by Don Burnett
Well, you had to be living under some rock in Pakistan today if you didn't hear about the Microsoft Halo 3 video game launch. It made morning and evening news on CNN international and even scooped the UAW/GM strike.
Halo 3 is probably THE most anticipated game ever for the X-Box 360 (and no doubt later on the PC). I escaped to Microsoft's regional offices this evening for a sneak preview party of Halo 3. Let me tell you it was the most fun I probably ever had at a Microsoft event. Watching the people come in and participate in the Halo 3 Tournament was awesome, there was great food and game developers all about to ask questions of and give Halo 3 the biggest video game launch ever. The launch event took place in over 60 locations they had similar events around the world. Video game launches will never be the same after this one. Besides the stunning cinematic visuals, it is a tour-de-force in gaming fun. I tried it and got killed instantly, but there were some amazing people and kids in the audience. The winner of our tournament gets to play against opponents from other regions coming up for national Halo 3 pride..
One of the reasons I am writing about this, in this blog, is that Microsoft (for one of the first times ever in a national launch) placed a lot of the content online using Silverlight to give Halo 3 a very high quality video experience that felt like an interactive movie. In fact Microsoft's Halo 3 Game Guide is completely done in Silverlight. It really puts the technology through it's paces. I will have an in-depth article up soon about the process of creating such a site. The site is very cool as well because it mixes ASP.NET with Silverlight, this time using ASP.NET as it's back-end server technology. Microsoft could have used any number of web servers (including Apache) and even PHP, but Microsoft now has two new GREAT extensions for Silverlight that make development of this caliber of site easier with ASP.NET... While you can use Silverlight anywhere this really shows the power of combining Microsoft technologies.
It was obvious, on the way home from the event, by the number of people waiting to buy Halo 3 at the local game emporium way after dark, that Microsoft already had a hit game on their hands. This time they reached out with Silverlight to help to tell the players the story of the new game. What this meant also is a vast number of people who accessed the online Silverlight content also helped to speed the adoption of Silverlight as well. I don't think we'll hear numbers right away, but everything that I have read and seen and from people's reaction to the Silverlight content adoption may be happening at a more rapid rate than anyone thought. We'll know for sure soon enough.
CodeToLive Rocks!
The other thing that got mentioned today was CodeToLive.NET which is an incredible video series coming to channel 9 with host and code masters Steve Loethen and Josh Holmes. This is probably the wildest, most fun, video webcast ever to hit Channel 9. It's also a new series.. If you haven't checked it out you should.. They are crisscrossing the nation on bikes seeking out code warriors where they live.
1 comment:
Code Warriors concatenate!
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