The NFL will receive $400 million from Microsoft over the next five years, according to an Associated Press source. The partnership was announced during Microsoft's Xbox One unveiling yesterday and will see NFL content coming to Microsoft's next-generation console. As for the NFL side, fans will see Microsoft branding on-field during live games starting this upcoming season. Coaches and other team officials will be provided Microsoft Surface tablets, with the possibility of further technological innovations coming from Microsoft throughout the longevity of the deal.

Recently leaked copies of Windows 8.1, which includes Internet Explorer 11, have suggested that Microsoft will support WebGL shortly, a specification that lets webpages render 3D graphics. The software giant is dropping a big hint towards that support today with a teaser on Vine. After a set of entertaining Vine ads for IE recently, the latest asks "what's next? WebGL?"

On Tuesday, before a roomful of panting games journalists and sore-thumbed enthusiasts, Microsoft unveiled its latest games console. The curtain was pulled, and the Xbox One was revealed. As gamers ruminated on the implications of the ’box (not hardcore enough? Better than the forthcoming PlayStation 4?), some of us were left confused. Why, we thought, is this console called One? I mean, the last one was called Xbox 360, and the one before was, well, an Xbox. You don’t have to be a card-carrying numerist to be confused. Does it represent a collective failure of creativity? Had they spent every ounce of ingenuity they possessed on the construction of this whizz-bang contraption and then thought: “Bugger it, let’s go the pub – we’ll just call it, errr... One.”

As a core gamer, it's difficult not to be frustrated by the manner of yesterday's Xbox reveal. Microsoft set out to champion its innovative platform, its vision for multimedia and a renewed focus on making Kinect relevant again as a convincing alternative to the traditional remote. But we wanted to know about the new generation of gaming and the approach in revealing Xbox One titles via trailers with no single identifiable example of actual live gameplay was an enormous error in judgement. The problem is that next-gen trailers look no different to current-gen trailers - so there was no groundbreaking innovation, no authenticity and therefore no buzz. Even the promising Call of Duty: Ghosts reveal - perhaps the closest thing we had to actual gameplay - was in-engine footage apparently running on Xbox One hardware. Yet there were no assurances that this was actually real-time, or that this would be the actual quality of the game we will be playing in November.

After coming out swinging a few days back with a Surface ad that focused on Office, Microsoft has a new ad that confronts the iPad head-on. And here’s the crazy part: it’s surprisingly amusing. The commercial is a takeoff of Apple’s iPad Mini piano commercial. In the Microsoft version—entitled “Windows 8: Less talking, more doing”—the company pokes fun at Apple’s personal digital assistant Siri, all the while showing off the advantages of a Windows 8 tablet over the iPad.

Phil Harrison was once head of worldwide development for Sony’s PlayStation brand, leading that platform for years. But now he is a corporate vice president at Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB) and took a prominent role in this week’s Xbox One video game console announcement — including being part of the company’s confusing messaging about used games.

All games for Microsoft's Xbox One must first be installed onto the console's HDD before they can be played, according to a report from Wired. Wired reports that game discs must first be installed onto the Xbox One and, if owners want to use the disc with a second account, that owner would be given the option to pay a fee and install the game from the disc. This suggests that, once installed, games may no longer require their discs.

The new Xbox One WILL NOT require a constant internet connection. But it WILL block pre-owned.

The other day, unable to take it anymore, we sucked it up and ordered HBO. We needed our Game of Thrones fix immediately. When the order went through and we were ready to binge-watch, it wasn’t our cable box we turned on, but our Xbox. This news, I am sure, would be music to Microsoft’s ears. It may have launched the Xbox 360 in 2005 as a gaming machine filled with games for gamers, but somewhere in the middle of that long lifecycle it decided to focus what seemed to be the majority of its efforts on making Xbox your all-in-one entertainment box. Today, in announcing the Xbox One, Microsoft takes the next big step in introducing a console designed from the ground up to do far more than just games.

The Xbox One is a big deal for consoles, but Microsoft just made a massive content announcement at today's reveal event - a live-action Halo TV series. As if the existence of such a television show weren't enough, it turns out that 343 Industries is teaming up with renowned moviemaker Steven Spielberg to bring the world of Master Chief to life in serial form. Spielberg will be the executive producer and the show will provide "exclusive interactive Xbox One content," whatever that means. Unfortunately, neither Microsoft nor Mr. Spielberg are telling when the show will actually be available for your eyeballs to view, but it is, most assuredly an actual thing. And just knowing that the follow up to Halo: Forward Unto Dawn is coming is enough, right?

