• Xbox 360 Has Biggest Sales Week in History with Around 1 Million Units Sold

    // Gradly // blog, Consoles, Microsoft, News, Xbox 360 No Responses

    Xbox 360 Has Biggest Sales Week in History

    Xbox 360 has sold 960,000 units in the U.S. during Black Friday week, Microsoft announced today. That makes it the biggest sales week in the history of Xbox.

    800,000 of those units were sold within a period of 24 hours. Besides, over 750,000 Kinect sensors were sold during the Black Friday week, combination of standalone and bundled.

    “We have seen tremendous excitement from customers for our hot holiday gaming offers,” commented Chris Homeister, senior vice president and general manager of Home Entertainment at Best Buy. “Xbox 360 was among the best-sellers at Best Buy this Black Friday, and is a testament to the continued popularity of the gaming category this holiday.”

    Microsoft added, “Xbox 360 should deliver its eleventh straight month as the number one console in the US.  With a robust holiday portfolio and the new Xbox LIVE dashboard going live on Dec. 6, we expect holiday momentum to continue, driving Xbox 360 to finish the year as the number one console in the U.S.”

    As for the competition, Sony noted strong demand but did not provide a sales figure for PS3, while Nintendo had its best Black Friday for the Wii yet by selling 500,000 units.

    [via industrygamers]

  • Try Out Windows Phone on Your iPhone or Android Right Now

    // Gradly // Android, blog, How To, iPhone, Microsoft, Mobile, Tutorials 1 Response

    Windows Phone on Your iPhone

    if you are eager to see how Windows Phone feels? Microsoft has just made it easy for you. They released a new HTML 5 website that allows iPhone and Android users to get a taste of the Windows Phone 7, Mango 7.5 operating system.

    Browse to the webpage http://aka.ms/wpdemo on your mobile device to try it out right away. To enjoy full screen experience, you can save the page to your home screen by clicking on the bookmark button.

    The demo gives a comprehensive look at some features you find in Windows Phone with a blue dot to guide you around the operating system.

    Ironically, the demo doesn’t work in Windows Phone’s own browser. I guess it doesn’t really have to, but funny none the less.

    [via Gizmodo]

  • Microsoft’s Tellme vs Apple’s Siri Video Comparison

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Humor, iPhone, Microsoft, News, Rants & Raves, Tech. 1 Response

    Microsoft's Tellme vs Apple's Siri

    Microsoft’s chief strategy and research officer Craig Mundie talked to Forbes about the company’s kinect and when asked about Siri, he said that Siri was nothing special, and Microsoft’s own voice capabilities have been around for over a year. Siri is all about good marketing nothing else:

    People are infatuated with Apple announcing it. It’s good marketing, but at least as the technological capability you could argue that Microsoft has had a similar capability in Windows Phones for more than a year, since Windows Phone 7 was introduced.

    This is what Microsoft execs usually say when challenged with a tech by their competitors:

    you can pick ‘em up and say ‘text Eric’ and say what you wanna say and it transcribes it. You can query anything through Bing by just saying the words. I mean, all that’s already there. Fully functional, been there for a year.

    This is not the first time, we all know when Steve Ballmer slammed the original iPhone back in 2007 and touted it as being overpriced and not appealing to business for the lack of a keyboard.

    Jason from techau ran a test and put a video comparison between Microsoftt’s Tellme and Apple’s Siri. Watch the video below. The results speak for themselves: