We’re trying to listen to customer feedback, company exec says

May 7, 2013 05:35 GMT  ·  By

Tami Reller, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer and chief financial officer, suggested that the tech giant might indeed use the upcoming Windows Blue to make some major changes to Windows 8, indicating that the Start button could be brought back in this new release.

While sources familiar with the matter previously hinted that the Softies are now pondering the return of the Start button, no official details have been provided, even though such a feature would pretty much make sense.

But according to Reller, some of the changes to be made in Windows Blue will be mostly based on customer feedback, which means that the company is willing to make its new operating system a bit more familiar.

“The Windows Blue update is also an opportunity for us to respond to the customer feedback that we’ve been closely listening to since the launch of Windows 8 and Windows RT. From a company-wide perspective, Windows Blue is part of a broader effort to advance our devices and services for Microsoft,” Reller said.

And still, some insiders explained that the Windows Blue Start button might actually be just a shortcut for the Start Screen, so it won’t launch a Start Menu.

It remains to be seen, however, if Microsoft is indeed trying to bring back the Start button, but more information is likely to emerge next month at the BUILD developer conference.

If previous reports are true, Microsoft is planning to launch the next major Windows upgrade as soon as June, most likely during the BUILD event in San Francisco.

Since it would initially be offered as a beta, the developer conference could be a great moment to collect feedback before the stable Blue version comes out.

There are no details on the Blue launch event, but some sources initially pointed to an August or a September release date.