Since the launch of Windows Phones the selection of games have been somewhat lacking. There doesn’t seem to be an avalanche of titles coming any time soon, but a collection of four titles are making their way to the platform, each of them “optimized for Mango.” The optimized titles include Age of Zombies from Halfbrick, Tomagotchi more »

The long wait for Angry Birds on Windows Phone 7 is nearing it’s end. To get to the game, however, you have to wait through five other WP7 versions of popular games. One game will be released each week for six week as part of Microsoft’s Must Have Games Program. To kick off the program, more »

The next major update to the Windows Phone operating system currently known as Mango will have a few more enhanced features that haven’t been officially revealed by Microsoft just yet. Much like the previous unofficial announcement, this news is also coming from the Windows Phone Dev Podcast. We can expect some substantial changes to the Windows Phone 7 operating system including support for Facebook Chat that’s built right in.

So Microsoft has been revealed as Skype’s secret admirer all along. The news has just been broken out and Microsoft has officially announced that it is buying Skype. And Skype’s value for Microsoft? $8.5 billion in cold cash. The deal which has already been approved by the board of directors of both Skype and Microsoft more »

I hope you’ve all stocked up on Mountain Dew because the Halo Reach Beta is officially live. The Xbox community will be able to enjoy the wonders of this brand new Halo installment from now until May 15th. Keep in mind that the servers will be getting bombarded for the first few hours so anticipate more »

Microsoft has certainly been the charmer at E3 this year. People went gaga over their new Project Natal (as well they should!), they announced a way to deliver movies in 1080p format…no disks and no waiting for download. And also, they worked with the uber-social networking site of the time, Facebook, to have it work more »

Already, the new Microsoft Zune HD is looking pretty good, with its HD playback and all. At the E3 tradeshow today, Microsoft unveiled an announcement, which didn’t really come as a surprise but definitely got people excited for the latest Microsoft device. The Xbox 360 would be able stream movies and television shows using the more »

I hate surprises. This year, it looks like a showdown of portable music players is being leaked early and I, for one, am thrilled. No more watching keynotes to see what is coming down the line. Today we can reveal one confirmed product and one that looks to be very real.

The Zune HD is real

Microsoft has confirmed the Zune HD we told you about here, saying it will be available this fall. This new Zune is designed to compete head-to-head with the iPod touch; which is a bold move as many of us believe that device is the pinnacle of PMPs.

The Zune HD will include an OLED screen, HD radio receiver, and HD output to a TV. There hasn’t been any announcement yet about apps (the big advertised point of the iPod touch), so surely MS has something more up there sleeve, right?

Zune owners love their little portable media player and are usually very vocal about it. Unfortunately, they are in the minority of PMP buyers. Quite frankly, I am a little surprised Microsoft is pushing forward with the much maligned Zune brand. Microsoft will be using the goodwill of the Xbox brand by having the Zune HD being a “premium partner in the Xbox LIVE Video Marketplace, bringing an exciting catalog of TV and film to the platform. Zune will occupy the first slot within the Xbox user interface in the Xbox LIVE Video Marketplace, exposing the Zune brand experience to millions of new consumers for the first time.”

Do you VUDU? Apparently it’s becoming more and more popular. And with their announcement yesterday that they are the first on-demand service to offer high definition movies to own, those that VUDU are liking it a lot.

Before this, subscribers could only rent HD movies from on-demand services (like VUDU). Although Vudu boasts a library of over 1,400 HD movies, but you could only watch them, not keep them. That all ended yesterday. Not all of their HD movies are available for sale however; for right now, there are 50 movies from “top independent studios.” That phrasing does have some folks raising their eyebrows a little, although VUDU says more studios will be making more movies available in the future.

The death of TV, really? Quite possibly, yes. Microsoft didn’t say that of course, but if you put all the pieces announced tonight together, you come to a pretty obvious conclusion rather quickly. Network TV, at least as we know it, will die.

Here are the puzzle pieces, see if you come to the same conclusion I did:

IPTVAt tonight’s CES 2008 Keynote, Microsoft made a big announcement: they’ve got 1 million set top boxes for its Mediaroom. This is 6 months ahead of schedule for Microsoft. They’ve done this pretty quietly now, but at this rate they are adding 2 IPTV subscribers every minute.

Making TV yoursLet’s say you love Nascar and follow a particular driver.