NFL players have come up with another way to utilize the Microsoft Surface tablet on the football field. After Denver beat Carolina, 24-10, on Sunday to win Super Bowl 50, CBS showed Broncos cornerback Aqib Talib holding up a Surface tablet with the phrase “World! Champs!” drawn on the device. — Frank Thorp V (@frankthorpNBC) February 8, 2016 It’s unclear who drew the message, but it was nice publicity for Microsoft, which has had its share of PR struggles with its NFL tablet this season. Thanks to Microsoft’s $400 million, five-year contract it inked with the NFL in 2013, players and coaches have had access to the custom-built Surface tablets for the past two seasons with an application that lets them be more efficient in how they review past plays. The idea is to replace the traditional printed paper black-and-white images of plays to analyze previous possessions, and instead use the waterproof tablets that allow for annotations on each photo with the Surface Pen.

The NFL introduced players and coaches to the Surface Pro 2 tablet last year, and this season Microsoft is upgrading the devices to a ruggedized, weatherproof version of its Surface Pro 3 tablet, which offers a bigger and thinner screen, lighter weight, clearer images, and a pen that can be used in four different colors.backpack price lsit Microsoft ran into some NFL Surface-related marketing issues this season. teton 3400 backpack reviewsMore recently during the AFC Championship, New England became “frustrated” afterits Surface tablets stopped working for a brief period. teton 3400 backpack reviewsThe NFL said it was a problem related to a “network cable malfunction” — not the Surface tablet itself, which Microsoft says has functioned without a single problem in the past two seasons.

Back in September during the season opener, Al Michaels mistakenly called the Surface an “iPad” on national television. This seems to be a recurring problem for Microsoft — last season, commentators referred to the Surface as an “iPad-like tool.” It happened on more than one occasion last season, with Trent Dilfer calling the tablet an iPad during a Monday Night game, too. Then there was a server power issue during last month’s Monday Night Football game between Dallas and Washington — but the NFL said the problem wasn’t with the Surface tablets themselves. CBS didn’t show much live footage from the broadcast of players and coaches using the Surface during the Super Bowl, causing some to wonder if they were being used. No Microsoft Surface tablets being used on sidelines today? — Brian Sozzi (@BrianSozzi) February 8, 2016 However, they were definitely utilized during the post-game celebration. Microsoft surface reduced to glorified etch-a-sketch

— Alexander Lohr (@AlexWithStripes) February 8, 2016 Microsoft says Surface Pro battery will only last 4.5 hours 11.30.2012 :: 11:25AM EST One big advantage the Surface Pro will offer over the Surface RT is that can run legacy Windows apps. This is the case because the Pro it outfitted with an Intel processor and Windows 8 Professional. One big disadvantage of the Pro’s use of full-on laptop components will be middling battery life, which Microsoft pegs at about 4 to 4.5 hours. That’s about half what the Surface RT can manage with its ARM-based chip. Really, roughly four hours isn’t terrible for a tablet with a Core i5 processor and a 10.6-inch 1080p display. Those two components require a lot more power than their counterparts in the Surface RT. But when the Surface Pro is going to be priced at $899 for the base config (without a keyboard), is that kind of battery life good enough to drive sales? It’s not going to make a consumer’s decision easier.

The Surface Pro’s battery life is no better than what’ offered by the Asus EP121 if what Microsoft tweeted is accurate — and the EP121 has a 12.1-inch display and a last-gen Core i5 processor. The Asus slate also runs Windows 7, which means it’s missing out on a lot of the power optimizations you’d benefit from on a Windows 8 tablet. Ultimately, the Surface Pro isn’t quite meant to challenge other tablets. Even more so than the Surface RT, it’s straddling the fence between tablets and ultrabooks. But when you tack on an extra $100 or $120 for a keyboard to make it truly comparable to something like an Asus Zenbook, the Surface Pro looks like it will struggle to stand out. Maybe Microsoft had a little too much consideration for its OEM partners when it built and priced the Surface Pro. In the thousand-dollar range, it’s a safe bet that companies like Samsung, Asus, and Dell won’t have any trouble competing. @shahroom Hey Shahroom, #Surface pro will have approximately half the batter life of Surface RT.

