microsoft

Well the Microsoft CES 2011 Keynote just wrapped up and you can head to the Microsoft Press website to watch it on demand if you want to see the demos and hear the announcements.

I kept some notes and will share the tidbits I grabbed out of it for a quick review of the key things announced in the keynote.

First the numbers for 2010 from the Microsoft CES site:

Xbox & Kinect for Xbox 360

• 8 million: Number of Kinects sold in first 60 days
• 50 million: Xbox 360s sold to date
• 30 million: Number of Xbox LIVE members

Windows Phone 7

• 100: Average number of new apps in the marketplace each day
• 5,500: Apps available in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace
• 20,000: Developers registered to develop apps for Windows Phone 7
• 1.5 million: Windows Phone 7s sold by phone manufacturers in the first six weeks after launch
• 60: Number of mobile operators that carry Windows Phone 7
• 30: Number of countries where Windows Phone 7 is available

Windows 7

• 7: number of Windows 7 licenses sold per second
• 20 million: Number of downloads of Internet Explorer 9 beta
• 500 million+: Number of Windows Live users worldwide
• 20: Percentage of PCs connected to the Internet running Windows 7

Announcements:

  • This spring Kinect will be able to interact with Netflix and HuluPlus on the Xbox 360 Console through gestures and voice control.
  • Avatar Kinect will come out this Spring as a free update to Xbox Live Gold subscribers that allow them to interact with other users avatars in several different ways.  I believe this is the rumored enhanced detection for Kinect that picks up facial expressions, individual fingers, etc.

Here is a picture of Steve Ballmer in Avatar Kinect delivering part of his CES 2011 keynote and a screenshot from Avatar Kinect in use on the console:

steveballmerasavatarduringkeynote Avatar_Kinect_Tailgate_06_web
  • New Xbox Live games coming for the Windows Phone 7.  These are the games I already posted about and embedded a video of them from the Channel 9 series Hot Apps.  You can see that post here – CES Hot Apps- Xbox Live Games for Windows Phone 7.

That was the bulk of the announcements during the keynote.  They did demo Surface 2.0, some new form factor laptops and of course the next version of Windows running on System on a Chip systems.  Check out the keynote and jump towards the end to see the hardware.