Microsoft continues to push on the aggressive Xbox 360 price strategy announced in the first days of September. After having brought the cost of the basic console version below 200 dollars in the United States, Redmond has got through doing the same in the Old Continent where Xbox 360 “Arcade” will have a price of 180 € starting from tomorrow September 19.
In a candid impotence acknowledgment in regard of the money-making machine that the Wii console has turned to be, senior vice-president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business division Don Mattrick has clearly said that the larger part of seventh generation home consoles’ sales is enlarging and will continue to enlarge the yet-puffy Nintendo’s wallet.
With the characteristic effect of a bolt from the blue, at the beginning of this week Mountain View has released the beta version of its browser, Google Chrome, joining the super-competitive market of software interfaces toward the possibilities of net economy and information society. Everybody talk about it, everybody express their own thoughts on the matter, but still no one has had the heart to define the event with its due name: Chrome, there’s no much to do about that, marks the beginning of a new browser war in a time in which the said browsers are the main framework of business and access to digital heritage of interconnected mankind.
Sony Computer Entertainment chairman Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai would like to sell 150 millions of PlayStation 3 in ten years, but even that wouldn’t be enough to recover from the astounding cost of the 3 billions of dollars lost for the console. It has been said not by a Nintendo fanboy but by the Sony Corporation Chief Executive Officer Sir Howard Stringer, who has frankly admitted with the press that PS3 is and will be a product at a loss for the coming years yet.
Is cause of a sensation the news coming from Japan in these days, according to which the Microsoft Xbox 360 console has exceeded the Sony PlayStation 3 in weekly sales. A fact that’s undoubtedly exceptional, considering that the American device has always been only a little more than an appearance in the Japanese videogaming scenery, and that can be an ideal background for some general considerations on the present landscape of the endless war among the seventh generation home consoles.
Announcements of network apocalypses come from Las Vegas, where the major security experts have met to discuss about the state of things of the modern computer platforms during the Black Hat conference held the last week. The message given describes just a dramatic scenery, where Internet structural flaws couple with those as much as fundamental of Windows Vista to provide the “good fella” with an entire new rack of attacks against users and assorted net services.
Flags halfway down for the old caryatids still relying on an operative system that calling historic isn’t enough: voices from within the Microsoft circle let us know that, with the mourning in its heart, the company will release no more Windows for Workgroups 3.11 licences to customers of the embedded channel starting from the 1st of November.
