Jeff Minter is an English video game designer and programmer who often goes by the name Yak. He is the founder of software house Llamasoft and has created dozens of games during his career, which began in 1981 with games for the ZX80.
Microsoft XNA is a freeware set of tools with a managed runtime environment that Microsoft developed to facilitate video game development. XNA is based on .NET Framework, with versions that run on Windows and Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio can help develop XNA games. The XNA toolset was announced on March 24, 2004, at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California. A first Community Technology Preview of XNA Build was released on March 14, 2006.
Over one hundred video games based on the Star Wars franchise have been released, dating back to some of the earliest home consoles. Some are based directly on films while others rely heavily on the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
Zune is a discontinued media management software program for Microsoft Windows that functions as a full media player application with a library, an interface to the Zune Marketplace, and as a media streaming server. The software is used to sync with all devices with Zune functionality including the Zune 4, 8, 16, 30, 80, 120, Zune HD, Windows Phone 7, and Microsoft Kin. Zune devices work exclusively with the Zune software, which applies many design principles of Microsoft's Metro design language.
Crayon Physics Deluxe is a puzzle video game designed by Petri Purho and released on January 7, 2009. An early version, titled Crayon Physics, was released for Windows in June 2007. Deluxe won the grand prize at the Independent Games Festival in 2008. It features a heavy emphasis on two-dimensional physics simulations, including gravity, mass, kinetic energy and transfer of momentum. The game includes a level editor and enables its players to download and share custom content via an online service.
Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design language. Unlike Windows Mobile, it was primarily aimed at the consumer market rather than the enterprise market.
indiePub Entertainment, Inc. was a publisher of video games based in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States.
Doodle Jump is a platforming video game developed and published by Croatian studio Lima Sky, for Windows Phone, iPhone OS, BlackBerry, Android, Java Mobile (J2ME), Nokia Symbian, and Xbox 360 for the Kinect platform. It was released worldwide for iPhone OS on March 15, 2009, and was later released for Android and Blackberry on March 2, 2010, Symbian on May 1, 2010, Windows Phone 7 on June 1, 2011, and August 21, 2013, on Windows Phone 8. It was released for the iPad on September 1, 2011. Since its release, the game has been generally well received. The game is currently available on nine platforms.
Angry Birds is a 2009 casual puzzle video game developed by Finnish video game developer Rovio Entertainment. Inspired primarily by a sketch of stylized wingless birds, the game was first released for iOS and Maemo devices starting in December 2009. By October 2010, 12 million copies of the game had been purchased from the iOS App Store, which prompted the developer to design versions for other touchscreen-based smartphones, most notably Android, Symbian, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry 10 devices. The series has since expanded to include titles for dedicated video game consoles and PCs. A sequel, Angry Birds 2, was released in July 2015 for iOS and Android. Around April 2019, the original game was removed from the App Store. A paid recreation of the game's content from 2012 was released as Rovio Classics: Angry Birds on March 31, 2022, but later on, Rovio mentioned that they were removing it from the Google Play Store on February 23, 2023, and retitling it as Red’s First Flight.
The Microsoft Store is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It started as an app store for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps. With Windows 10, Microsoft merged its other distribution platforms into Microsoft Store, making it a unified distribution point for apps, console games, and digital videos. Digital music was included until the end of 2017, and E-books were included until 2019.
The Xbox app is an app for Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11, Android, iOS and Tizen. It acts as a companion app for Xbox video game consoles, providing access to Xbox network community features, remote control, as well as second screen functionality with selected games, applications, and content.
Infinite Dreams Inc. or Infinite Dreams is a game development studio in Gliwice, Poland. Founded in 2002, the company develops games for a range of digital platforms such as iOS, Android, macOS, Windows Phone and Symbian. The studio is best known for its Sky Force series. Games developed by Infinite Dreams have been downloaded over 25,000,000 times worldwide.
Microsoft mobile services are a set of proprietary mobile services created specifically for mobile devices, they are typically offered through mobile applications and mobile browser for Windows Phone, | platforms, BREW, and Java. Microsoft's mobile services are typically connected with a Microsoft account and often come preinstalled on Microsoft's own mobile operating systems while they are offered via various means for other platforms. Microsoft started to develop for mobile computing platforms with the launch of Windows CE in 1996 and later added Microsoft's Pocket Office suite to their Handheld PC line of PDAs in April 2000. From December 2014 to June 2015, Microsoft made a number of corporate acquisitions, buying several of the top applications listed in Google Play and the App Store including Acompli, Sunrise Calendar, Datazen, Wunderlist, Echo Notification Lockscreen, and MileIQ.
Halo: Spartan Assault is a twin stick shooter video game developed by 343 Industries and Vanguard Games. Part of the Halo media franchise, the game was released on July 18, 2013, for Microsoft's Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 platforms. The game subsequently released on Xbox 360, Xbox One, Steam, and iOS. Halo: Spartan Assault is set between the events of Halo 3 and Halo 4. Players control the human soldiers Sarah Palmer and Edward Davis as they fight a new splinter faction of the alien Covenant. The game launched with 25 single-player missions; an additional campaign released as downloadable content. The console versions also feature an exclusive cooperative horde mode.
Badland is a mobile video game developed by Finland-based Frogmind Games and first released on the iOS and Android platforms in 2013. It was released on Windows Phone 8 in June 2014. There is also a Game of the Year Edition that was released in May 2015 for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, Wii U and Steam for Linux, Microsoft Windows and OS X, and in August 2021 for Nintendo Switch. In December 2015, its sequel Badland 2 was released on iOS and Android. For the same platforms, a real-time strategy spin-off, Badland Brawl, was released in September 2018, where gameplay is a mash-up between Angry Birds and Clash Royale.
Universal Windows Platform (UWP) is a computing platform created by Microsoft and first introduced in Windows 10. The purpose of this platform is to help develop universal apps that run on Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile (discontinued), Windows 11, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and HoloLens without the need to be rewritten for each. It supports Windows app development using C++, C#, VB.NET, and XAML. The API is implemented in C++, and supported in C++, VB.NET, C#, F# and JavaScript. Designed as an extension to the Windows Runtime (WinRT) platform first introduced in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8, UWP allows developers to create apps that will potentially run on multiple types of devices.
Xbox Cloud Gaming is Microsoft's Xbox cloud gaming service. Initially released in beta testing in November 2019, the service later launched for subscribers of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate on September 15, 2020. Xbox Game Pass cloud gaming is provided to subscribers of Ultimate at no additional cost.
