Microsoft has decided to opt out from CES 2013 onwards, where they will no longer hold any more keynotes or even have a booth presence, but will still be there in spirit via meeting with “partners and customers across the PC, phone and entertainment industries.” According to Microsoft, the main reason behind that is the company’s “product news milestones generally don’t align” with the event’s timing which is traditionally held at the start of the January. Frank Shaw, corporate VP of corporate communications says, “As we look at all of the new ways we tell our consumer stories – from product momentum disclosures, to exciting events like our Big Windows Phone, to a range of consumer connection points like Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft.com and our retail stores – it feels like the right time to make this transition. Microsoft has enjoyed a close to 20-year working relationship with the Consumer Electronics Association – and we look forward to working with CEA for many years to come.”
Guess sentimentalism of all that 20 years of working together does not mean anything, but CES did prove to be a landmark even for some of Microsoft’s milestones in the past, incuding Bill Gates unveiling the final design of the Xbox back at the turn of this century. Just last year, the Redmond-based company announced a holiday release for Kinect, which was known in the industry as Project Natal.