I’m considering the XNA pacakge so I can install games on my Xbox. I looked into how hard it is and then I realized it’s a pay only feature. It’s $100 for homebrew games on my Xbox and thats a bit much this week. I gotta find out how many games there are and how easy it is to install them. Wheres the best Xbox XNA games place?

Connecting to Your Xbox 360 Console with XNA Game Studio 2.0

This guide assumes you have already installed a supported version of Visual Studio tools and XNA Game Studio. These products must be installed before connecting to an Xbox 360 console. For information about installing these products, see Setup and System Requirements.

* Step 1: Sign In to Xbox LIVE
* Step 2: Download XNA Game Studio Connect
* Step 3: Connect Your Xbox 360 Console and Windows-Based Computer
* Step 4: Create and Deploy an Xbox 360 Project
* What’s Next?

Step 1: Sign In to Xbox LIVE

Turn on your Xbox 360 console and sign in to Xbox LIVE. You will need at least a Silver Xbox LIVE membership, an XNA Creators Club membership, and a hard drive for your Xbox 360 console to be able to develop games for Xbox 360 using XNA Game Studio. While you are in XNA Game Studio Connect or playing an XNA Game Studio game, you must remain connected to Xbox LIVE.
Step 2: Download XNA Game Studio Connect

XNA Game Studio Connect must be downloaded from Xbox LIVE Marketplace and installed on the Xbox 360 console. XNA Game Studio Connect is listed on Xbox LIVE Marketplace next to the XNA Creators Club Subscription, which may be found by selecting Game Store, More…, Genres, and then Other.
Step 3: Connect Your Xbox 360 Console and Windows-Based Computer

When you develop games for Xbox 360, you develop them on your Windows-based computer, then transfer them over your local network to your Xbox 360 console. This requires that your Windows-based computer and Xbox 360 console share the same subnet. Most home networking layouts support this configuration. If your console and computer share a router or hub, it is likely that they share the same subnet.

With your computer and console on the same subnet, follow these steps to set up a connection between your computer and your console.

Technorati Tags: zune, xna, zune xna, zune games

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Microsoft Seeks Mesh Sizzle - Forbes.com

Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) demonstrated its grand vision for the future of Web-based software and services at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco Wednesday, even as it prepared to talk about the state of its current business on its quarterly earnings call with investors on Thursday.

Microsoft’s pitch is simple: Today’s world is all about the Internet. Microsoft wants to use the Internet to synchronize a user’s data, applications and panoply of devices into a single living “mesh.” The project, Live Mesh, helmed by chief software architect Ray Ozzie, has been in development for two years as Microsoft has struggled to move from the stronghold it built on the PC desktop with Windows to the untamed Web, where it competes for turf with Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ), Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) and a host of online upstarts.

Microsoft could certainly use sizzle from its online adventures. Analysts predict Microsoft will report Thursday that earnings have sagged 14% during its fiscal third quarter in contrast to a year ago, when the company enjoyed a one-time pop created as it rolled out Windows Vista and a new edition of Microsoft Office. The Redmond, Wash.-based company is expected to report earnings of $4.2 billion, or 44 cents a share, on sales of $14.5 billion, according to consensus estimates published by Thomson Reuters. By contrast, during the same quarter a year ago, Microsoft earned $4.8 billion, or 49 cents a share, on sales of $14.4 billion.

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Zune + Yahoo! = Y!Phone | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

Over the last few months I’ve been thinking about how Yahoo! might be able to leverage its assets in order to better compete with Google. In another publication, I recently discussed the “What if” scenarios if Yahoo! were somehow able to escape a Microsoft acquisition, and defy the iron grip of Google’s popular web API’s and viral adoption of its competing services by joining forces with a major mobile handset vendor – such as a Motorola or a Nokia, and create a truly Open Source smart phone that leveraged the power of Yahoo’s assets, such as Flickr, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Mail.

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“So I was like. What could I do that could really just, you know cause them to go; he is physically and mentally unstable ”

From YouTube

This is part 1 of a video series that will chronicle my name change to:
First name: Microsoft
Last name: Zune

Part 1: I called Microsoft in this video to ask about the legal side of my name change. I didn’t get the 100% go ahead I was expecting but they did give me the legal department’s address to send a letter to. But the individual at the end of the call did let me know something neat..

Popularity: 39% [?]

