaching that of desktops, the lagging ability to efficiently input information has grown ever more pronounced," he wrote in a blog post describing the phone. The post includes videos--one in 3D--with a rendering of the concept phone. Seabird has two pico projectors. When placed in a dock it uses one of them to project...

I found this interesting video of how actually a USB Flash drive is made. It is pretty interesting and elaborates the process. The video depicts trip to Kingston Production Plant. Must watch!

For video click here

via http://www.saumyaaggarwal.com

Intel Turbo Boost is a technology implemented by Intel in certain of their Nehalem-based CPUs, including Core i5 and Core i7. Turbo Boost allows CPU clock speed to be dynamically increased on demand. It is activated when the operating system requests the highest performance state of the processor.

Turbo Boost enables processor cores to run faster if power usage and temperatures are within limits. For example, if one core would benefit by processing faster while the others are idling or running slower, the base frequency of that core can be increased on demand in increments of 133MHz

Any of the following can set the upper limit of Intel Turbo Boost Technology on a given workload:

* Number of active cores
* Estimated current consumption
* Estimated power consumption
* Processor temperature

For further reading refer :-
http://www.intel.com/technology/turboboost/

With era of all types of social networking sites, here come the consolidation. The giant 'Yahoo!' has taken a lead and come up with integration. Unlike following competition and launching all new platform it will use exisiting popular networks. They call it Yahoo! Pulse.

Though currently only facebook has been integrated with Yahoo accounts, it may add more soon. Its certainly clear signal to outdated Orkut and failed Buzz.

The UI is attractive and people can find similarity between Pulse and Facebook. The clear target audience is Facebook users and why not when Yahoo...

Future of Indian gaming industry