Win Rumors: Silverlight isn't dead, its the heart of WP7, W8, and Xbox

Just saw this article by Tom Warren over at WinRumors: http://www.winrumors.com/silverlight-isnt-dead-its-the-heart-of-windows-phone-windows-8-and-xbox/

If this is true, it would certainly make a lot of sense. Having a unified development platform based on Silverlight would allow Microsoft to achieve their vision of "three screens and a cloud". Not to mention the awesome benefits it would provide for .Net developers. I could see people implementing MVVM and writing their business/data layers once, but swapping out the UI layer to fit the device its running on.

Think his claims have merit or is this just another piece of speculation surrounding W8 and Silverlight? Discuss!

You shall not know... til September.

@LCARSNxG:

Well, it's certainly much more plausible than "MS deprecated .Net for HTML5/JS". Let's hope it is true, it really sounds good.

BTW, I think there was already another thread about the WinRumors article though...

@BitFlipper: Really? I checked but I don't see any threads about this article.

@LCARSNxG:

Not surprised. Balmer said that long long long long ago. But, a lot of people just don't understand what he was saying.

It was the same back in the Windows Mobile with Zune experience. No one really understand what he was saying and screaming they want Zune Phone instead.

@LCARSNxG: while I don't think Silverlight (or at least XAML and .net) are dead, this article is void of substance.

This is good news, I've been hoping the Three Screens strategy would start to become clear. This gives me great hope.

15 hours ago, LCARSNxG wrote

@BitFlipper: Really? I checked but I don't see any threads about this article.

My bad. Someone linked to the WinRumors article in another thread, which is why I got confused. Carry on...

BTW, I have to agree the WinRumors article doesn't add anything that we didn't already know, it just tries to connect the dots in a logical way. It certainly makes much more sense than deprecating .Net in favor of HTML5/JS, but until we hear something official from MS on this, it is all just speculation at this point.

1 hour ago, Michael Butler wrote

This is good news, I've been hoping the Three Screens strategy would start to become clear. This gives me great hope.

Three screens, eh? That would be the mobile handset (Windows Phone 7), the slate tablet ('Immersive' Windows 8), and the laptop and desktops we all know and love ('Classic' Windows 8).

You're forgetting a whole load of other stuff in there:

• The '10 foot' screen as used by the Xbox 360 and Windows Media Center
• The 'headless' boxes that Windows Server runs on
• Embedded screens (this new 'Immersive' UI has huge implications for kiosk and embedded development)
• Micro devices, like Microsoft SPOT

The 'three screens' spiel is just Microsoft's take on Apple and Nintendo's "three pillars" strategies. Apple's three pillars are the MacBook, iPad, and iPhone (note the absence of the MacBook Pro, MacPro, iMac, and iPod). Nintendo's three pillars were the GameCube/Wii, DS, and the GameBoy, but look how quickly they dropped the GameBoy after the DS started printing money for Miyamoto.

Given this history of "pillar" business strategy I'm going to say it's all just rhetoric. It worked for Apple, which makes sense given their tightly-controlled product offerings, but it didn't work for Nintendo. I imagine it won't work for Microsoft either.

14 minutes ago, W3bbo wrote

*snip*

Three screens, eh? That would be the mobile handset (Windows Phone 7), the slate tablet ('Immersive' Windows 8), and the laptop and desktops we all know and love ('Classic' Windows 8).

You're forgetting a whole load of other stuff in there:

• The '10 foot' screen as used by the Xbox 360 and Windows Media Center
• The 'headless' boxes that Windows Server runs on
• Embedded screens (this new 'Immersive' UI has huge implications for kiosk and embedded development)
• Micro devices, like Microsoft SPOT

The 'three screens' spiel is just Microsoft's take on Apple and Nintendo's "three pillars" strategies. Apple's three pillars are the MacBook, iPad, and iPhone (note the absence of the MacBook Pro, MacPro, iMac, and iPod). Nintendo's three pillars were the GameCube/Wii, DS, and the GameBoy, but look how quickly they dropped the GameBoy after the DS started printing money for Miyamoto.

Given this history of "pillar" business strategy I'm going to say it's all just rhetoric. It worked for Apple, which makes sense given their tightly-controlled product offerings, but it didn't work for Nintendo. I imagine it won't work for Microsoft either.

I always thought the three screens were: PC (desktop, notebook/laptop, tablet), Phone, and TV (Xbox).

@cbae: That's what I thought too. If you think about it, those are the distinct areas MS is targeting. The stationary, work related devices, entertainment devices, and mobile devices. But I think the idea is that they all intersect at certain points...you can game on your PCs, your phones, and xboxes, you can get email (and maybe even work on documents) across all devices, you can communicate will all devices. It's basically a continuum that is sort of made possible by the cloud.

At least, that's how I interpret it.

Yeah, the three screens thing is TV's, phones and PC's. Arguably there should be a fourth screen for tablets, because that's a different usage scenario too, but in the original strategy they lumped those in with PC's.

On the topic of Three Screens...apparently Xbox Live is going to be a part of Windows 8.

Live will be built into the PC. It will be the service where you get your entertainment.

Finally. The game explorer in Vista made no sense at all, that should have been a direct Steam competitor like Live instead of a glorified launcher menu.

I guess there's some truth in that 10 year DOJ thing ending.

5 minutes ago, Bas wrote

Finally. The game explorer in Vista made no sense at all, that should have been a direct Steam competitor like Live instead of a glorified launcher menu.

I guess there's some truth in that 10 year DOJ thing ending.

Ugh. Bad. Bad.

The "Games for Windows Live" user experience is awful (despite the mandates for compatibility, reliability, and plays-nice-with-the-filesystem behaviour). I'd much prefer it if Microsoft instead gave Steam their own backing.

This puts PC gaming into a bad dichotomy: Games can either integrate with Steam for Steam Friends, Achievements, and the Server Browser, or they can go with GFWL.

However all of the major publishers have already gone with Steam: EA, Activision/Blizzard, 2K, Bethsedia, Rockstar, and Valve. The only thing GFWL has going for it is Xbox integration, but I'm not interested in that.

@W3bbo:

Well you have to think of the new "Immersive UI" here. In that scenario, the Marketplace will be common between Xbox/WP/PC (apps will be automatically filtered by which of the platforms they support). So the same apps (with some tweaks by devs to make them aware of the different form factors, but 90% of the code is shared) would be available on all three. Better even - you buy a game from Marketplace and it becomes available on all supported devices you own, even storing your "progress" in the "cloud". Yes it is a bit of a fantasy view but that is the idea anyway.

Steam and GFWL would only support legacy games in this scenario.

The "Games for Windows Live" user experience is awful (despite the mandates for compatibility, reliability, and plays-nice-with-the-filesystem behaviour). I'd much prefer it if Microsoft instead gave Steam their own backing.

Explain how it is awful compared to Steam.