Microsoft Blue Dragon

Sep 22, 2005

by Michael Dinowitz

As many of you know, the name BlueDragon is synonymous with the alternative ColdFusion processing engine owned by New Atlanta. That is why when someone found a registration for a trademark for the name Blue Dragon by Microsoft, it caused quite a stir. The thought was that Microsoft has acquired BlueDragon from New Atlanta, just as Adobe is acquiring ColdFusion along with the Macromedia buyout.

But this has nothing to do with New Atlanta, or with the BlueDragon software that we know. Microsoft's Blue Dragon is

"the first of two epic RPG projects for Microsoft by Mistwalker, the studio founded by Square-Enix's Hironobu Sakaguchi. Blue Dragon features characters by designer Akira Toriyama, and tells the story of a young boy named Shu who has special adventure with his two friends and a mythical blue dragon."

While this does not preclude Microsoft from acquiring BlueDragon from New Atlanta, at least for now, we need not worry about seeing the names Microsoft and Blue Dragon together.

(Thanks to Shaun Webster for bringing this to our attention.)