Microsoft has revealed the top 20 most popular games played on the Xbox 360 in 2011 based on numbers of unique users logged into Xbox LIVE (Silver and Gold members). Note that this gives a different result to the total playtime for a particular game, which has not been disclosed here. Unsurprisingly, the Call of Duty series dominates the chart, but what is sure to irk CoD detractors, but make fans very happy, is that a massive five of those positions are taken up by CoD - that's 25% of the rankings. Even CoD4: Modern Warfare which was released way back in 2007 sits at a very respectable number 14. However, top games Battlefield 3 and Skyrim did very well nonetheless, sitting at five and six respectively, with only Halo beating them at number 4. Can you guess which CoD game hit the top spot before looking at the chart?

In the latest Building Windows 8 blog post (published yesterday) Microsoft is talking about the options available to 'rekindle' the flame of a Windows 8 install. These options include the definitive Reset, which will basically re-install Windows and remove all personal data, apps, and settings from the system, and the less 'damaging' Refresh, which will reinstall Windows or restore a previously-created image of the OS, while keeping data, settings, Metro style apps and such, untouched.

Microsoft Corp. today issued proceedings against Comet Group PLC for allegedly creating and selling more than 94,000 sets of counterfeit Windows Vista and Windows XP recovery CDs. The alleged counterfeits were sold to customers who had purchased Windows-loaded PCs and laptops.

"As detailed in the complaint filed today, Comet produced and sold thousands of counterfeit Windows CDs to unsuspecting customers in the United Kingdom," said David Finn, associate general counsel, Worldwide Anti-Piracy and Anti-Counterfeiting at Microsoft. "Comet's actions were unfair to customers. We expect better from retailers of Microsoft products - and our customers deserve better, too."

With three successors and design limitations posing as hurdles for security updates, Microsoft's iconic Internet Explorer 6 (MSIE 6) web-browser had been deemed a security vulnerability for anyone using it, and Microsoft undertook a campaign to get the world to update their MSIE to the latest MSIE 9. With December 2011 web-browser usage statistics out by several sources, the usage of MSIE 6 in the United States dropped below the 1% mark, causing Microsoft claim that the United States bid goodbye to MSIE 6. The MSIE team celebrated this development with a ceremonious cake and a little afterhours party.

MSIE 6 now makes up 0.9% of the US web-browser market. Czech Republic, Portugal, The Philippines, Ukraine and Mexico, are the other countries where MSIE 6 holds under 1% of the market. The browser is used by 25% of Chinese internet users (a huge number). Interestingly, South Korea, which has some of the fastest consumer ISP networks in the world, has 7.2% usage. 5.9% of Japanese netizens are still stuck to the decade-old browser, and so are 5.4% Indian users. Overall, MSIE 6 still holds 7.7% of the global web-browser market-share, which is respectable, considering it's greater than those of Apple Safari (Mac/PC), and Opera, and disturbing, considering it is a very vulnerable piece of software unless it's used for closed VPN intranets. More stats can be found here.

After overtaking Mozilla Firefox in terms of web-browser market-share in December 2011, Google Chrome has its eyes trained on Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE), still the most popular web-browser in use today. According to the most recent StatCounter figures, at the rate at which Google Chrome's market-share is growing, it will overtake that of MSIE in 2012. It will do that as early as in June-July. Interestingly, Google Chrome is the youngest web-browser among its competitors, launched in Q4 2008, but has surpassed the market shares of much older competitors in a matter of months. Apart from stats, Google's web-advertising prowess makes Chrome's MSIE overtake in June-July seem realistic.

Welcome to the TechPowerUp 2011 PC technology Christmas special. We hope that you will enjoy reading it while tucking into your turkey, Christmas presents and a little too much wine... In this article, we go through the technology of 2011 that has had the most significance, the most impact and was generally the most talked about. It's not necessarily the best tech of 2011 which is the most significant though, since lemons can be just as significant as the ground-breakers in how they fail to deliver - and the backlash that goes with it.

