Tonight CES 2010 was officially kicked off when Steve Ballmer took the stage for Microsoft"s CES 2010 keynote. Even with a 20 minute delay due to a power outage, Steve Ballmer took the stage enthusiastically and had quite a bit to announce. While this year"s announcements are nothing like last year"s announcements, Steve Ballmer had a lot to say.
According to Ballmer, 2009 was a big year for Microsoft. Ballmer announced that Windows 7 was by far the fastest selling operating system in history with PC sales jumped nearly 50% the week Windows 7 launched. Ballmer added that Bing saw major progress by adding 11 million new users. Xbox and Xbox LIVE also set new records in 2009 with over 39 million Xbox 360 consoles around the world, and more than 500 million games have been sold.
Here"s a recap of Ballmer"s announcements:
- A new touch-enabled slate PC from HP
- New Xbox games coming: Mass Effect 2 (Jan 26), Splinter Cell (February), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 new content packs, Fable III, Crackdown 2, Alan Wake, Halo Reach (Fall of 2010),
- HP and Microsoft have teamed to launch Bing as the default search engine and MSN as the default homepage on HP PC"s in 42 countries worldwide.
- The HTC HD2 will be available to T-Mobile consumers later this year.
- Mediaroom 2.0 is now available, with AT&T U-verse being compatible.
- Project Natal will be available by the holiday season 2010, more information coming on that soon.
It looks like any news regarding Windows Mobile 7 will be at Mobile World Congress in February. Microsoft is planning on the Xbox platform to be the biggest hit of 2010, with all of the games mentioned above being released as well as Project Natal being ready for the holiday season later this year. All-in-all Microsoft"s keynote this year wasn"t the most exciting we"ve seen, but is definately going to please Xbox fans around the world.
You can view our archived version of our live bloghere (Kudos to special guest Matthew Arkin, Microsoft Partner, for joing us) as well as the full press release of Microsoft"s announcements here.