Steve Ballmer Quietly Leads Microsoft Out of CES

Microsoft CEO delivers a toned down keynote address to mark his company's exit.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been known to give animated talks.

But Monday evening's keynote at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show was anything but colorful.

The easily excitable tech leader delivered a calm, focused and anything but rememberable address to the thousands amassed in the Las Vegas desert for four days to hear the latest in consumer technology.

Ballmer and Microsoft are two of the bigger names to attend CES this year and in that lies the problem for some.

Many of techs biggest names no longer attend the annual convention, where companies are expected to announce new products.

This year was Microsoft's final swan song as well. Ballmer had announced before Monday's keynote that he no longer intended to bring his company to he dessert to start the new year.

But Microsoft did not cite the lack of big names, like other tech insiders have, but instead the company said the event did not align with its normal product design cycle to make an announcement.

With that in mind Ballmer did not talk about new products. Instead he addressed where Microsoft has been the past year.

Ballmer spoke about Windows 8, the status of Windows Phone devices and XBox Live.

He released sales information for Microsoft's strong video game business.

Ballmer said the company has sold about 66 million XBox 360 devices, it has about 40 million XBox Live subscribers and it has sold 18 million Kinect sensors.

And like that, Microsoft joined the ranks of Apple and Google on becoming another tech giant that will no longer make news at CES.

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