January: Intel Sandy Bridge i5 & i7

Released on January 9th, the new Intel Core i5 & i7 processors were based on Intel's second generation Core architecture built on a 32 nm production process (HEXUS review). They included an IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) physically on the same piece of silicon along with HyperThreading. These new dual and quad core processors soundly beat all previous generations of Intel processors in terms of processing performance, heat, power use, features and left AMD in the dust. Therefore, Intel badly needed some competition from AMD and unless you have been living under a rock, you will know how that turned out in October with the launch of Bulldozer. Sandy Bridge was a sound win and is generally considered to be the only architecture worth considering at this point. The i5-2500K is currently at the sweet spot of price/performance. It comes at a stock speed of 3.3 GHz, but typically overclocks to an amazing 4.5 - 5 GHz with a decent air cooler and without too much difficulty in getting there. Models in the budget i3 range were released at various times later. See this Wikipedia article for details.

For those heading to the International CES expo 2012 held in January, it would be a final chance to see a Microsoft booth there; and a final chance to, if you're lucky, get to shake hands with Badboy Steve (CEO Steve Ballmer). After 2012's expo, Microsoft doesn't plan to have a CES keynote, or even place their booth there. The company blames the annual timing of the expo for its decision to stop setting up big presence at CES. It says that its product and service launches aren't able to align with CES' typical January timing.

In a press-note, the company said: "We'll continue to participate in CES as a great place to connect with partners and customers across the PC, phone and entertainment industries, but we won't have a keynote or booth after this year because our product news milestones generally don't align with the show's January timing."

Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: MMI) ("Motorola Mobility") today announced that it has received notice that the Administrative Law Judge ("ALJ") in the U.S. International Trade Commission ("ITC") action brought by Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) against Motorola Mobility has issued an initial determination. The ALJ determined that Motorola Mobility does not violate six of the seven Microsoft patents listed in Microsoft's suit. The Company noted that Microsoft had previously dropped two patents from its original case which included nine patents.

"We are very pleased that the majority of the rulings were favorable to Motorola Mobility," said Scott Offer, senior vice president and general counsel of Motorola Mobility. "The ALJ's initial determination may provide clarity on the definition of the Microsoft 566 patent for which a violation was found and will help us avoid infringement of this patent in the U.S. market."

In perhaps one of the more ironic legal moves to be seen recently, Sony's clause in its Terms of Service preventing PlayStation 3 owners from filing class action lawsuits has itself attracted a class action lawsuit! The lawsuit was filed in Northern California in November, by a man on behalf of PS3 owners who signed up for the PlayStation Network before September, when the ToS were updated and this anti-class action clause added.

The killer clause is buried deep into the contract and is very hard to spot, requiring the contract to be read all the way through with a fine toothcomb - if the reader can rise to the challenge of reading the complicated and dry legalese it's written in. Compounding the problem is that the agreement isn't even readily available online for anyone to study - it can only be viewed on the PS3 itself (so the console is already used before you can even see the agreement - hardly fair?) and appears near the bottom of the 21-page form. Previous agreements had been posted online for anyone to inspect. On top of that, the only way of opting out of it, is to mail a physical letter to Sony within 30 days of agreeing to the ToS - very inconvenient and likely to be forgotten by the average person. The main thrust of the lawsuit are allegations of unfair business practices, since PS3 owners are forced to choose between forfeiting their rights or access to the PSN. Note that since Sony introduced this clause, Electronic Arts and Microsoft have both introduced similar clauses, which doesn't put them in a very good light either and potentially at the receiving end of a lawsuit themselves.

Despite having a rough year with lay-offs, AMD can end 2011 on a high, as brand survey group Trust Across America that lists out America's top-10 most trustworthy companies, deemed AMD as the fifth most trustworthy American company. The list included just two other tech companies, semiconductor major Texas Instruments at number 9, and printing and digital imaging company Lexmark at number 10.

