It must be a bit difficult to be Microsoft sometimes, especially these days. Sure, they still make a desktop OS that dominates the world, but that lead is dropping as fast as sales of desktop computers.

And their other products, like the Surface, don’t seem to be catching on with the kids. And don’t get us started on the XBox One.

Microsoft just doesn’t seem to get it. So what do you do when you are a big company that’s falling behind the times? You go negative, of course.

In a new ad that’s just come out, Microsoft again decides to mock Apple and the iPad via Siri, the company’s voice-enabled personal assistant. The chief reasons the iPad is bad this time: it doesn’t have a zoomable home screen, lacks an SD card slot and for not being able to multitask as efficiently as Windows RT.

Sure, okay. Now that you put it that way we’re going to throw our iPads in the trash and rush out to buy a Surface right now. Not.

Check out the ad after the break.

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In just a few short hours, the E3 conferences begin and as we’ve all seen these can be the biggest moments of the expo and often influence the nature of the industry for the coming year and even further. In the past, these conferences have also made significant impact on who lost in the coming year as a lack of hype for certain companies made others look even greater by comparison.

The one given for this E3 above all else is that Nintendo doesn’t have anything big to reveal. While they will probably be making announcements from the show floor and through Nintendo Direct and shoving off various new games, potentially including new details on the upcoming Wii U Smash Brothers, they actually are not going to have a Nintendo Press Conference. After two years of lackluster results pushing the Wii U to the mainstream media through E3 press, Nintendo is backing off hopefully to reevaluate where the console stands in the market and figure out a way to focus back on their core audience they lost with the Wii.

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It used to be all Intel all the time and the little chip maker that could, AMD, seemed like it was being left in the dust. Well, how things have changed.

AMD is supplying both Microsoft and Sony its new A Series-based Jaguar APU to power both the XBox One and PS4 in a deal said to be worth over $3 Billion. That’s a lot of APU chips folks.

But why is AMD getting all that money from both of the gaming giants? Well, to demonstrate, AMD has released a trailer called “Be Invincible” to showcase the capabilities of said APU.

In it you can see there’s a whole lot of pixels being pushed and a whole lot of math going on, two things APU need to be good at. Fortunately, this one is. In fact, the graphics look pretty damn amazing.

But heck, why don’t you just look at them yourselves after the break. Kudos AMD, kudos.

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As we learned already, the XBox One isn’t going to be backwards compatible with XBox 360 games. Personally, I don’t see this as an issue. When I got my XBox 360, I didn’t worry about playing my original XBox games on it. And any of us who were born before the PS2 rose to prominence remember the days when we got our SNES and the only ones who questioned if the NES games would still play on it were our parents. We didn’t care back then.

In an interview with The Verge, Microsoft Xbox Live vice president Marc Whitten said, “The system is based on a different core architecture, so back-compat doesn’t really work from that perspective.” As a result, the content of the XBox Live Arcade on the XBox 360 won’t be able to carry over to the XBox One. Since the XBox One’s hardware configuration won’t support XBox 360 discs, it makes sense that the downloadable content would not be supported as well.

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Since we already told you the important facts about the XBox One yesterday, I thought I would take time to let it sink in and then give my reaction to what was announced. Any of you follow me on Twitter saw my initial reactions yesterday, but I wanted to be fair and take a step back before voicing my actual thoughts instead of just hoping for retweets. This isn’t about being a fanboy or ranting, but just my honest reactions to the announcements.

First off, the name has to be addressed. I like the fact that Microsoft didn’t go with calling the console just “XBox” again and at least the “One” differentiates it. I call my current console the “360” in conversation and I don’t doubt that I’ll end up calling the XBox One just the “XBox,” but it was at least better than Apple’s iPad, iPad 2 and then “new iPad.” And let’s be honest, the name isn’t what sells a system as the Wii proved since every gamer ripped that name to shreds.

Also, thank you to Microsoft for showing the system. They needed to do something to separate themselves from Sony and the PlayStation 4 and rather than continue the pissing contest that is going to reach E3, they just showed what it looked like. Much like the name, the overall look of the system isn’t going to make or break the sale of a console (again take a look at the Wii). I was happy to see most of the design on the controller remained and was happy to see the D-Pad had been changed as it is especially reviled by fighting gamers.

Hooray for Blu-Ray. Although that means my HD-DVD is now officially in the same category as Betamax and Laserdisc.