Now representing Microsoft in the next round of the video game battle: Xbox One. The software giant introduced the successor to the Xbox 360 at an industry event at its headquarters here Tuesday. While it didn't mention a price or exact release date, the Xbox One is expected to join the Sony PlayStation 4 in stores this holiday season. A renewal of the Microsoft and Sony rivalry will energize the global $27 billion console game industry, says Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. "Gamers have become fatigued, and they are ready for something different. Publishers have been reluctant to launch new (intellectual properties) late in the cycle, so there is a lot of fresh content ready for the next generation," he says.

Today a 3p ET/12n PT/190:00 GMT join me and the following special guests to discuss the Architecture of Xbox One. Here you’ll hear more about the design decisions behind the ultimate all in one gaming and entertainment box.

Microsoft has unveiled the new Xbox, and it's called Xbox One. It's Microsoft's first new console in over seven years. Yes, we've had many expectations for this console, especially since Sony and Nintendo have already taken their first steps in the next-gen landscape. Here's what you need to know that was announced at Microsoft's event in Redmond. The original Xbox debuted in the fall of 2005, which feels like a million years ago...even if it’s only seven and a half. It’s high time for a new console, even if some tech pundits are questioning the value of gaming hardware platforms in the current age.

Last week during Google I/O, Google sent Microsoft a cease and desist letter demanding that the company remove its YouTube app from its Windows Phone Store by May 22. The letter stated that the Microsoft-made app violated YouTube’s terms of service by stripping out ads and letting people download videos.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian's live blog of the Xbox reveal in Redmond, Washington. The as-yet unnamed console will be the first major revamp of the popular Xbox since Xbox 360 debuted in 2005. Microsoft's announcement comes two months after its rival Sony released some details on its forthcoming Playstation 4 console. The two systems are expected to have similar technical specifications and a key focus of today's announcement will be how Microsoft plans to differentiate itself from its competitor. One way Microsoft might be able to do this is with updates to the motion-sensing Kinect device. Kinect 2.0 is rumored to have advanced capabilities that can track four separate players and allow people to log in with facial recognition. It's possible Microsoft will save some announcements for its E3 conference in June and the company will likely keep quiet on a release date or price for the new console.

Microsoft Corp. will unveil its new Xbox on Tuesday. What's underneath the hood of the latest videogame console represents a multiyear odyssey of trying to figure out how to keep the machine "cool" in the age of smartphones and tablets. Since the last Xbox debuted in 2005, Microsoft has produced multiple prototypes for a new console and experimented with different technologies for it, said people familiar with the matter. The company has looked at streaming games from far-away servers to the latest Xbox; sending recorded videos of game exploits on the Web from the console; and including various television technologies, these people said.

The video-game industry’s health meter is blinking red, and its ammo belt is nearly depleted. Industry players are crawling through the darkness, frantically looking for first-aid kits and new weapons to get back into the action. Down one path a pulsing green light beckons, promising resuscitation, new capabilities and another round of fun. The light is coming from Redmond, where on Tuesday Microsoft will “reveal” the third version of its Xbox in a high-voltage news conference that will broadcast around the world.

Hewlett-Packard rolled out another Android device this week. This could become a pattern as PC makers hedge against a world that's less about Microsoft and more about Google. On Tuesday, the largest PC maker in the world - a dubious distinction these days - added a laptop-tablet hybrid to its growing stable of products based on Google operating systems. The $479 HP SlateBook x2 is an Android first for HP. It's "powered by Android, the world's most popular mobile operating system...100 percent tablet, 100 percent notebook, 100 percent Android," according to the company's ad copy.

Microsoft Internal Google Chrome Bouncing Ball Now Everywhere Parody.

Please play a game with me. Who dislikes whom more? Google or Microsoft? I only ask because at Wednesday's I/O conference Google's chief preacher, Larry Page, bemoaned what he believes is Microsoft's reluctance to do what Google wants. No, he didn't quite phrase it like that. It was more berating Redmond for allegedly milking Google for its own profits. Yes, just like Google milks you.

Google would like to endow Chrome with Microsoft's technology for letting Web applications deal with input from mice, pens, and touch screens. Developers of the Google browser said at the company's Google I/O show here Thursday that Microsoft's Pointer Events approach - built into IE10, Windows 8, and Windows Phone 8, and being standardized at the World Wide Web Consortium - has some real advantages. "We're going to start landing some experimental support in Blink for Pointer Events," said Chrome programmer Rick Byers. Blink is the open-source browser engine at the heart of Chrome. "Hopefully, we'll see it in Chrome at some point in the future."

Speaking at Microsoft's Security Development Conference in San Francisco this week, Scott Charney, corporate vice president for Trustworthy Computing at Microsoft, detailed Microsoft's journey from just issuing patches when problems occurred to following its own SDL (Security Development Lifecycle) processes, which made security intrinsic to development. "Back in the early days, it was all about whack-a-mole. Problems would occur, patches would issue," said Charney, a former prosecutor.

