Windows Ultimate Extras are optional features offered to users of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. They are accessible with Windows Update. Ultimate Extras replace the market role of Microsoft Plus!, a product sold for prior consumer releases of Microsoft Windows.[1] Windows Vista Ultimate Edition's successor, Windows 7 Ultimate, does not include Windows Ultimate Extras.[2]
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Initially Microsoft had been criticized for not delivering many useful Extras after the launch of the Vista operating system and its most expensive edition. Some people even questioned whether the Ultimate Extras team was still in existence given a decline in their blog activity.[4] However, on July 2, 2007, in a post on the Windows Ultimate blog they issued a statement that they would be providing 20 more language packs and final version of Windows DreamScene by the end of the summer 2007, as well as more Ultimate Extras "over the next couple years."
Microsoft released the final version of Windows DreamScene on September 25, 2007. Microsoft released two new Extras, including two new DreamScene backgrounds and two sound schemes, on April 22, 2008, almost 8 months after DreamScene's release.[3] Group Shot was initially announced to be a future Ultimate Extra, but it was eventually downloadable at a Microsoft Research site for some time.[5]
Since the release of new Ultimate Extras in April 2008, the uproar over Microsoft's lack of providing Extras has died down substantially. One editor called the Ultimate Extras 'useless addons'.[6]
In September 2008, Microsoft released a game via Ultimate Extras called Microsoft Tinker and an additional DreamScene Content Pack. One reviewer wrote an article about Tinker called the "Best Ultimate Extra so far (although the bar has been set pretty low)".[7]