Here’s http://www.compareandrecycle.co.uk’s round-up of the latest technology news:
Microsoft Improving Xbox Live Chat Quality
Since Xbox Live launched (way back in 2002) one thing has remained constant, the fairly awful quality of the in-game voice chat. Well that’s finally going to change as Microsoft plan to increase the voice quality of Live chat as part of the update which will introduce the new Kinect features later this year.
Earlier this year Microsoft pulled the plug on their online service for original Xbox games. Many suspected that this was in order to increase the limit on the number of friends you can have on Xbox Live, but maybe it was also in order to allow an increase in the bitrate of voice communication, as it may have been backwards compatibility with older games that was holding this back too.
Windows Phone 7 Launch to Cost $1 Billion
It’s been suggested that the launch of Windows Phone 7 will cost in the region of $1 Billion, but even with that kind of financial backing can Microsoft really compete Android, iPhone and Blackberry?
One thing in Microsoft’s favour is the fact they’ve managed to do it before, they entered a games console market dominated by Playstation, pumped a lot of money behind their console, and nearly ten years later the Xbox 360 is doing very well for itself.
There has been a lot of interest in Windows Phone 7 and many of the biggest players in the mobile world including HTC, LG, Samsung and Sony-Ericsson will be releasing hardware that runs WP7. It’s likely that the success of WP7 will rest on how well developers support the platform, there’s little doubt that iPhone probably wouldn’t be as popular without it’s huge library of apps.
It’s clear Microsoft are pushing harder for success in the mobile market than ever before but we’ll have to wait until later this year to see if consumers share their enthusiasm.
