Does anybody know what time it is? Does anybody care? Long time readers of this esteemed website know that there is a war brewing, a smartwatch war. In other words, there is a beast inside every man and it stirs when you put a watch on his hand. There have already been announcements that Apple is prepping their own smartwatch, as is Sony and just about every other big company. This is in addition to all of the small companies doing the same, the Pebbles and what have you. Well now you can throw another capable competitor into the ring. Here comes Microsoft.
Microsoft, better known for making PCs a household name, has tasked their venerable Xbox team to design their own smartwatch. This means that, much like their mobile operating system, the watch will play rather nicely with your Xbox Live account. A team of both Xbox and Kinect staffers have reportedly been working on the watch for more than a year. Details, beyond that, are scarce. We don’t know what kind of bells and whistles this watch would have, but it is safe to assume with that design pedigree it will be a bona fide smartwatch and not a glorified fitness tracker or something.
Being as how it has been working on for a year already, this watch may be close to hitting retail. At the very least look for an announcement from Microsoft in the coming months, either at the yearly E3 conference or some other gathering where tech-heads gather. We’ll let you know more info as soon as we know it! In the meantime, here is a video saying pretty much the same stuff you just read. You know, for you audio learners out there.
