Windows 7 tours gets animated Silverlight browser

[flv:win7tour.mp4 650 340]

Those fun and quirky animated characters at the beginning of every Windows 7 tour video released earlier are back to do more of what they do best, animate! Replacing a static imagery, the new Windows 7 tours page now features a fancier Silverlight player that does a little more than just play videos. Once loaded, each of the four “features” come to life when you hover over them.

Now I know I’m writing about fluff but the reason I’m keeping a sharp eye on these animated characters is because their production value is unusually high if for just a brief video introduction or website animation. I’m going to go out on a digital limb and predict we’ll be seeing more of these guys in the Windows 7 advertising campaigns to come.

Update: Thanks to a heads up from commenter “Martin”, this is the work of Digital Kitchen.

14 insightful thoughts

  1. Very nice. It looks similar to the Genie engine and its characters used in Age of Empires but this time with modern outfits. Would be better if MS made them bigger instead of so tiny. I was also expecting a single guided tour of the OS’s new features like XP’s tour which has awesome eye candy icons and mesmerizing background music from Bill Brown which blends with the XP sound scheme.

  2. @Robert: Very cool job 🙂 I noticed however there’s also a Flash version which is almost identical. I think you guys did a great job porting it to Silverlight.

  3. frog did the Flash development piece as well, so it was Flash + Silverlight versions in parallel.

  4. @Robert: Ah cool. Can you reveal if there are any further enhancements or developments planned for these tours, or are they done?

  5. Works the way you want?
    -OMG LOL, no its broken, and its breaks the things that did work..or just plain replaced things with more poorly made crap… only a fucktard group could come up with some of the most retarded shit implemented in this borked OS
    Simplifys everyday tasks?
    -OMG this is killing me.. if you’re a noob who doesn’t know how to use an OS or get better tools to enhance defaulty crap provided (which is lot cus MS can’t seem to actually improved anything in the years they spend working on updates) then you’re probably simplified enough to be the targeted user for this barely improved MS shite.
    Makes new things possible?
    -And if you believe that are truly are stupid.

    “I love it! Life without walls!”
    Life without walls… lol…no just extra steps.. extra retardation, extra false security, extra clicks.. And the wall in the advert.. yes you just need to wait for them to load up, tap them, and then jump over the gap(THE GAP), watch out, you don’t want to fall into the won’t find any bridges in this shitty experience of Winshite7. Microshite – hiring advertising agencies to fool nubs into believing any old bullshit.

  6. hmmm, aren’t the colored “worlds” wrongly arranged if they should represend the Windows logo?

  7. The silverlight demo doesn’t work as in the video (at least on mac/firefox).
    When I hover over tree and the drawer nothing happends!

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