One of the most-rumored features of the mythical Apple television set is Siri integration that would allow you to naturally ask questions and issue commands to your TV, but Microsoft may beat Apple to the punch, if a new report from The Verge is accurate. Microsoft already has some voice features built into the current generation Xbox, but the next-gen console will get much-improved abilities including natural language processing powers, the report claims.

New voice-based abilities include the option to wake the new Xbox from sleep mode with an “Xbox on” command, as well as a system that can use Kinect to detect people in the room and offer up multiplayer game suggestions. Users can also query the new Xbox to ask it what their friends are currently playing, tell it to pick up playing a movie where it was last left off and more. The new system will also be much better at vocalizing responses to voice-based user input, according to the report, which should make the overall experience feel much more like an ordinary conversation.

Natural language input for Smart TV platforms is a trend that’s just starting to find its sea legs. The tech was discussed at CES this year by many CE companies including LG as part of their upcoming or shipping platforms, and language processing industry leader Nuance launched its Dragon TV platform last year at CES, to be offered up for integration into OEM hardware and cable/satellite services that want to start building in NLP functionality.

Our own Romain Dillet noted the regrettable lack of confirmed games for the upcoming OUYA Android-based home gaming console just yesterday. Today, as if in answer, OUYA founder and CEO Julie Uhrman spoke at DICE to announce some new launch partners for the Kickstarter-funded project. The newly announced titles include Double Fine Adventure (another Kickstarter success from gaming legend Tim Schafer’s studio) and Rob Gilbert’s The Cave, also from Double Fine studios.

In addition to the Double Fine titles, Uhrman said onstage that Paul Bettner, best known for creating Words With Friends, would also be developing titles for OUYA. No word on the specifics, but it is a vote of confidence from a game creator who has had enormous success on mobile platforms.

When Romain complained about a lack of substantial games for the OUYA, he was mainly talking about marquee titles that would attract core gamers to a standalone console. The argument he made is essentially that users won’t flock to dedicated hardware that they can essentially already play on their Android or iOS devices. Without noteworthy launch games to give it juice, he believes OUYA’s will become yet another device gathering dust on peoples’ shelves.

Now that Zynga beat the street with a surprisingly positive $311 million in revenue, here are the highlights from the earnings call. Zynga shares are up about 13 percent since yesterday’s close on the results.

-Zynga is now a “mobile-first” company: Yes, this sounds familiar. Zynga now has 72 million monthly active users on mobile platforms, which is about one quarter of the company’s total. CEO Mark Pincus said on the call that more game teams in the company are focused on mobile launches than on Facebook. They added that Zynga likely has the fifth largest daily audience on mobile platforms behind companies like Google, and almost certainly the largest in mobile gaming. Players spent 10.7 billion minutes inside Zynga’s mobile games in December. That said, Zynga is still feeling the effect of Draw Something’s decline with daily active users declining to 20 million from 22 million in the previous quarter.

-Midcore games are coming: Zynga made its bread-and-butter on the stereotypical 35-year-old female gamer and positioned itself as the new daytime soap opera, so to speak. But following an industry-wide trend, the company is shifting to focus on midcore-style games like Kabam and Kixeye, which have a smaller number of players who typically spend more. “Our pipeline is heavily weighted to midcore,” Pincus said on the call. Zynga recently A Bit Lucky and November Software to get talent to build these kind of games. Speaking of which, Kabam has been quite vocal about its earnings growth.

During this afternoon’s fourth-quarter earnings call, Zynga announced three more game shutdowns — CityVille 2, Party Friends, and The Friend Game.

The most notable closure was probably CityVille 2, since it was the sequel to what was once Zynga’s biggest hit. However, the game’s traffic has plummeted. COO David Ko blamed some of CityVille 2′s failure on a lack of lead time to properly test the game.

Zynga had earlier announced a cost-savings plan that saw the shutdown of 11 titles. This year, the company will be releasing fewer games and spacing their releases further apart, Ko said. He also said that many of those new games have significant franchise potential.

The launch of FarmVille 2 was one of the big highlights of Zynga’s past year, but CEO Mark Pincus said its predecessor FarmVille crossed major milestone too, having reached $1 billion in total player bookings.

Seeing an old game reach cross the $1 billion mark may not tell us much about Zynga’s future or current finances, but it still seems appropriate (or symbolic, or something) that FarmVille crossed that line as the focus shifts to its sequel. Speaking of that sequel, Zynga had said a month ago that the game had 40 million monthly active users and 8 million daily active users. Today it also said that bookings from the game had exceeded Zynga’s predictions by 100 percent. And Pincus said FarmVille 2 will be coming to mobile this year.

Those numbers were shared during Zynga’s fourth quarter earnings call, as part of a larger discussion how the company is doing in the “investment and express” category. At the same time, Pincus said Zynga’s “pipeline is heavily weighted toward mid-core” games that are aimed at a less casual audience.

The little Android-based gaming console that could is in on track for March as promised for Kickstarter backers, but the public launch in June looks to be an equally splashy affair with retail support from some of the biggest U.S. chains. OUYA announced today to backers that it would be selling the console to the general public beginning in June at Amazon, Best Buy, Target and GameStop.

Pre-orders begin today for retail partners (they’re currently live at Best Buy, Amazon and Target), with pricing set at $99.99 for the console and one controller. Additional controllers are available as well, for $49.99 each (the console supports up to four controllers at one time.

OUYA founder Julie Uhrman sat down with the Wall Street Journal to discuss the upcoming launch and some of the details around it, laying out that Kickstarter backers would get their units first, followed by pre-order customers who ordered through the OUYA website in April, and then wide retail release including physical store presence beginning in June. She reiterated some of the details around launch day content previously announced, including the fact that there will be around 200 titles coming to OUYA as of right now, with Final Fantasy 3 one of the premiere titles from launch partner Square Enix, which will feature exclusive content.