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XBox (Games) Entertainment Games

Microsoft Talks Handhelds, Xbox Linux 404

Posted by simoniker from the boxy-has-moxy dept.
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Canada.com interview with Xbox head honcho Robbie Bach, which shoots him some wide-ranging and perceptive questions about Microsoft's console strategy. Interesting answers include whether Microsoft wants to get into the handheld console market ("It's like starting a new business...we will focus on making the current Xbox successful."), and their views of Linux for Xbox ("..the numbers are not really that big. It's not a commercial as much as it is an intellectual property issue and we always pursue those.")
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Microsoft Talks Handhelds, Xbox Linux More

Microsoft Talks Handhelds, Xbox Linux

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  • Microsoft XBox Handheld (Score:4, Funny)

    by questamor ( 653018 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @07:49PM (#6037482)
    I can see the XBox handheld now

    One foot by 3 inches thick and about 6 inches deep. Somewhere around the size of a PS2 :P

  • interesting (Score:4, Interesting)

    by shmuc ( 70684 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @07:50PM (#6037489) Journal
    Could this be another wave attempt at handheld consoles? Sony is in the process of making a handheld to go along with their top selling gaming console. Meanwhile, Nintendo, who still owns the handheld gaming console market, is standing strong with the GameBoy series (GameCube isn't holding up as well compared to it's little brother). Let's see how the two (MS and Sony) do against Nintendo in this category. If history holds up, Nintendo better start cranking with ideas.

    • Re:interesting (Score:3, Informative)

      by arakon ( 97351 )
      Nintendo's sales have picked up dramatically in the last 6 months, and you should really look at which systems the top 20 titles belong to and how many units were sold. Nintendo is doing fine and dandy. Xbox is sucking it up the worst of the bunch right now. Please check your numbers before posting fud. ::No invite for flames; I've got all 3 systems I just don't like seeing raw hype and biased opinions posted as fact.

      1 Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker Nintendo GC 826,352
      2 Pokemon Ruby Nintendo GBA 652,595
      3

  • Cheat?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by georgn ( 91130 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @07:50PM (#6037490)
    Q. Folks have even built a Linux-Xbox computer. How can you control this?

    A. Electronic hobbyists will do what they want to do...the numbers are not really that big. It's not a commercial as much as it is an intellectual property issue and we always pursue those. If someone finds a way to cheat, we close it down and do an update so people can't anymore.

    I'd be very curious to know how running Linux on an Xbox is cheating.

    • Re:Cheat?!? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @08:03PM (#6037555) Homepage Journal
      "I'd be very curious to know how running Linux on an Xbox is cheating."

      Did you read his previous answer?

      "
      Q. You now have PC, Internet and cell phone connectivity with the Xbox, plus Karaoke. How are you addressing security issues now that the Xbox is stepping out of the safe living room?

      A. We are designing everything we are doing to provide security as a service for both player and game publisher. For example, we can sense and disable an Xbox modified with third party "modchips" and not allow it to play online."


      It's not the answer you guys want to hear, but he's got a point. What's to stop people from cheating on-line if the XBOX can read games with modified binaries? When you pay extra per month for XBOX-Live service, you don't want to deal with cheaters.

      • Re:Cheat?!? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by FauxPasIII ( 75900 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @08:10PM (#6037593)
        >> What's to stop people from cheating on-line if
        >> the XBOX can read games with modified binaries?

        What's to stop people from remote rooting boxes if their PCs can run modified ssh binaries? Robust servers.

      • Sure he has a point. And they're within their rights to try to detect modified XBox consoles and prevent them from playing on their service.

        But the point doesn't go any further, however much they would like it to. It certainly doesn't give them any right to interfere with me using an Xbox for a routher, for instance. Speaking of which, can anyone point me to a good how-to on converting an Xbox into a decent *nix router?

        • Re:Cheat?!? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by NanoGator ( 522640 )
          "Speaking of which, can anyone point me to a good how-to on converting an Xbox into a decent *nix router? "

          Why bother? For $120 you can buy a 54-megabit wireless router. $50 gets you an ethernet router. Besides overpaying and flipping Microsoft, you also have to exploit/mod it and get ahold of a Linux distro for it.

          • I've got a hardware router, but I'm not happy with it. Limited programmability, and seems to have a problem dealing with thousands of simultaneous low-bandwidth connections as well. An Xbox or even an old 486 with a custom kernel and firewall would probably be more satisfactory - but it's hard to find an old 486 for the same price as an Xbox.

            Plus making MS eat a little loss would feel good too.

            • Re:Cheat?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @09:19PM (#6037955)
              "Plus making MS eat a little loss would feel good too. "

              So you're willing to spend money to make MS lose money? Can't say I'm impressed. Personally I'd donate to the EFF.