— Surface (@surface) November 29, 2012 subscribe to our newsletter: Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.Microsoft says it will close its Xbox Entertainment Studios as part of the broader cutbacks announced by the company earlier today. Shows that are already in production will continue to market, but beyond that the company is backing away from its full-scale push into original television programming. This is a break from the trend among large technology companies like Hulu, Amazon and Netflix, who have led the push into original programming and in some cases picked up large numbers of subscribers as a result. See the full statement below from a Microsoft spokesperson. As Satya said last week, Xbox is important to Microsoft.  Games are the single biggest digital life category in a mobile-first world.  And Xbox is a strong consumer brand with an incredible fan base.  As part of the planned reduction to our overall workforce announced today and in light of the Xbox vision to focus more on games and gamers, we plan to streamline a handful of portfolio and engineering development efforts across Xbox.

One such plan is that we will expect to close Xbox Entertainment Studios in the coming months. Nancy Tellem, Jordan Levin and some of the XES team will stay on and remain committed to original programming already in production like the upcoming documentary series ‘Signal to Noise’ whose first installment takes on the rise and fall of gaming icon Atari and of course, the upcoming game franchise series ‘Halo: Nightfall,’ and the ‘Halo” Television Series which will continue as planned with 343 Industries.  Xbox will continue to support and deliver interactive sports content like ‘NFL on Xbox,’ and we will continue to enhance our entertainment offering on console by innovating the TV experience through the monthly console updates. Additionally, our app partnerships with world-class content providers bringing entertainment, sports and TV content to Xbox customers around the world are not impacted by this organizational change in any way and remain an important component of our Xbox strategy.

Update: Here’s the full text of the internal email sent by top Xbox executive Phil Spencer to employees, obtained by GeekWire, echoing the comments made in the public statement and going into more detail. “I hope you have had a chance to read today’s mails from Satya. I wanted to take a moment to share a few thoughts on what this means for our team and some of the changes we are making as a result. In last week’s mail outlining some of the steps towards creating the culture and organization to bring our ambitions to life, Satya called out the strategic importance of Xbox as a strong consumer brand, a creative center for gaming and a leader in bold innovation. Every member of Team Xbox should be incredibly proud of the impact and reach your work has within the walls of Microsoft, with our developer community and most importantly, with consumers. Microsoft is the productivity and platform company for a mobile-first and cloud-first world, and games are the single biggest digital life category in a mobile-first world. 

Success in this category, by growing a robust Xbox business, brings additional value to Microsoft. I have stated this before, but for Xbox to be successful, we must remain committed to being a consumer-driven organization with the mission of meeting the high expectations of a passionate fan base, to create the best games and to drive technical innovation. As part of the planned reduction to our overall workforce announced today and in light of our organization’s mission, we plan to streamline a handful of portfolio and engineering development efforts across Xbox. One such plan is that, in the coming months, we expect to close Xbox Entertainment Studios. I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the accomplishments from the entire team in XES. They have built an impressive slate of original programming and pioneered interactive entertainment on Xbox, such as the innovative reality series ‘Every Street United’ that succeeded in uniting audiences around the globe during the recent World Cup.

I am pleased that Nancy, Jordan and members of the XES team remain committed to new, original programming already in production like the upcoming documentary series ‘Signal to Noise’ whose first installment takes on the rise and fall of gaming icon Atari and of course, the upcoming game franchise series ‘Halo: Nightfall,’ and the ‘Halo’ Television series which will continue as planned with 343 Industries.  Xbox will continue to support and deliver interactive sports content like ‘NFL on Xbox,’ and we will continue to enhance our entertainment offering on console by innovating the TV experience through the monthly console updates. Change is never easy, but I believe the changes announced today help us better align with our long-term goals. We have an incredible opportunity ahead of us to define what the next generation of gaming looks like for the growing Xbox community. I have a great deal of confidence in this team and know that with clarity of focus on our mission and our customers we can accomplish great things together.