Trust Across America evaluated its top-10 candidates on five factors it calls "FACTS"; that's acronym for Financial stability and strength, Accounting conservativeness, Corporate integrity, Transparency, and Sustainability. It's quite surprising that other, more financially stable tech companies such as Microsoft and Intel didn't make it to this list.

The top-10 list follows.

To the surprise of many, last week, Microsoft rolled out a patch (KB2592546) for Windows that it claimed would improve performance of systems running AMD processors based on the "Bulldozer" architecture. The patch works by making the OS aware of the way Bulldozer cores are structured, so it could effectively make use of the parallelism at its disposal. Sadly, a couple of days later, it pulled that patch. Meanwhile, SweClockers got enough time to do a "before and after" performance test of the AMD FX-8150 processor, using this patch.

The results of SweClockers' tests are tabled below. "tidigare" is before, "nytt" is after, and "skillnad" is change. The reviewer put the chip through a wide range of tests, including synthetic CPU-intensive tests (both single and multi-threaded), and real-world gaming performance tests. The results are less than impressive. Perhaps, that's why the patch was redacted.

Since we reported on the AMD Bulldozer hotfix, The Tech Report reports in an updated post, that the Bulldozer threading hotfix said to improve performance of the processor, has been pulled:

We've spoken with an industry source familiar with this situation, and it appears the release of this hotfix was either inadvertent, premature, or both. There is indeed a Bulldozer threading patch for Windows in the works, but it should come in two parts, not just one. The patch that was briefly released is only one portion of the total solution, and it may very well reduce performance if used on its own. We're hearing the full Windows update for Bulldozer performance optimization is scheduled for release in Q1 of 2012. For now, Bulldozer owners, the best thing to do is to sit tight and wait.

It will be very interesting indeed to see how this much maligned processor benchmarks after the fully developed patch is released. It's true, actually attempting to download the hotfix and agreeing to the licence terms, at the moment, one is lead to a page that shows it as unavailable.

Nokia BFF Microsoft has today revealed a new peripheral which caters to the typing needs of Windows, Android and iOS tablet owners, the Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 5000. This keyboard measures 165 × 355 × 13 mm, it features a sleek, Comfort Curve design (allowing for a more natural wrist posture), Bluetooth connectivity (range is up to 10 meters), and comes with a three-year warranty.

The Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 5000 requires two AAA batteries to work and is scheduled to become available later this month. Its price tag is $49.95.

Today Windows updater may have brought "Bulldozer" users a little surprise. A hotfix that increases the AMD flagship processors performance. As this "hotfix" is bleeding edge news any benchmarks have yet to be seen but this confirms Windows 7 was in fact hampering "Bulldozer" from performing at 100% in all prior benches. What percentage it was previously performing at has yet to be determined. Here is a small snippet from the Hotfix release notes.

This article introduces an update that optimizes the performance of AMD Bulldozer CPUs that are used by Windows 7-based or Windows Server 2008 R2-based computers. Currently, the performance of AMD Bulldozer CPUs is slower than expected. This behavior occurs because the threading logic in Windows 7 and in Windows Server 2008 R2 is not optimized to use the Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) scheduling feature. This feature was introduced in the Bulldozer family of AMD CPUs.

You can download the Hotfix here.

In an effort to ensure that Windows users have the latest version of Internet Explorer installed and ready for use, Microsoft has decided to add its browser to the automatic update list. This means that Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 installations which have automatic updating enabled in Windows Update, will also be seamlessly upgrading Internet Explorer, from time to time.

For starters the automatic update switch for IE will be turned on for customers in Australia and Brazil. This will happen in January (2012) and will expand in other areas throughout the year.

