microsoft

Looks like Microsoft is starting to look after their independent game developers.

A few of the good things that have been announced:

• Maximum size limit has been increased to 500MB (up from the previous 150MB limit)
• Developers are now able to apply a price point of 80 MS Points ($1) to games smaller than 150MB. Previously, you could only apply the $1 price tag to games smaller than 50MB
• Also, the maximum number of titles than can be on the market at any given time, per developer, has been raised to 20, up from the previous 10

I'm not usually one for rumour mongering, but when the rumour involves my favourite console, I'll bite.

Rumour has it (always wanted to say that) that Microsoft is developing 2 different variations of their next generation console.

The one will be a slightly lower priced and lower performing settop box, mostly aimed at families looking at units for entertainment purposes, like streaming Netflix and watching DVD's and hopefully Blu-ray.

The other will of course be the monster gaming machine complete with (rumoured) full backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 games. I can only hope that the last part is true.

When Sony tried full backwards compatibility with their PS3, only the first generation PS3 had full compatibility, mainly because the Emotion Engine chip that was present on the PS2, was embedded on the new hardware. Budget and manufacturing constraints forced Sony to remove the Emotion Engine, instead opting for software-based backwards compatibility. The new software based compatibility could not fully emulate the entire PS2 library of games. Finally, with the new PS3 Slim, Sony removed backwards compatibility completely.

I sincerely hope they don't call it the Xbox 720 though. I was telling my nephew just the other day that that would be a stupid name...

Anyway, hit up the source link for more rumour mongering goodness!

In a strange twist of things, an independent study has identified IE9 as the safest browser of the bunch. Strange but true.

IE9 was able to block more than 90% of malware using it's SmartScreen Filter technology, while other browsers struggled to reach 15% percent.

The downside? A lot more false positives.

Head on over to the source link for a more in-depth read.

Microsoft recently gave the .NET Development world quite a scare by implying that their new development platform is based on HTML5 and Javascript when they unveiled their new Windows 8 Touch interface.

I for one don't believe that Microsoft will be throwing away 10 years of .NET development and experience and that most of the internet are jumping up and down for nothing. I happened upon this Ars Tecnnica piece which posits that, possibly, Windows 8 might just be the best development platform that we've seen yet. I don't believe we'll see the end .NET anytime soon and I also think that Microsoft is on the path to supporting more and more open source technologies.

They have to if they want to keep up.