Microsoft CES Keynote Coverage

We've just gotten out of the Microsoft keynote that officially kicked off CES 2009. It was long, so very long, and they didn't really have a lot of new products to unveil, just a bunch of concepts and prototypes to demo. But even with the disappointment of having few major announcements, it actually had a few redeeming moments.



We thought that Sony really tried hard to project a cool, possibly even hip, atmosphere, but I think that Microsoft might have trumped them. Microsoft tried really really hard to make the keynote look fun by starting off with a lot of popular music and then segueing into a beat-boxing duel live on stage. Sorry, Microsoft, the performance was impressive, but it won't make us think you're any more "with it" than we did before entering the keynote.

Okay, let's start with the big news. The public beta of Windows 7 is available, and it really looks like they might have listened to all the complaints about Vista when designing Windows 7. At any rate, we're excited, especially for the home networking capabilities and the capacity for touchscreen interfaces.

Another announcement that caused a lot of interest had to do with community game creation software, called Kodu. I know that doesn't sound interesting at first, but it actually is. Kodu is a simplified way to learn programming and create your own games, then share them with others. They brought out a 12-year-old girl named Sparrow and she demonstrated some pretty intricate work flows. Either Kodu is extremely intuitive or the girl is a certified genius. It's probably a combination of the two, but we're leaning more toward the genius thing. Sparrow demonstrated a game that she had created in Kodu and then soundly whipped the presenter in an impromptu game (she really was pretty impressive, in fact, we were sitting next to her father and he seemed far more nervous than she was). We're interested to see what the public can come up with when given a tool like this.

It seems like this and tons of other community content will be concentrated in the Xbox Live arena, which was a major focus of the night. They announced a new feature called Xbox Live Primetime, where people could basically create their own TV game shows and other collaborative content with the millions of other users.

Unfortunately, other than the announcements above, the Microsoft keynote was fairly mundane. Much like the Apple keynote at Macworld just a few days ago, we found ourselves asking, "Are they really spending this much time to announce fairly insignificant changes?"

For instance, we got a complete rundown AND demo of Windows Live's new features, including the ability to sync with Facebook and other apps. Basically, Windows Live will aggregate all your social and media resources into one place. Oh, and Dell will be bundling the complete Windows Live suite with their computers. Okay.

There were more self-congratulatory stats about Windows Mobile, Xbox, Xbox Live (and all the movies and content available), two new Halo games, new touch interfaces, digital textbooks, "innovation in cars and Zune" (what?), and a few other interface tweaks that make it easier to do the things you're already doing.

That's right, Steve Ballmer and a handful of other Microsofties took 2 hours to stroke their egos, show off a child prodigy and officially announce the Windows 7 beta. For all their talk about increasing productivity, they sure didn't seem to manage their time well.

For more CES coverage, keep checking up on the blog homepage. For other keynotes and press conference coverage, try these:

Sony

Samsung

Panasonic

Cisco

Sharp