• Microsoft: June 6, 1900 hours EEST / 1600 hours GMT
• Sony: June 7, 0300 hours EEST / June 7 0000 hours GMT
• Nintendo:  June 7, 1900 hours EEST / 1600 hours GMT

A highly placed development source has confirmed to Digital Foundry that the new disc format being beta tested in a new dashboard upgrade adds 1GB to the storage of Xbox 360 game discs.

The maximum space allocated to game data on the current disc format is just 6.8GB out of a maximum of 7.95GB on a standard dual layer DVD, with over 1GB dedicated to a DVD-Video partition that also contained anti-piracy security sectors.

What’s most interesting about this news is what isn’t being said: allocating resources to improve the disc format of a five-year-old system suggests to me that Microsoft isn’t planning on announcing the successor to the 360 in a while. That, or the method described above can be adapted to whatever storage format the 360′s successor will have.

The UX matters: it’s the first thing potential customers see when a friend passes them their new phone in the pub. A well-designed UX is consistent, forgiving and rewarding; Nokia’s user experience was inconsistent, unforgiving and hostile. Nokia’s designers honed in with meticulous attention to the wrong detail. Apple’s iPhoneOS UI had some unusual features – smooth graphics that played transitions at 60-frames-per-second, thanks to a dedicated graphics chip. Instead of redesigning the entire UX, Nokia acquired expensive professional-grade video cameras to determine the animation speed, and having confirmed that yes, it was 60fps, tried to recreate the transitions.

Nokia is not adopting Microsoft’s current Windows Phone 7 platform – which means that there is no chance of any handsets running Microsoft’s software before the end of October. It is likely to be a lot later.

If they haven’t announced a release date, how can this be called a “delay”?

If you go over to Nokia’s announcement where they announced a sweeping deal with Microsoft and read all the comments you’ll see that most of the comments are in total despair mode.

It’s like a bunch of Google employees are astroturfing the comments there. “I’m gonna buy Android” they all say. Many others say “how can Elop (Nokia’s CEO) bet on a failed platform?” Other blogs are calling this note “a suicide note.”

You all are nuts.

Unequivocally, Qt is not dead. This morning we heard top Nokia executives like CTO Rich Green talk about Qt and the future. Qt will continue to live on through Symbian, MeeGo and the non-mobile Qt industries and platforms.

It’s dead, at least where Nokia is concerned.

But back to three operating systems – that means more costs and confusion. If you thought that Nokia’s ‘execution’ was a problem before – just watch it do delays like a pro this year – like someone… who should I think of, someone who really knows how to deliver software on time? hmmm.. MICROSOFT !

This isn’t an “analysis” but a piece that is opinionated in every sense of the word. I’d be willing to bet that the first Windows Phone from Nokia will be released on schedule.

I will not be the first to say this, nor the last, but Nokia needs to kill off its OS platforms more quickly than that. Its now a journey into futility. Nobody believes in Nokia OS platforms anymore, they are the walking dead. Why develop them? Why maintain them?

First off, I’d like to redirect the author to presentation slides presented by Stephen Elop, clearly stating that Windows Phone will replace Symbian completely. I’d also like to highlight another Engadget piece stating that “Stephen Elop says that he expects Nokia to ramp up the transition this year and be ready to ship Windows Phone 7 devices in significant volume in 2012″.

If Nokia foresees selling Windows Phone devices in 2012, why would they not maintain Symbian until then? Maybe they should shut down all Symbian operations today and stop selling phones for the rest of the year. Additionally, no-one has said that Symbian and MeeGo will continue to be developed, only supported.

Does Nokia gain a superior OS out of Microsoft? No. Phone 7 won’t even be able to run all the features that current Nokia premium phones have. So right from the start, this means moving Nokia abilities down a notch.

Less features? I agree. The iPhone also has fewer features, and it turned out okay.

• Windows Phone is, for Nokia, a completely new and unfamiliar operating system
• No more return on significant software investments, namely Symbian, Qt and MeeGo
• Software and hardware solutions will no longer both be developed “in house”
• The restructuring needed may put employees at risk of losing their jobs

The reactions are understandable: Nokia is seen as a domestic product, as are its software platforms Symbian and MeeGo. Switching to Windows Phone is perceived as an intrusion by foreigners, and it seems that most Finns are ignoring the advantages of an alliance with Microsoft because of this perception. It’s a shame, because there are many reasons why the announcement today may lead to a strong future for Nokia.

Firstly, Nokia can quickly come to market with new hardware models because — as an operating system — Windows Phone is a mature implementation that has already been used in commercial products. Nokia can focus on engineering great hardware and integrating its software with the new OS, and spend less time focusing on maintaining and improving its own OS initiatives.

Secondly, the potential size of Nokia’s developer community will most likely enjoy significant growth. Though switching to Windows Phone will inevitably alienate a large portion of the current community, the sheer amount of .NET/C#/Visual Basic developers is a fact that can’t be discounted. For most developers, using the Windows Phone SDK and its choice of programming languages is arguably far more palatable than C++ and Qt . The percentage of PCs running Windows has led to a vast reserve of developers expert in the very technologies and architecture model that Windows Phone favours.

The alliance entails drastic changes for Nokia. It’s a very bold move, a fact that I don’t think anyone disputes. But I also see it as both an encouraging and necessary one: the current software solutions and services developed at Nokia are the primary reason why the company has experienced stagnancy whilst its two main competitors continue marching forward.

Nokia gains software solutions and support from Microsoft; Microsoft gains consumer reach from Nokia. I see this as the encouraging start of a brighter future for the mobile phone giant.

It is funny how people think that the important thing about exceptions is handling them. That is not the important thing about exceptions. In a well-written application there’s a ratio of ten to one, in my opinion, of try finally to try catch. Or in C#, using statements, which are like try finally.

If you take a look at the block diagram above, you’ll notice that most of the blocks are fairly obvious … But the purpose of the “FSB replacement block” may not be obvious. This particular block essentially implements a kind of on-die “frontside bus” with the exact same latency and bandwidth characteristics as the older bus that connected the CPU and GPU when they were discrete parts.

The FSB replacement essentially lowers the performance characteristics of the SoC in order to retain the performance level of older Xbox 360 machines.