SiliconBeat

On June 9, I’ll be stopping by the annual Launch: Silicon Valley event  at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View . The gathering is co-sponsored by Microsoft, Garage Technology Ventures, and the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs (or SVASE).

The gathering is usually a good opportunity to take the pulse of the entrepreneurial community. In advance, I spoke with SVASE President and CEO Chris Gill to get his thoughts about the state of Silicon Valley during the downturn. Read the rest of this entry »

The games industry frequently surprises me … and not in a good way.

One of the most obvious things about the current console cycle has been that the Wii is the dominant platform. To date, Nintendo, has sold 50 million Wiis worldwide. In contrast, Sony and Microsoft have sold about 52 million PlayStation 3s and Xbox 360s — combined.

At least in the United States, the Wii’s lead on the other two consoles has just kept getting bigger. In recent months, the Wii has typically outsold both the PlayStation 3 and the 360 combined — by a wide margin. Read the rest of this entry »

First Microsoft unveiled Project Natal. Now Sony says it has a “motion controller” in the works.

Two-and-a-half years after Nintendo’s Wii hit store shelves, the company’s chief rivals have stopped firing at each other long enough to try to match the Wii’s motion-sensing game controllers.

Given that the Wii has been the breakout hit console of the current generation since its launch, you’d have thought Sony and Microsoft wouldn’t have tarried so long. Regardless, they clearly have Nintendo in their sites.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nintendo seems to be getting just the slightest bit smug.

For its E3 presentation yesterday, Microsoft brought out the remaining Beatles and showed off Project Natal, a piece of technology straight out of the “Minority Report.” At its press event, Electronic Arts brought out tennis legend Pete Sampras and a stage full of Jedi warriors. Ubisoft had James Cameron, Pele and a cool new camera accessory for the Wii.

Nintendo … Well, Nintendo today showed off a glorified pulse meter. The company’s presentation included no celebrities, few real surprises in terms of games or new accessories and was kept to a relatively curt 72 minutes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Market research firm NPD Group on Thursday released its latest monthly video game sales numbers. At first glance, they don’t look great for the industry.

For the second straight month, U.S. retail sales of video game products plunged by 17 percent compared with the same month a year earlier. The pain was felt all over: in dollar terms, hardware sales dropped 8 percent, software sales fell 23 percent and accessories sales fell 15 percent.

Perhaps more disturbingly for future growth, sales of the latest video game consoles dropped off a cliff in the month. Sales of Nintendo’s Wii, far and away the leader thus far this cycle, plunged 52 percent from April 2008 to 340,000 units. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember way back in the beginning of this year when Microsoft supposedly said it was willing to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion? (And that was before the company reportedly was willing to bump the offer up even more).

Well, not that I’m actually suggesting anyone do this, but…Thanks to the stock markets’ implosion, if you had enough spare change lying under your couch, you could now buy eBay AND Yahoo for less than that. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been fashionable for years to knock Microsoft for not being hip, cutting edge, innovative. Choose your dart. The folks at Redmond have heard it all. But, of course, the picture is more complex. In its most recent fiscal year, Microsoft spent $8.2 billion on research. That sum makes it one of the largest research organizations in the world.

So when I was offered the chance last month to chat with Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer, I jumped on it. Mundie spent a day at the University of California at Berkeley as part of a week-long visit to universities across the country.

According to his official bio: “Mundie is responsible for directing the company’s technical strategy and long-term investments. In this role, he oversees Microsoft Research and other technology and research initiatives, the company’s health and education businesses, and a number of technology incubations. Mundie also works with government and business leaders around the world on technology policy, regulation and standards.”

On a basic level, Mundie is the guy in charge of figuring out the future for Microsoft. So, what he thinks matters. He’s been at the software company since 1992. And Mundie makes a convincing case that the conventional wisdom about Microsoft and innovation is wrong.

During a presentation to students and faculty at Berkeley, Mundie began by demonstrating the World Wide Telescope. And if you haven’t downloaded this yet, you should. Especially if you have a five-year-old at home, like me. The WWT pulls together almost every astronomical image in the world to create a kind of “Google Maps” for the universe.

There were a few highlights from Mundie’s official presentation to students and faculty: Read the rest of this entry »

Confirming recent scuttlebutt, Google announced Wednesday that it was walking away from its advertising partnership with Yahoo. According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice, the agency had told the pair that it planned to file a suit to block the deal:

“Yahoo! Inc. and Google Inc. abandoned their advertising agreement after the Department of Justice informed the companies that it would file an antitrust lawsuit to block the implementation of the agreement. The Department said that, if implemented, the agreement between these two companies accounting for 90 percent or more of each relevant market would likely harm competition in the markets for Internet search advertising and Internet search syndication.

“The companies’ decision to abandon their agreement eliminates the competitive concerns identified during our investigation and eliminates the need to file an enforcement action,” said Thomas O. Barnett, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department’s Antitrust Division. “The arrangement likely would have denied consumers the benefits of competition–lower prices, better service and greater innovation.”

As I wrote the other day, I think the notion that this deal raised anti-trust issues was wrongheaded. And I think Google and Yahoo could have won a court fight. The problem was that this would take time and money. And the deal didn’t really matter that much to Google from a financial perspective to invest all those resources in fighting to save it. Google was doing it, probably, just to thumb its nose at Microsoft and disrupt its bid for Yahoo.

For Yahoo, on the other hand, this is a body blow. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s become increasingly clear that the U.S. Department of Justice is building a case against the proposed ad deal between Google and Yahoo. And now there are rumblings that Google may walk away from the deal. Amid this speculation, there’s more talk that Yahoo and AOL are sniffing around each other again for some possible deal. If the Google deal collapses, Yahoo apparently feels it needs something to get its stock price going and buy it some time to implement its new “open” strategy.

All this hand wringing over the Google deal, however, has left me shaking my head.

Recall that Yahoo signed the deal with Google as a way to thwart the takeover bid by Microsoft. Not the greatest move in the world. But still, I don’t understand the firestorm of protest over it.

Here’s why: Read the rest of this entry »

Back in April, the compensation committee on the board at Avistar Communications (Nasdaq: AVSR), approved a bonus structure for its chief executive, Simon Moss, who joined the company in January. Under it, his target bonus was set at $200,000, payable in quarterly installments based on the achievement of certain financial performance targets.

Moss also gets to participate in Read the rest of this entry »