Darren Huston, Corporate Vice President of Consumer and Online International at Microsoft, has revealed a more detailed timeline for the future of the Windows Live Wave 3 applications and services this week. LiveSide claims a new version of Windows Live Messenger will be released next week (with around 200 bug fixes!):



You can expect the scoop when the build is released (presuming it is). Let's hope all those small, annoying, little issues are resolved. In case you were wondering what has been going on in the beta world, here's some statistics that we've received about bug reports since the last beta version:

By design: 81
Duplicate: 1
External: 15
Fixed: 191
N/A (investigating): 113
Not reproducible: 46
Postponed: 52
Won't fix: 125

Further reading: LiveSide - Life Without Walls, Windows Live Timeline Revealed

Extra footnote by the andyman: The new versions of the Windows Live Wave 3 applications being released next week (or around the 15th of December as I'm hearing from other sources) - through the new Windows Live Essentials installer - should be the release candidates (RC) of the software, meaning that not much will change between then and when the final versions are released approx 9th/10th February next year. Expect the new Messenger build to look something like the one shown in this teaser video a few weeks ago.