For about the 325th consecutive year, Microsoft delivered a keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Wednesday night. Billionaire Steve Ballmer might as well have phoned the thing in.It is a guarantee at these things that some major glitch or computer crash will occur during Microsoft keynotes. YouTube is filled with such fun clips. Wednesday's keynote was no exception as the major problem occurred just 10 minutes before the thing was supposed to start.
I sat in the press section -- the best seats in the house, in the first seven rows right in the middle of the Las Vegas Hilton Center -- as all the lights in the house suddenly shut down, leaving us in darkness for a few moments before the emergency power kicked in. When we saw that the dozen Microsoft monitors were still dark, we knew we were in for an unwanted adventure.
It was interesting to watch the world's largest Black Screen of Death.
About the time the keynote was scheduled to start, an announcement came over the loudspeaker: A "small power problem" has occurred and we would be starting in "about five minutes." Then technicians rushed the stage frantically trying to bring life back to the still powerless PCs on the stage.
"About five minutes" turned into 30, and it was obvious that some of the PCs were still having difficulty being restored to their former health. Microsoft finally gave in and started the show anyway.
What followed could only be adequately described as "Amateur Hour." I'm sure it resembled the old Homebrew Computer Club demonstrations of the mid-1970s more than what passes for modern keynote deliveries of the 21st Century.
Steve Jobs of Apple has set the standard on the modern keynote address, with his simple graphics and well-rehearsed deliveries. It's rare that a glitch occurs in his keynotes, and when they do, he always manages to pass it off with a funny line and gets on with it.
Steve Ballmer's keynote couldn't have been more different. He fumbled over his words during some rocky moments and when it came time for humor, it was obvious that it was scripted. You coud tell he was about to make a joke because he would raise the volume of his voice in order to let all of us know that he was about to make a joke.
Ballmer's hit the road during 2009 making a lot of speeches about just how crappy Microsoft's products have been. He's apologized on different occasions about the Xbox red rings problem, the worthlessness of Windows Mobile 6.5 and just how much everybody hated Windows Vista. He offered no such apologies in Wednesday's keynote. In fact, he acted as if Microsoft didn't have any problems at all.
For example, as the media was being seated before the show, we were all instructed to turn off "our cell phones and Windows Mobile devices." Well, practically anybody in the press corps who might have owned a Windows Mobile device had turned it off a long time ago. It was probably sitting in a shoebox at home.
But Ballmer, talking about Windows Mobile 6.5, acted as if it was the industry's leading mobile phone OS, with marketshare expected to be growing into the next year (and probably throughout the millenium to come). The media folks rolled their collective eyes.
It was a rambling presentation, with a lot of empty words being spoken about a lot of equally empty products. Ballmer didn't offer anything new. After talking about Windows Mobile, Windows 7 and a new cellphone designed to run WiMo, he finally got the media excited when he revealed some examples of some new "slate" computers that were being developed. Ahhh, here's the Apple-killer everyone wanted to see. But when he admitted that it was just a concept, everyone slumped down in their seats again. Alas, Microsoft's patened FUD (fear-uncertainty-doubt) struck again.
Finally, Ballmer relinquished the stage to Microsoft's Entertainment head, who presented some genuinely interesting -- and actual -- products, such as the next version of Halo and some more details about the gamer-is-the-controller concept they call Project Natal. He even promised that Project Natal would actualy be available during 2010.
But by that time, Steve Ballmer was already gone, not to return to the stage. With the keynote being at the Las Vegas Hilton, Elvis Presley's old hangout, I expected an announcement along the lines of "Steve Ballmer has left the building," but it didn't happen.
Instead, he rode out in the same silence that will undoubtedly surround most of Microsoft's big ventures of 2010.
Oh yeah! It's the beginning of the week, so you know we have to hit you with 
I read in Variety this week that you have had some disagreements with your previous owner Microsoft and that was why there was no Halo announcement at E3 this year. 
If you are an avid listener of our podcast or frequent visitor our site you know that the ESH crew is not in LA covering E3 on the ground this year. We are there in spirit though, and I am more than happy to share what I have surmised from the day one coverage of the media bru ha ha.
Way back in the early 1970s when I was a college student, I remember seeing a one-panel comic in the newspaper. A Martian explorer was reporting back to his commander, "They worship Beatles and want them to get back together."
It's bad enough that Microsoft copies everything that Apple does and calls it its own, but now it appears that the company is trying to strike gold by Wii-ifying the Xbox.
