MSLiveWatch

It’s been know for a while that Microsoft has been working on some sort of karaoke game, Lips. Not many details have been revealed, however there are a few box art and game play shots. From the pictures we can tell the mic do have some sort of ring of lights that will probably light up in different colors. Check the shots below.

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This week on XBLA, two new games will be available for download. Golf: Tee It Up! and Schizoid will be released this Wednesday. Each game will cost 800 Microsoft Points.

Microsoft has announced an agreement to fully purchase MSN Israel from their partner, Internet Gold. Microsoft previously held 49.9%, while Internet Gold owned 50.1% of MSN Israel.

The parties are currently discussing the terms of migration and possible future cooperation. The msn.co.il portal will continue to operate throughout the transition period and both parties are working together to support employees, advertisers and users through this period.

MSN is a global portal network which operates in 44 countries. In almost all of these countries the MSN portal is fully owned by Microsoft Corp. and only in a very few instances has Microsoft joined forces with a domestic partner to establish a local MSN portal. In 2007, MSN Israel accounted for less than 3% of Internet Gold’s total revenues.

Continuously improving on its Maps services, Microsoft has released a batch of updates to Live Search Maps in China. Check out the full list below:

• Real-time Traffic in Beijing
• Send-to-Mobile for free for local search and transit routing result
• Transit data refresh for existing 11 cities including 3 new subway in Beijing (No.10, Airport and Olympic).
• Expanded coverage from 11 to 31 cities.
• Geocoding and Local Search
• Data refresh for existing 114 cities including Olympic Venues.
• Support city and county name geocoding for areas outside of 114-city coverage.
• Olympic query relevance improvement
• Local search category refinement
• Map refresh for 10 existing major cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou etc.
• Expanded tile coverage for 30 more cities, totally 289 cities now.

Released as a “Thank You” gift, Ubisoft has released a free DLC pack for Rainbow Six Vegas 2. The pack is available in all regions except Germany.

As a thank you gift to our community, Ubisoft Montreal is pleased to announce free Multiplayer DLC for Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2. This free map pack includes reworked versions of familiar favorites to storm your way through: Calypso Casino, Murdertown – Dark and CQB Training – Dark. Experience your favorite game modes in a whole new light!

When Microsoft announced Silverlight 2, they showcased a really neat feature known as Deep Zoom. Deep Zoom allows for smooth in-place zooming and panning for high resolution image. Using this feature,  Deep Zoom Obama has created “an interactive mosaic” of Barack Obama using over 12,000 images of Obama supporters uploaded on www.BarackObama.com. The mosaic allows you to instantly zoom into the “10,000×10,000 gigapixel” image to see the individual images that compose it.

Revealed back in April as Albany, Microsoft’s subscription service for Office and Live OneCare will be released in mid-July.  Named Equipt, the new subscription offer will cost $69.99 for a one-year renewable subscription, which can be deployed on up to three home PCs. Equipt offers Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, Windows Live OneCare, and Windows Live tools, such as Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Photo Gallery.  As part of the subscription, Equipt will always push the newest versions and updates of these programs to you. Equipt will initially launch through nearly 700 Circuit City retail outlets throughout the U.S.

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Another week, another Zune freebie. This week, Zune Marketplace is offering a free track, “Stay,” by Fred Everything off the album Lost Together. The track and album are completely DRM free, which means all tracks are in MP3 format. Like always, a Zune account is required with Zune Marketplace installed on your PC.

Title: Stay
Artist: Fred Everything
Genre: Electronic/ Dance
Length:5:12

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 division in Australia have announced price cuts across all three Xbox 360 SKUs. The price cuts drop the Xbox 360 Arcade to AU$349 (from AU$399), the Pro to AU$499 (from AU$579) and the Elite to AU$649 (from AU$729). These price cuts make the Xbox 360 the cheapest next-gen console in Australia and New Zealand. All three SKUs will now become cheaper than the PS3 and the Arcade version of the Xbox 360 will become cheaper than the Wii, which sells for AU$399. We’re still waiting for our price cuts here in the U.S. as rumors suggest a $299 Xbox 360 Pro, which will make room for a 60GB Xbox 360.

At an educational conference today, HP released its newest players to the xw4550 series. Starting at only $599, the xw4550 is perfect if you’re in the market for an inexpensive workstation. For that amount of cash, you’ll be getting 2GB of RAM, a 2.0GHz AMD Opteron 1212 processor, a 160GB hard drive, NVIDIA Quadro FX 290 graphics with 256 MB of RAM, and a DVD burner. You can also choose to upgrade the system to a more powerful one if you’ve got a bit more cash. The xw4550 will come with Vista Business as default OS with XP Professional pre-installed.

With the upcoming release of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, Marvel has decided to put the power in your hands. No you won’t be selecting any new features, but you do get to select which box art you want (pretty exciting huh?). Here at MSLiveWatch, we’ve made our decision for Spidey on the right, with the crossed arms. You can head over to SeizeControl.com and pick the Spidey cover you want.

Beating Harmonix to the punch, The Who have released the upcoming DLC for Rock Band. The pack will be dropping July 15th, featuring 12 tracks. Pricing is set for $20 (1600 Microsoft Points) for the entire pack, or $1.99 (160 Microsoft Points) per track.

Here’s the list of tracks being released:

• “Amazing Journey”
• “Baba O’Riley”
• “Behind Blue Eyes”
• “Eminence Front”
• “Going Mobile”
• “Leaving Here”
• “My Generation” (LIVE)
• “Real Good Looking Boy”
• “Sea & Sand”
• “Summertime Blues” (LIVE)
• “Who Are You”
• “Young Man Blues” (LIVE)

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It’s final, Microsoft acquires Powerset just as rumors predicted. After looking for suitors since May, Powerset finally decided Microsoft was the best fit. The acquisition will not fuel Microsoft’s search marketshare, but will give it new talent and search technology. The price of the acquisition isn’t being disclosed, but TechCrunch is reporting it was roughly $100 million.

“With an existing search infrastructure, incredible capital resources, unlimited data, a leading search team, and clear mission to revolutionize the search landscape, Microsoft can rapidly accelerate our progress in building semantic search technology and bringing it to full Web scale,” said Powerset’s Mark Johnson.

Microsoft Announcement

Powerset Announcement

With the release of this new “PinkGold” LifeBook, Fujitsu is aiming at a consumer market. This limited edition LifeBook P8010 features up to 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, 1.3-megapixel camera, and a dual-layer DVD burner. This notebook also includes 3.5G WWAN, 12.1-inch WXGA SuperFine screen, and Intel’s Core 2 Duo SL7100 processor. Expect to get about 6 hours of batterlt life. This model will be sold in Australia for $2,899. No info about a global release.

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This week’s XBLA releases will bring you SOULCALIBUR for 800 points and a DLC for Wits & Wagers for 320 points. Both will be available Wednesday , July 2nd.