Optical disc drives have been pretty cheap for years now, yet there is enough money in the business, that three executives managed to collude in price fixing of these devices, scamming HP, Dell and Microsoft in the process - and in the end the consumer, who foots the higher prices. The three are from Hitachi-LG Data Storage Inc. (HLDS) and have reached a plea agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice on price fixing charges for optical disc drives during the 2005-2009 timeframe. According to Security Week, the three executives, Sang Hun Kim, Young Keun Park, and Sik Hur, will each pay $25,000 USD in fines and serve little sentences of seven to eight months in prison at a "correctional facility" aka prison, that is yet to be decided.

Activision Publishing, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI), announced today that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 crossed the $1 billion mark in sales since its launch on November 8, 2011, according to Charttrack and retail customer sell-through information. Highlighting the trend of interactive entertainment gaining a greater hold of audiences worldwide, the game achieved this milestone in just 16 days, eclipsing the record set in 2009 by the feature film "Avatar," which reached the $1 billion milestone in 17 days.

While 2011 box office revenue is on the decline - down 4 percent this year at $9.4 billion, compared with $9.8 billion in 2010 -- the number of people purchasing and participating in gaming is on the rise, with no sign of slowing.(1) With more than 30 million gamers, the Call of Duty community now exceeds the combined populations of the cities of New York, London, Tokyo, Paris and Madrid.

Tomorrow, Tuesday aka December 13th Microsoft is set to let loose no less than 14 updates which are supposed to resolve 20 vulnerabilities affecting products like Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Publisher, and Windows Media Player.

Three out of the 14 patches are rated 'Critical' and target bugs that could lead to remote code execution, while the other 11 are rated 'Important' and are set to plug in holes that can result in remote code execution and (unwanted) privilege elevation. As always, Microsoft isn't giving out specifics on the vulnerabilities that will be patched so we'll have to wait for tomorrow to get the full scoop. And to update of course.

Today, we're happy to announce the release of Silverlight 5. Silverlight is part of a rich offering of technologies from Microsoft helping developers deliver applications for the web, desktop and mobile devices. Download Silverlight 5, a free plug-in less than 7 MB in size that can be installed in less than 10 seconds.

New features in Silverlight 5 include Hardware Decode of H.264 media, which provides a significant performance improvement with decoding of unprotected content using the GPU; Postscript Vector Printing to improve output quality and file size; and an improved graphics stack with 3D support that uses the XNA API on the Windows platform to gain low-level access to the GPU for drawing vertex shaders and low-level 3D primitives.

Windows (PC) will make its first transition to a machine architecture other than x86 in decades with Windows 8 Windows on ARM (WOA), and Microsoft wants to make absolutely sure that it has a well-oiled ecosystem in place to propel its growth. Currently, Microsoft picked three potent players among ARM processor vendors, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments (that have experience and can ship in Zerg volumes), and NVIDIA (which has demonstrated a lot of engineering potential with its latest Tegra products).

Microsoft reportedly asked the three ARM players to pick two notebook vendors each (one major, and one minor) with which they will work to develop some of the first WOA portable computing devices. Qualcomm selected Samsung and Sony, Texas Instruments chose Toshiba and Samsung, while NVIDIA chose Acer and Lenovo. Among these, Samsung, Toshiba, and Lenovo are the major partners. Surprisingly, Taiwan-based companies have an insignificant role in this ecosystem. ASUS, which has thus far been the largest client of NVIDIA for Tegra processors, has been left out. Now that downstream partners are selected, upstream ODMs such as Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics, Wistron and Pegatron Technology, which manufacture for those companies, are getting their R&D teams in shape to compete for the next-generation platform. The finishing line of ARM's marathon run to get into PCs is in sight.