This is getting ridiculous. It seems that if you want to improve sales of a product, all you have to do is put an iPod Dock in it. The latest example is the Razer Pro|Type keyboard, shown here. But that's not what would get me to buy a new keyboard, so I mocked up a picture of what would sell me on a new keyboard.
I hereby open the nominations for Stupid Gadget of the Year, and it should come to no surprise that the first candidate is from a company that has littered the world with plenty of stupid gadgets: Microsoft.
Ok, maybe "madness" is a tad bit strong for what's really going down in Japan right now, but the MS Game Studios title Blue Dragon has sure gotten some serious attention out of our friends in the East.
El fiesta en su pantalones! Holy Bob is my spanish bad, good thing for you this game is not... I'm talking about Viva Piñata from Rare [Microsoft Studios] of course. I've been able to sit down with the game for a few weeks now, and I'm ready to share my thoughts on it with you... because you are my friend, you are special to me.
In Viva Piñata, you play the guiding hand in growing a piñata plantation. [It's more like neighborhood building, but I like the way plantation sounds better.] You start out with a crummy shovel and a small plot of land that you have to work into something piñatas in the wild will want to give up their roaming ways for. Sounds easy, and in the beginning it is, but as you progress on in the game gaining new plantation residents you'll start finding out that keeping your new little eco-system in tact will be difficult. For instance, in order to get some piñatas to become residents on your plantation you have to let them eat some of your existing residents. Before you start with the, "hey this is supposed to be a kid friendly game, not violent at all..." crap remember that I said they are piñatas. They get broken open [being paper mache] and their carcass floats off into a bright light towards the sky leaving behind candy which is eaten by the conquering piñata. It's so cute you barely recognize that your plantation residents are happy canabals. ☺
As I said, Viva Piñata is very much like a Sims game... you have to do a job [tend to your garden planting flowers, trees, grass, digging ponds, etc.,] and meet criteria in order to get wild piñatas to want to visit your garden. Once they have visited you now have to find out what they need to have happen in order to get down to business. Yeah, you heard me correctly. Once you get a couple of the same species of piñata in your garden/plantation you have to figure out how to get them to reproduce. This usually entails having a house for their species built on the plantation and feeding them one of whatever thing it is that they like to eat. The first piñata that you will get to be resident and reproduce will be the "worm" piñata which are called whirlms. The first time you get your piñata to "romance" [that's what it's called in the game] you will have to guide a piñata through a mini game to the other piñata in order to get them to do the mating dance and make a baby! And when it is the first time that you have gotten a species to "romance" you actually get to watch them do it. The mating dance you perv, not "it" it. Every species has a different dance. Once the dance is completed the piñata leave the house and wait for Storkos to bring their baby egg. It is at this point that the game is nearly too adorable for words. I'm not kidding. It is the most cute thing I've played I think ever. This game is MORE adorable than Animal Crossing... and that's a HUGE statement coming from me. I used to play that game for 8 or more hours a day man! Moving on.
There is a little dude that wears a monkey mask that drives out in a shrinermobile to the aid of your nearly dead piñata. How do you make money to pay for these doctor visits? You can sell the fruit from plants you grow, seeds, flowers, pick up coins during the "romancing" mini-games, or just sell your piñatas that are residents. I recommend breeding the hell out of your "bee" piñata as you get over a grand per bee you sell, and the only things they need in order to get busy are a bee house and any piece of fruit. This is why I refer to the garden as a plantation, because you spend most of your time breeding and selling piñata in order to be able to attract other piñata to your land in hopes of ensaring, I mean, encouraging them to live on your land.
This game is damned addictive. I can't stop playing it. The textures are gorgeous. When piñata come into view and move around their paper hair moves [i.e. rises and falls] in a way that seems natural, but it looks sooo good. I love that all the helper characters that speak in the game have an English accent. It makes it seem like it really is a "goodnight" story that someone is reading to your kid... even if that kid happens to be 27 yr old me. But what I like most about Viva Piñata is that it's a game that parents can actually enjoy playing with their kid or at very least enjoy watching their young kid play. It's light hearted, it teaches your kids how to manage money, and take care of things. All this, and it looks good too!
In today's news, we look at All Things Wii, with advice on how to get one on launch day, whether you'll need to bolster your health insurance to play the new controller, some Zelda pics, choice quotes from a Nintendo spokeschick and the lengths that a famous TV star will take to get one.
I recently received my Xbox Live Diamond Card in the mail, and first impression was it looked snazzy!
Again, didn't hate it, it just wasn't for me. All was well with my world until I found out about Halo Wars today. I raced over to the IGN website 