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Here is a very interesting article written by Patrick Klepek over at the Multi Player Blog at MTV.com that asks if the Microsoft Live Anywhere Initiative is dead? For those of you who do not know what the Live Anywhere Initiative is take a look back at the Wikipedia page for more details. In a nutshell Live Anywhere is Microsofts global plan for dominance of our digital lifestyle where they want us to be able to access their services from anywhere at anytime through Windows, Xbox and now Zune.

Patrick asks if the Live Anywhere Initiative is dead and I don’t understand how he came to this conclusion really. I think that Zune is actually the most important component to the Live Initiative. I think Zune will cover most if not all of the mobile components and is not limited to just music and phones. I realize that everyone has been waiting for a mobile Xbox platform to arrive but I think its already here in the form of Zune. I think that Xbox will be reserved as the home entertainment console with a focus on HD movies and IPTV which I think will make an obvious partner with Xbox as the preferred content delivery method of the future. There will not be a mobile Xbox game player or platform, its going to be Zune Game Players. I believe that Zune is the mobile platform and the “Anywhere” aspect of the Live Anywhere Initiative that is still very much alive. It’s progressing just fine but what our friend Patrick has missed is that it will not be developed under the Xbox brand as so many expected it would be it will be under the new brand of Zune.

My money lies on a portable game player from Zune and not Xbox. What better way to insure the success of the Zune brand then to build the mobile game player on that platform? It won’t matter what they call it they mobile game player from Microsoft is a sure success and by building it on the Zune platform they guarantee the success of their new mobile entertainment and communications platform. Once they integrate more Windows Mobile and Live features into the Zune game and music players the convergence of Live Anywhere exists. The Live Platform is all of the Microsoft services including Windows, Windows Mobile, Xbox and now Zune. It began as Xbox Live with the games because that was the easiest to generate a community with and they will slowly make it a Microsoft portal with access to everything Live. This should make it easier to understand why Microsoft has been dumping billions into Xbox when you see that it was about much more than just games and why they will dump billions into Zune which is about much more than just music.
MTV Multiplayer » We Asked Microsoft: Is That ‘Live Anywhere’ Initiative Dead?

At the Microsoft’s press briefing at E3 2006, Bill Gates came on stage to introduce Live Anywhere, an ambitious company initiative to integrate the Xbox 360 experience into everyday life via mobile phones.Nearly two years later, Live Anywhere has yet to materialize.

Is Live Anywhere dead? Here’s what Xbox Live exec. John Schappert (who took the stage for Microsoft’s keynote at GDC this year) told Multiplayer in an e-mailed statement:

Technorati Tags: zune, xbox, live, microsoft, live anywhere, xbox live, zune live, zune games

Popularity: 76% [?]

Yesterday I announced the second winner of our Free Zune Giveaway and since it fell on April Fools Day I decided to have some fun with the announcement. Giveaway winners are posted in the forum and I announced the topic to every registered member with the misleading title “You won a Free Zune from ZuneMAX.com” which I thought was funny but I guess one or two of you didn’t. One guy cursed me pretty bad actually but he appears to have issues. Not all Zuners are cool It seems.

I had some fun yesterday just checking some of the other April Foolishness and saw the fun Google and Slashdot had with it. Late last night I read a story on Slashdot that caught my eye. titled “Microsoft set to Announce Zune 360 and 180” describes an article written by BlueBerry Bob title “Zune - set for a revamp“. In this article Bob claims that Microsoft is holding back plans for the current Zuner device because of the impending release of two new devices named the Zune 360 and the Zune 180. The Zune 360 is said to be a touchscreen video player with a full face screen and increased capacity and the 180 is a smaller Nano style player.

When I read the article late last night I thought it was an April Fools gag but now I’m wondering if I was the fool. I reread the article today after I found sites like TheInquirer going with the story and if it is a gag it’s well done. If it’s not what Microsoft has planned then maybe it is what they need to be doing at least. As it stands I have no idea whether it’s true or not but I do agree with their conclusion.

Conclusion
There’s not enough information to say whether the new Zunes will be a success but if this information is accurate the new models will be a major improvement over the original. This could mean some much needed competition in the portable music player market.

Zune - Set for a revamp

Microsoft’s Zune was released in the US in November 2006 and sales have been disappointing so far, in fact except for the launch week there’s been no week where the Zune has sold over 1000 units. A lot of problems with the Zune are caused by perception (a lot of people think they’re only available in brown), pricing (same price as an iPod - people will only pay a premium for the market leader) and the defective by design wireless sharing which adds bulk to the product without providing any useful purpose. The roll out to the rest of the world has been temporarily suspended while Microsoft finalize plans for the Zune 360 bringing them parity with their successful Xbox line of consoles. As yet, no information has been leaked so we have no pictures of this new product, but it is planned to be released in June and in a break from typical Microsoft style of announce plans early and often they’ve decided to follow a more secretive Apple style approach. Still, it’s amazing what information you can get out of a Microsoft rep if you feed them 10 bottles of Duvel, for some of them 2 bottles will even do.