Well, it looks like the Windows 8 flagship feature, the Metro interface, isn't going down too well with PC users, according to leading market research firm International Data Corp. On top of that, there aren't really any killer improvements in the operating system that make shelling out for a new version compelling. The Metro interface, while suited to a smartphone or tablet, really doesn't do anything for a desktop PC, because it's operation is very restrictive compared to the standard desktop that's been around for over 15 years on Windows and is now a very refined and sophisticated user interface. Also, the fact that many organizations have only recently migrated to Windows 7 and are not looking to spend money in the current economic climate and go through the pains of another upgrade cycle again isn't helping. The poor economy looks like it will hamper sales of Windows 8 on its target devices, tablets, too. Finally, IDC said: "(T)here will be intense scrutiny on Microsoft's ability to deliver a successful tablet experience aboard both x86-based tablets and on devices running ARM processors. This is a tall order for Microsoft, and while the x86 tablet strategy makes sense as a transitional solution for today's PC users, it will be the ARM-based devices that need to shine and clear a high bar already set by Apple."

Yesterday at a developer/preview event in San Francisco, Microsoft Corp. has provided the first real details on the Windows app store and 'slipped' out the fact that the Windows 8 Beta will be outed in late February 2012. The Windows Store will debut in the upcoming beta release and is set to be the 'single source' of Metro-style apps.

Built using HTML5 and JavaScript, the Windows Store app boasts a fluid, easy-to-navigate interface that promotes the latest and most popular apps, and is scheduled to be available in 231 countries, supporting no less than 100 languages.

According to the latest data sourced by StatCounter for the month of November 2011, Google Chrome has overtaken Mozilla Firefox in terms of web-browser software market-share. The GlobalStats data provides a worldwide picture, and not just specific to a region. According to the data, Chrome took 25.69% of the worldwide market (up from 4.66% in November 2009) compared to Firefox's 25.23%.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer still maintains a strong lead globally with 40.63%. Google Chrome began in mid-2008 as an experimental minimalist UI web-browser based on the Chromium project, it is a multi-process tabbed web browser based on Apple Webkit and several other pieces of free, licensed, and open-source technologies. Its market share is on the rise. The stats can be accessed here.

It looks like there's a subtle but relentless push to get ARM CPUs into desktop PCs. Morgan Stanley recently surveyed 30 PC makers (names not revealed) and discovered that 40% of them are interested in trying out ARM-based PCs within the next two years. As we reported previously that the Wintel alliance appears to be crumbling, this finding appears to add weight to that assertion. Of course, there's a huge mountain to climb before ARM processors can compete head to head with high performance x86, as explained in our article, not least because Microsoft won't begin supporting ARM until Windows 8 is released late next year and the fact that the vast majority of existing software won't run on ARM. A real catch-22 if ever there was one. Just as crucially, the many high performance enhancements and interface standards that currently go into making a modern x86 chip fly will also have to go into an ARM - and developing that isn't going to be cheap, although it may not take that long, since these are tried and trusted technologies that need to be applied. Still, the interest is there and Morgan Stanley expect that 10% (39 million) PCs, excluding tablets, will have an ARM processor at their heart. If true, it will make for interesting times.

Finally, next generation gaming consoles are around the corner. It will have an uplifting effect on the entire gaming industry as it will raise the bar for visual and technical detail in games. Many of today's games are designed keeping consoles in mind, and so their PC platform versions don't look much more than what has come to be known as "console-ports". There are a few exceptions to this, but it would be refreshing to see most game developers move on to creating games that take advantage of today's insanely powerful PC platform, because the console platform will have caught up technologically.

Rumors have it, that Microsoft will be developing not one, but two product lines that succeed the Xbox 360, and we're not talking about product variants here, but two distinct lines. The first of the two will be an entry-level console designed more like a set-top box, designed around the Kinect controller (perhaps something to compete against Nintendo Wii U). The second product line will be the one that will be supercharged with the latest technologies that will raise the bar in graphics. It will compete with whatever succeeds the Playstation 3. There is talk that it will pack a 6 core processor, an AMD-made GPU, and 2 GB of fast DDR3 memory. This console could be unveiled to the world (although not launched), at the CES event held in January. Meanwhile, Microsoft is allowing TSMC some time to refine its 28 nm bulk process.