Maybe you missed it, but Bill Gates gave a webcast yesterday from New York, celebrating the general availability of Windows Vista and Office 2007. It’s available from here now.
After Bill gave the introduction, Mike Sievert, a corporate VP, gave a demo of some of the features in Windows Vista. I was only half-paying attention, enjoying the free cake, but there was something Mike said around 17:20 into the video that made me say to myself, “Umm, excuse me?” And I quote:
“What Uno for Windows Vista can do is something that games before have never been able to do, and that’s cross-platform play.”
This “never before” feature is the ability for Mike to play Uno on Windows Vista with his son, who’s playing it across the country on his Xbox 360. Now, I don’t blame Mike for giving the speech, but when they crafted this presentation, did any of the writers forget that Final Fantasy XI has been doing cross-platform play for nearly three years?! (Although the PC version was released in October of 2003, the PS2 version didn’t come out until March of 2004). And, for those critics who say, “Well, what about Xbox 360 cross-platform play?”, FFXI for Xbox360 came out in April of 2006. That’s three different platforms playing the same game.
So, this is for Microsoft, Apple, or any other company making such broad claims. Before you make such a general statement that something is the “first time” it has been done, please make sure it truly is the first time.
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