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Microsoft today announced their reported $800 million acquisition of Tellme Networks, Inc., a leading provider of voice services for everyday life, including nationwide directory assistance, enterprise customer service and voice-enabled mobile search.

It’s not a Zune phone announcement but for those with some idea of their plans for the Live Anywhere Initiative this purchase is all about the Zune phone and other portable devices to come later. Voice enabled search would certainly give the Zune phone an advantage over the Google Phone in regards to it’s search abilities and cuts out many advantages of what they might offer with Apple on the iPhone.

A voice activated search and directory feature goes beyond just the phone and would integrate well into the Xbox Live service also I would think. Integrating voice activated commands into the Live gaming arena would be an awesome new feature with the loads of functions and content available. Beyond searching for games and players via voice command they can also integrate the same technology to assist in navigation and layout.

Microsoft to Acquire Tellme Networks: Combined expertise will bring the power of voice technology to everyday life.

Potential areas of development resulting from the deal will range from hosted voice-enabled customer service solutions that complement Microsoft’s existing unified communications offerings to voice user interfaces in existing Microsoft products to search services on mobile phones that integrate with Live Search for mobile offerings. In addition, developers and partners will be able to build new speech-based solutions on top of a scalable, standards-based voice-enabled applications platform.

TellMe Networks offers Microsoft much more than just the voice search capabilities and use on the Zune phone and portable devices. Microsoft has struggled for some time with development of decent speech recognition software and suffered an embarrassing episode during the pre launch of Windows Vista when the much touted new speech abilities went haywire in a public demo. Microsoft is certain to want to use the technology across their entire platform of products and services and they spell out a few items here in this excerpt from their press release.

Microsoft to Acquire Tellme Networks: Combined expertise will bring the power of voice technology to everyday life.

This acquisition will mark an important step forward in Microsoft’s strategy for delivering software plus services that put people at the center of technology solutions in the office, at home and on the go. For more than a decade, Microsoft has enabled speech, handwriting and touch as forms of natural user input, making computing and digital devices easier to use. Combining Tellme’s technologies with Microsoft’s existing and future products and services will help improve the way people use voice to find, use and share information:

• Unified communications. Tellme’s voice-enabled services and solutions for enterprise customers complement Microsoft’s unified communications voice services portfolio. This will allow customers and industry partners to build highly scalable voice solutions that leverage rich identity, presence, messaging and application integration.
• Speech platform. Tellme’s robust voice-enabled platform helps open new doors for Microsoft’s hundreds of thousands of developers and partners to build innovative speech solutions based on open standards.
• Mobile services and search. Tellme’s speech expertise and work in mobile search, combined with Microsoft’s innovative local and mobile search offerings, will help take the mobile search usability experience to the next level.
• Software plus services. In the long term, Tellme technology will enhance Microsoft’s many voice-enabled applications, including the Windows Vistaâ„¢ operating system, the Microsoft Office system, and mobile applications such as Windows Mobile® and Windows® Automotive.

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Microsoft has not been exactly forthcoming with specifications of future Zune devices but they have unveiled hints that intrigue the public and encourage tech enthusiasts to keep an eye on Redmond in the future. Although Microsoft has made some mistakes during the Zune launch no one has completely discounted their efforts and what Zune means to the portable device market.

Just as Microsoft released their Zune MP3 player, the company confirmed the rumors spreading over the tech industry that they are preparing a lineup of devices that would compete with almost every existing handheld player on the market. According to Microsoft, their future technological innovations would connect home, office and automobile audio-visual systems and enable users to experience multimedia entertainment at their fingertips. It’s their Live Anywhere Initiative and the Zune family of devices appear to be the "Anywhere" component.

The trademark of Zune, which filed documents describe as a “family of multimedia devices” rather than one product, draws quite a bit of attention from many handheld enthusiasts and critics. Many bigwigs from the industry opined that Microsoft is having a “risky game” with existing multimedia devices, threatening them all as the company develops new devices under Zune trademark that would integrate functionality that are offered by separate portable devices nowadays. Many are concerned with Microsoft’s abandonment of their previous market endeavors such as the Plays4Sure program. Microsoft defends their position by claiming they plan to support both Zune and Plays4Sure as two separate programs. The Zune devices will allow Microsoft more control over the device design and upgrade progression.