Earlier this week, Google sent a cease-and-desist letter to Microsoft, saying that it must remove the YouTube application from the Windows Phone marketplace. That app, which Microsoft updated to make it look like those on other mobile platforms, was criticized by Google for allegedly violating its terms of service. The company specifically took aim at Microsoft over the application's lack of ad support.

The new Microsoft Surface Pro will be released in one week in the UK. Microsoft's tablet/laptop gadget is finally going to be released in the UK on May 23, months after its US release. It is the company's most powerful tablet to-date, boasting 4GB RAM, an Intel Core i5 third-generation processor, and a large HD 10.6in screen. One major boon for this tablet is (unlike most Microsoft tablets), the computers runs a full version of Windows 8 rather than Windows RT. However, the UK retail version does not come included with the iconic keyboard that clips on to the device, rather that is sold separately for an additional £110 (approximately $168). The computer does, however, come with the "pen digitizer and pen" stylus for accurate writing or drawing.

In the light of yesterday’s well-received unveiling of the new Nokia Lumia 925 flagship phone, we grabbed 15 minutes with Nokia’s VP of European Sales and Marketing, Chris Weber, and asked him where Nokia’s future lies. His response? Unequivocally in “the Windows Phone camp”. But why has the Finnish mobile giant so recklessly thrown all its eggs into a basket lined with the most derided of operating systems when its very survival is in question? Simply it seems because everyone at Nokia, from developers to execs, is convinced the Windows ecosystem offers the most coherent and future proof service for customers.

Lots of rumors and speculation circulating today that Microsoft has a smaller variant of the Surface – let's call it the Surface Mini until further notice – in the pipeline, and there's been a lot of focus on what screen size this mythical device will have. But it's not screen size that will determine whether the Surface Mini sinks or swims. The general chit-chat hints that the Surface Mini will have a screen size of between 7.5- and 8-inches, putting it in the same ball park as Apple's iPad mini, and a smidgen bigger than Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire HD.

It’s not that long since Microsoft and Windows defined all aspects of computing. In the days when every computer was a functional, beige box sitting underneath a bulky monitor, what this Seattle-based company wanted was what consumers and businesses got the world over. When Microsoft decided that the best way to access software was via a mouse, even though they hadn’t invented it, that was what the world got. When the same company decided that a menu called “Start” was the place to go to find anything on your PC, and also, oddly, the place to go to shut down your computer, that was that.

Microsoft and Google have been locked in a war of words over a YouTube Windows Phone app, but in the midst of the arguments a new Scroogled ad has emerged. Designed to be an internal-only video, a copy has somehow managed to find its way onto the web right in the middle of Google's I/O developer conference.

Unlike Microsoft's previous attempts, this directly parodies Google's own Chrome ads with a bouncing ball tracking how Google allegedly targets you with ads. It's identical to Google's own Chrome "Now Everywhere" ad, set to the same music and style. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that the ad is genuine, stating it's "an internal video that was leaked."

Google CEO Larry Page zinged Microsoft for its "sad" behavior during his remarks at Google I/O, complaining about the company's us-versus-them mentality. Yet only a few days earlier, Google had served Microsoft with a cease-and-desist letter to pull a Windows Phone YouTube app. Whose behavior is really sad here? During a talk at Google I/O, Page decried tech industry competition, saying that it impedes progress. Cooperation, not competition, is the way that the world will improve, he said. CNet quotes him as saying: "Every story I read about Google is us versus some other company or some stupid thing. Being negative is not how we make progress. The most important things are not zero sum. There is a lot of opportunity out there."

Google and Microsoft are in the middle of a scuffle over the updated YouTube app in Windows Phone, but the software giant is apparently willing to compromise. Earlier this week, Google sent a cease-and-desist letter to Microsoft, saying that it must remove the YouTube application from the Windows Phone marketplace. That app, which Microsoft updated to make it look like those on other mobile platforms, was criticized by Google for allegedly violating its terms of service. The company specifically took aim at Microsoft over the application's lack of ad support.

Free Microsoft games in Windows 7 are abundant, but not always easy for everyone to find (which is probably how you came to find this page in the first place). To make it less of a chore for you, fair reader, we will outline 10 free Microsoft games that you can find on your Windows 7 machine. These games come standard with Windows 7 and are free to play. If you want to access them, you can use the Games folder via the Start button and search for games in the provided field.

Windows 8 was built for a world that blends our work and our personal lives, a world where we expect high quality touch experiences everywhere, and a world that is always on the go and always connected. Windows 8 redefines our market from PCs to mobile computing. We are pleased with the progress we’ve seen with Windows 8 so far. Our OEM partners have delivered tablets, touch laptops, and convertibles that bring the vision of Windows 8 and mobile computing to life. They have introduced some incredible (and unique) new form factors like the Dell XPS 12, the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13, the Sony VAIO Tap 20, or the recently announced Acer Aspire R7. And today at retail, you can find a powerful mobile touch laptop starting at just over $400. We now have more than 70,000 apps in the Windows Store (the online app store for Windows) – apps such as Twitter, eBay, Netflix, CNN and games like Temple Run: Brave, Bejeweled LIVE and Angry Birds Star Wars and many others.