I appreciate Skype being on the XBox One and integrated with the “Snap” feature, but I feel like I’ll never use it. The last thing I want when watching TV or a movie is to have someone talking to me. Maybe if I was a sports guy and wanted to talk trash during a game with my friend across the country during a basketball game, I’d be down. But if I am watching The Walking Dead, don’t you dare try calling me during the show.

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During an event today at its Redmond, WA campus, Microsoft announced the brand new Xbox console everyone had been waiting for. Dubbed “XBox One” the new console features a host of internal and external improvement, enhancements and new features/content including 8GB of RAM, a 500 GB internal HD, USB 3.0, 802.11n Wi-Fi, a Blu-ray drive and three operating systems: The standard Xbox OS, the kernel of Windows 8 for web applications and a third platform that connects the two together.

Microsoft has also completely redesigned its Kinect sensor to better respond to users’ voices and gestures and has overhauled its Xbox Live experience, which is now supported by 300,000 servers, or 20 times the number of servers that currently power Xbox Live. That’s a lot of servers.

Microsoft also said during the event that it will launch 15 exclusive games on the Xbox One, 8 of which are new titles. The major one reveled was, of course, a brand new Call of Duty game called: Call of Duty: Ghosts.

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It looks like Microsoft won’t be as dumb as, well, Microsoft seems to be sometimes. That’s right XBox fans, you won’t need to be connected to the Internet to enjoy any games on the next-gen XBox console, currently known as the XBox 720.

Word has come to us today from the fine folks are Ars Technica (who got hold of an internal Microsoft email) that the Redmond giant has decided against this requirement. In the email, from Microsoft to Xbox engineers, the company outlines “a number of scenarios that our users expect to work without an Internet connection” and instructing the engineers to make those functions “‘just work’ regardless of their current connection status.”

The email goes on to say that the new Xbox should be designed for “playing a Blu-ray disc, watching live TV, and yes playing a single player game” without an Internet connection. Well, that makes more sense, doesn’t it?

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Not one to be left behind when there’s a fight to be had, Microsoft has decided to take on what it thinks are two of its biggest rivals: Apple and Samsung. Or, at least, it wants you to remember that it also makes phones too and the fued between Apple and Samsiung is a silly distraction from the awesomeness of its products.

One way Microsoft is trying to accomplish this is with a new ad. In this one iPhone users make fun of Galaxy owners and their “enormous” phones, Galaxy owners make fun of iPhone owners and call them children and the list of insults goes on and on.

If it wasn’t so heavy-handed and obvious, it would be kinda funny. Still, we do like stylized martial arts action in a church and overblown sound effects as much as the next guys/gals. The guy with the Apple tattoo is also a nice touch.

So kudos to Microsoft for at least trying to have a sense of humor and trying to do something. We may never buy a Windows Smartphone (check that, we never will), but at least it won’t be due to a lack of effort on Microsoft’s part.

Hey, we still love the XBox 360. Check out the add after the break.

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In somewhat of an ominous email I, and probably nearly every Xbox Live member, received today from Microsoft, a date has been announced for the folks at Redmond to reveal their next generation gaming console. A day past 3 months after Sony held their presentation for the Playstation 4, M$ will lay it out for everyone on May 21st at 1pm EDT/10am PDT.

Rumors have flowed a plenty about what the next Xbox (720? Durango? Fandango?) will feature, from features like an updated or even built in Kinect sensor, HDMI passthrough letting it act like a cable box, whether or not it will support Blu-Ray media, to screams that it won’t be able to play used games.

Hopefully most, if not all, the rumors out there will be answered during the presentation, and maybe we’ll even see what the damn system will look like (unlike the Playstation 4, which we’re still waiting on…).

Watch the announcement live May 21, 1pm EDT/10am PDT on Xbox Live, Xbox.com or Spike TV.

Despite Sony rumors running rampant throughout most of February before the PlayStation 4 announcement, the XBox 360 was still the top selling console of the month. Making it now twenty-six months in a row, the XBox 360 topped both the PlayStation 3 and Wii which came out after it in its generation as well as the latest generation’s entrant, the Wii U. With this momentum, does Microsoft really need to announce the next XBox, and if so, when?

Right now, Microsoft has the benefit of learning from Sony’s lessons that were painfully learned from the PlayStation 3 launch which Sony never fully recovered from. When the PS3 launched a full year later at a higher price point than the XBox 360, even the system’s power and free online network weren’t enough to make up the deficit.

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