The Windows 8 "suite" (not rant).

Following the current decay of the Playstation scene at my home, with the lack of proper and affordable new gaming (GT5 seasonal events can only endure so far...) I've been think of moving the Xbox into the number one spot. The living room (*).

That, recent Xbox updates and the need to catch up on it's most famous and best titles I've never gotten around to play, are weighing in very heavily.

New Xbox Dashboard

I've also been very eager to get my hands on a Surface tablet. To work on a company that relies on a Windows network, Operating System and Office suite, and to play at home also on a windows "server" and "network".

  

Now WP8 phones look very interesting as well (still fugly UI). Again, for work and play. There's some serious gaming coming. And apparently with confirmed cloud sync between devices, and with some developers, even cross-platform sync. And some expected to be free or a steal  (see that Sony? Heresy in your book).





I'm not totally convinced on the desktop front, since mine is basically a server and I need nothing more than what I've got at the moment.

But the possibility of keeping everything synced in what I expect to be a "natural" Windows way across any and every device (screw iTunes!) I'm sure to give it a go. Already have a license for it. And you don't even need this app to manage anything:

I guess eventually I'll be going for the "full experience", and I'm not sure I'll return any time soon.

Microsoft is coming in last, slowly but steadily and as strong and deadly as hurricane Sandy (**).

This is gonna make a serious dent in the market in my opinion. It can't do more than bite a little bit off of the Apple, but others must be (and are) seriously concerned. Especially on the tablet side... Hence yesterday's news from Google. Excellent work from The Verge covering it by the way, you can read it all here or watch the video below (if you haven't yet).




Thing is, even if people are mostly using tablets for internet access these days, and performing most of their  daily tasks on them or on their Smartphones, usually there's an aggregator machine at home, at work or both. A safe place to store you stuff, and to "really" work with a keyboard and a mouse (those are not gonna die off that easy...). That is still the anchor.

So unless 2013 is the year of the linux chromium desktop, I don't see them succeeding. Even with their outstanding "cloud" services. I'm a fan of them. But they've been making a bit of a mess of their integration, renaming, consolidating efforts, and the cloud can only go "so far".

Now... to start, where to get the whole Halo and Forza suites for the xBox?

Know any good used game stores or sites?




(*)  I bought it to be used as an ipTv STB in another room, it's mostly and seldom used, especially in the winter.
(**) hey, it's trending... I had to fit it in here somehow...