The checkered flag is out and the race to the bottom for Windows RT manufacturers has entered the final laps. Dell - for all intents and purposes the only Windows RT hardware manufacturer left standing, other than Microsoft -just dropped the official price of its only Windows RT tablet by 33 percent. At almost the same time (when most of the tech world is watching Google I/O), Microsoft started giving away free Touch or Type covers with all new Surface RTs sold in most of Europe, effectively up to a 25 percent discount.

Google was once a humble startup with a big dream—to be the David that takes down Microsoft’s Goliath. Google has become a tech force to be reckoned with, challenging Microsoft in almost every area including Web search, browsers, email, operating systems, productivity software and mobile platforms. Over time, it has chipped away at Microsoft’s market share.

Gartner reports that sales of PCs in Western Europe fell 20.5 percent in the first quarter compared to a year previous. Every country and every segment of the market saw serious declines. Shipments of mobile PCs fell by 24.6 percent and desktop PCs by 13.8 percent. Shipments for the "professional" PC market dropped 17.2 percent, and those to the consumer PC market declined 23.7 percent.

As an aside, if you're sending URLs that contain login credentials in plain text, you already have big security problems. The same is true if your session ID allows anyone to masquerade as you simply by clicking a link. That IP address, 65.52.100.214, is indeed controlled by Microsoft, as a cursory inspection of DNS records confirms. But after doing some investigating of my own, I’ve concluded that the reason for the mysterious visit is almost certainly innocent.

The new gift cards will be offered in a similar way to Apple's iTunes vouchers, allowing Xbox owners to purchase true currency to be used to download content. We're told that normal cash transactions, using credit and debit cards, will also be supported. Microsoft currently offers gift cards in its retail stores, but these can only be used for purchases in brick and mortar stores. The new system will work across Microsoft's various marketplaces, including the Windows Store, Windows Phone Store, and Xbox. We understand that Microsoft is planning to unveil the system as soon as E3, with a planned launch later this year in time for the next-generation Xbox console.

Regular readers know I have been a die-hard Windows Phone fan since the beginning, after testing out an early prototype starting in July 2010. The newly announced Nokia Lumia 928 and 925 devices look solid, but they also makes it clear that Nokia is being held back with incremental hardware updates while pushing as hard as they can with their own software. It reminds me of the way HTC used to push Windows Mobile back in the day and we see how that ended up. The new Lumia 928 and 925 devices offer some incremental improvements over the 920 released last year with a Xenon flash in the 928 and additional lens piece in the 925 with OLED displays now being used on both.

In June, Microsoft will release its next big update to Windows 8 called Windows Blue. With this update, Microsoft will hopefully fix a lot of things that have annoyed people about Microsoft's new touch-friendly operating system. A lot is riding on this. Windows 8 has been widely criticized as being too hard to learn. One report after another has shown that initial demand has not been good for new Windows 8 devices, including Microsoft's own Surface tablets.

Microsoft claimed last week that it's made '100 million' Windows 8 sales and the claim has been widely repeated. But channel feedback and the experience on the ground point to a very different picture. The Guardian's Charles Arthur has made a stab at estimating the true figure, and suggests it's much less, at between 57 million and 59 million machines running Redmond's latest OS. Arthur looks at two metrics of browser usage: StatCounter and Net Applications' NetMarketShare, and extrapolates a usage figure from the number of PCs actually shipped. The logic here is that browser usage is a reliable proxy for real-world usage.

There are narratives circling the technology industry that are wearing out their welcome. The primary one, and the one where I wish more intelligent voices would prevail, is the narrative that there can only be one winner in this industry. Namely that for Google’s ecosystem to win, Microsoft and Apple must fail. Or that for Microsoft’s ecosystem to win, Apple and Google need to lose. And of course for Apple to win, Google and Microsoft need to lose.

The Google Talk integration will be implemented similarly to the way Microsoft already integrates Facebook and Skype messaging from inside Outlook.com, according to a new post on the Microsoft Outlook blog. Microsoft said users should expect to be able to send an instant message to Google contacts with a single click "over the next couple of days." Microsoft built the support using Google's

As many expected and hoped, Microsoft is going to make the coming Windows Blue update to Windows 8 free for existing Windows 8 and Windows RT users. win8blueprice Microsoft's Windows Chief Financial Officer Tami Reller, during an appearance at the May 14 JP Morgan Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, shared the pricing news.