Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Vincent H Curley

Michal Bortnik

Steven Dale Lamb

Ling Tony Chen

James David Macauley

James Hsi-kai Jen

Patrick W O'Kelley, Ii

Johan Peter Hansen

Holly Knight

Jerry Alan Johnson

J Peter Hansen

Shyamalan Pather

Praveen Seshadri

Neil Warren Black

Robert H Gerber

Jennifer Ruth Mead

Charles Tete Mensa-Annan

James Hsi-Kai Jen

Paul E Newson

Richard Dievendorff

Robert F Blanch

Henry Morgan

David Shaw

Philip Lawrence Garrett

Stephen E Dossick

Alan Thomas Shen

Benjamin F Kilgore

James His-Kai Jen

Lon Eugene Fisher

Patrick W O'kelley Ii

Systems and method for providing a game achievements system where players are rewarded with game achievements based on mastering certain in-game facets of the games they play. Each game achievement may be conveyed in a profile as a badge or trophy, title, description, date, etc. Players may also accumulate points based on game achievements. A display interface may be made available such that a player may see his achievements and total points, as well as those of others.

Game achievements system

Information is shared among users in a system by the use of a service. The service receives information from at least two different game applications that each have a configuration file (defined with a common schema) that defines information from the game application to share with a service. An intermediary program executing on a computer that is also executing one of said game applications receives information from the application as defined by said configuration files and stores at least a portion of the information received from the application. At least a portion of the information is sent to the service when the intermediary is in communication with the service over a network wherein the service provides information about a user of said at least two game applications based on information received by said service.

System and method for configuring game data about players

A game hosting service manages game sessions and groups of players. The service creates, starts, and ends a game session. The service also manages the joining and deleting of players and groups of players both prior to and during game play. The service collects, stores, and optionally arbitrates statistics for each player such a game score and relative ranking with other players. The service assigns a group ID to a group of players to allow the group to migrate across game sessions. The game hosting service utilizes session management APIs to nest multiple sessions, thus enabling groups of players to remain intact across multiple sessions.

On-line gaming session and party management

A game console has the capability to execute programming to unlock an achievement. After the achievements are unlocked, a data store accessible by the game console over a network stores the information in the profile of the user. The achievements associated with the user profiles can be retrieved from the store along with an indicator, that is indicative of a tier level associated with the achievement where the tier indicates a certain performance level associated with unlocking a particular achievement.

Tiered achievement system

Mechanisms for visual identification of a user in a gaming environment. For example, a digital image is used to identify a user, whether the user is on-line or off-line. This digital image is easily verifiable as an appropriate and non-offensive image because it May come form a controlled digital image source (or set of sources). The digital image is also revocable in a variety of gaming environment contexts by a gaming authority. Lastly, the digital image is changeable depending on the context of the gaming environment, in one aspect, being configured to be visible to the entire gaming environment in one form, and being visible to a subset of the gaming environment in another form.

Visual identity mechanisms

The present invention relates to a system and methodology to facilitate subscription, delivery, processing, and reception of notification services. A global service framework is provided that operates in conjunction with a notification platform architecture to deliver information from one or more event sources to one or more notification sinks that receive information from the services. The global framework includes discovery and description components that provide information relating to available notification services. Subscriptions can be obtained via subscription events, whereby notifications can be delivered via notification events, wherein such events can be modeled as part of the global service framework. Various communications protocols can also be provided to facilitate communications with the notification services and global services framework. Furthermore, various notification delivery protocols can be provided that operate with structured database technologies to facilitate bulk message delivery and service in a reliable manner while mitigating network problems such as delivering notifications under power-interrupting conditions.

System and method for providing notification(s) in accordance with middleware technologies

A rules-based software architecture that provides the infrastructure for the definition and execution of end-user rules logic. This enables end-user automation of data in a unified storage platform using simple IF-THEN rules. The architecture includes a monitoring component that tracks items associated with the data, and a rules component interfaces to the rules component, and employs metadata associated with the tracked items to provide for automated handling of a subset of the items. The system further provides for defining virtual collections and items in the system using content based logic. The system further comprises one or more trigger components that sets items and collections of items dynamically active as a function of trigger logic. Additional components can include a constraint component for imposing constraint logic on items, and a decision component that supports enabling application customization logic at decision points.

Rules framework for definition and execution of end-user rules logic

A system and method for efficiently synchronizing multiple databases stored on multiple computing devices. The method and system provides a duplicated database configuration where a database can either be stored only on a plurality of client computers, or on at least a client computer and a server computer. This duplicated database configuration allows users to access a database from a plurality of client computers that are communicatively connected to a server computer.

System and method for synchronizing multiple database files

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Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Vincent H Curley