Blog: Microsoft - Page 2

The enemy of my enemy is my friend – a phrase that nicely sums up the latest major development in games streaming and the console gaming industry. “ Sony and (Microsoft) announced on Thursday that …the two companies will partner on exploring joint development of future cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure to support their respective game and content-streaming services.

As you probably know by now, Microsoft launched Xbox All Access in the US. It is a bundle deal offering an Xbox console and a two year access to Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live – all this in return for 24 monthly payments of $21.

The majority of the gaming industry is pro cross-platform gaming and truly sees it as the natural evolution of the industry. Sony, however, is retaining the walled garden model as manifested by the recent Fortnite issue.

MIDiA is proud to partner with DiMA on its inaugural Streaming Forward Report. Digital distribution, andstreaming in particular, has been transforming music business in recent years. Although digital business models had already transformed content marketplaces prior to the rise of streaming, it is the rise of streaming services that really flicked the switch on this radical transformation.

Amazon and Microsoft have announced they will be collaborating around the Echo by allowing Microsoft’s Cortana service to be accessed through the voice control device. Whilst the move is not a direct merger between the company’s two respective voice assistants, it will now allow users commanding Cortana to open Alexa, meaning you will now be able to launch one of over 18,000 Alexa skills.

I started my career as an internet analyst back in the period of the dot-com bubble. They were heady days in which anything seemed possible. The world was changing in unprecedented ways and the possibilities were endless.

So two weeks into the 2017 and it's another year and yet another twist in the ongoing saga that is Yahoo. On Monday, Yahoo Inc disclosed in a regulatory filing that it was splitting the company into two.

Following an 84% success rate for our 2016 Predictions report, we today launch our 2017 predictions report: ‘ MIDiA Research Predictions 2017: The Year Of The Platform’. The report is immediately available to all MIDiA subscription clients and can also be purchased for individual download from our report store here.

Only 8 months on from its January 2016 launch, live interactive game streaming site Beam has been bought by Microsoft. In many ways an aquihire (where acquiring company looks to acquire the team running a company as much as the company itself) the Beam team will be absorbed into Microsoft’s Team Xbox while striving to maintain their original platform agnostic ethos.