The Zune system’s trademark documents submitted to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) expose that one of the future features of Zune family would be electronic games. This means that Microsoft intends to have their own product representation in handheld games industry that is currently dominated by companies such as Sony and Nintendo. The software giant’s confidence on their handheld game device venture is strengthened by the success previously realized by their own Xbox – as you may remember, it became the world’s number two game console when it was launched – surpassing the game entertainment veteran, Nintendo. A Microsoft portable game player has been discussed since the beginning of the Xbx was introduced and many have looked forward to the "Xboy" for quite some time. Many in the industry have high hopes for the Zune game player and there is no longer doubt that one is being planned, the only speculation left is what will a Zune gaming device do?.

Microsoft has partnered with several big companies to develop future Zune devices. With the information leaked in the filing of device prototype at FCC from a consortium involving Microsoft, it revealed that their current partners are Intel, Dell, Phillips and HP. Rumors were confirmed by Microsoft and its partners that they are currently working on a smart phone dubbed the “Zune phone.” Though the company did not confirm that their new Zune device is aimed to compete with Apple’s iPhone that will be launched on June 2007, they said that it would be available on the holiday season of the same year. The revelation of the Zune and iPhone would potentially stir telecom companies as these new products take advantage of wireless VOIP. Wireless VOIP would be attractive to public because calls are generally cheaper because they are routed through the Internet.

“Microsoft is getting involved with everything” would seem true statement when other Zune devices scheduled for release. The company’s greater cross-platform ambitions apparently would strike existing handheld manufacturers and encourage them to undergo massive re-strategy either to keep their dominance on their market or to protect their product’s existence. As these competitions push technological development and innovations more rapidly, it is clear that Microsoft is trying to steal the crown from companies as they join the handheld battle of the fittest.

The only question that remains is that if the software giant will be able to realize their plans. While future Zune devices will not immediately materialize, people involved in the industry have plenty of time to wait and see – and it begins with the Microsoft’s first Zune device. Microsoft’s attempt to topple down Apple’s market-leading iPod is merely the beginning of a long, exciting battle in the portable player market.

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Following up on our rumor from yesterday with some more Zune game player speculation today we have an article from Arstechnica on the announcement at GDC by AMD of their development of a suite of tools which allow developers to produce gaming content for their next generation mobile graphics products.

AMD has a new line of processors developed for mobile applications named Imageon which has support for 3D and 2D graphics, audio processing, digital still and video cameras, TV out, video recording with image stabilization, video transcoding, and various other multimedia features. The Arstechnica article speculates on a use for the new processor. They feel the Imageon chip would be the great match for a Microsoft portable game player and would be just what you need for a Zune gaming device. Of course this does not mean it will end up in any gaming device from Microsoft but just the fact people are mentioning it as a use may means there is interest in the player. Let’s hope Microsoft is paying attention and the rumored development of the Zune game player is on track. A holiday release date for a Zune 2.0 player and crossover with the existing Xbox fan base is just what Zune needs to kick start the social.

AMD brings Xbox 360 tech to handhelds

At GDC today, AMD announced a suite of tools for developing handheld gaming content for the company’s next-generation mobile graphics parts. The suite includes Rendermonkey 1.7, a shader tool that will let game developers write graphics code for a range of devices that support the OpenVG 1.0, OpenGL 2.0, and Unified Shader Architecture technologies. ATI’s Unified Shader Architecture in particular is one of the main selling points of the Xbox 360, and AMD will offer support for unified shaders on its next generation of mobile parts.

Rendermonkey is already widely used by PC and console developers, so the fact that the latest version makes it easier to author mobile gaming content should help foster porting and the development of original titles for handheld devices containing the AMD’s forthcoming Imageon processors.

The Imageon processor line, announced by AMD last month, is essentially a “GPU” for mobile devices. Imageon is more flexible than a desktop GPU, of course, since with a mobile device you want to save on cost and battery life by cramming as much of the phone onto one piece of silicon as you possibly can. So Imageon has support for 3D and 2D graphics, audio processing, digital still and video cameras, TV out, video recording with image stabilization, video transcoding, and various other multimedia features. All of this stuff is on a single chip that’s separate from the phone’s radio chip, so that the handset maker can upgrade to a new version of Imageon without having to go through the process of FCC qualification each time they add features.
A portable Microsoft gaming device?

Read more here:

AMD brings Xbox 360 tech to handhelds

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