            • Re:Cheat?!? (Score:4, Informative)

              by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) <scott@alfter.us> on Monday May 26, 2003 @02:04AM (#6039037) Homepage Journal
              it's hard to find an old 486

              Check here [computersu...outlet.com]...$15 for a barebones Socket 5 system, $4 for 64 megs of RAM, $1 for a 100-MHz Pentium. You can probably do better locally with prices for el-cheapo Realtek-based NICs (I bought some Intel 10/100 NICs from them a while back for $2 each, but they're not up on their website...they have 3Com 3C905s listed at $20 each). For a firewall, you don't really need a hard drive...but you probably have one gathering dust that you could put in there if you want. I'm fairly sure that's a good bit less than whatever an Xbox costs.

      • See, the mayor flaw here is that you equate moid-chips with modified binaries. Which is just so much bollocks. A mod chip might allow you to play imports, and even warez'd games...but it a) doesn't neccessarily allow modified binaries and b)when certain mod-chips do, it's dead easy to do a quick binary check to see if the binaries have been modded.

        Anyway, it really brwaks down like this. I buy a car, and can buy any carburetor I want and install it. Not only that, but I can legally get many third party boo
        • "Anyway, it really brwaks down like this. I buy a car, and can buy any carburetor I want and install it. Not only that, but I can legally get many third party books on how to modify my car."

          I'm not advocating Microsoft's stand here. I think it's stupid. (In other words, I agree with you.) I'm not very supportive of attempts to hack it, though, because I don't think the little guy will win. Thanks to the DMCA, MS has the power to fight it by claiming IP damage. Worse, there's little to no reason (yet)

          • Where's the apps that justify the time into mucking with it?

            Apps are here [mplayerhq.hu]

            I can't think of a cheaper way to get a device that will play DivX/mov/whatever movies on my TV in the living room, with network connectivity, all in a case that looks like it belongs in the living room.

            • "I can't think of a cheaper way to get a device that will play DivX/mov/whatever movies on my TV in the living room..."

              It's a pity that the creation of DivX movies is legally questionable, specifically in the sense of ripping DVDs to attain them. The only reason I bring that up is that court case involving the company wanting to make DVD backup software. It's not looking good for that company. It's stupid, really. Jack Valenti thinks that making a backup of a DVD is the same as having a company replac
        • You can modify you car if you like but if you want to enter that car in a competition it will have to meet the technical requirements of that competition.

          Just as most competitions severely limit what modification can be done to cars in order to keep the racing "fair" it is perfectly reasonable for MS to limit modifications made to the XBox if you want to use it with their XBox live service.

      • What's to stop people from cheating on-line if the XBOX can read games with modified binaries?

        I thought that argument was put to rest when those gameshark cartridges came out for the NES. Maybe I'm thinking about the wrong thing, but I could have sworn lawsuites were filed and gameshark won in the long run.

        • Re:Cheat?!? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @09:02PM (#6037855) Homepage Journal
          "I thought that argument was put to rest when those gameshark cartridges came out for the NES. Maybe I'm thinking about the wrong thing, but I could have sworn lawsuites were filed and gameshark won in the long run. "

          If memory serves, Nintendo tried to claim that that Game Genie caused damage to people's games. There was a breath of truth to it, enter the wrong code and you could erase save games. You could also make the game unstable (only when the Genie was hooked up...) thus making the game seem defective. Yes, Nintendo lost. Nintendo's stance on that was pretty shitty. I wish I could tell you what their real concern was, but unless a bunch of people called with tech support issues, I have trouble imagining it. (Was it possible it could have been used to play unauthorized games?)

          Here's a question for you: Would the Game Genie case hold up today in light of the DMCA? If you're looking for the difference between then and now, that'd be the first direction I'd point you.

          • Game Genie, that was it, thank you.

            Your description of Nintendo's argument against Game Genie is very similar to MS's argument against mod-chips (stability, unauthorized games). You are right though, DMCA does change anything, even though only real diff between Game Genie and a mod chip (from a user point of view) is that you don't need to open up your NES to install the Game Genie.

            Still, it could be used as an example of how this stuff has been around for a while, heck, same thing existed for the Commod

          • Re:Cheat?!? (Score:3, Interesting)

            by mrseigen ( 518390 )
            Don't forget that Nintendo went after one of the video rental places (Blockbuster?) for renting out games; their argument was that the rental of video games would eat into the market. Nintendo was smacked down by the law, and thus we can rent video games. In those days, Nintendo was pretty vicious legally.
      • I do understand his point. We have the right to mod our Xboxes, and they have the right to keep us from playing on their servers because of what we did. However, I'm not a big fan of Xbox live anyway.
        • " We have the right to mod our Xboxes, and they have the right to keep us from playing on their servers because of what we did."

          Heh. That kind of reminds me of Slashdot's favorite game company who's name rhymes with Wizard.

    • Re:Cheat?!? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fiddlesticks ( 457600 )
      > I'd be very curious to know how running Linux on an Xbox is cheating.

      it's not, and he knows that. It's just part of the redmond strategy plan to go after people that mess about with 'their' stuff, so that when, some day, some unlucky hacker breaches some law about modding/messing about/ having UNAUTHORISED FUN WITH A MICROSOFT PRODUCT in any of the territories that xbox is sold in, as well as the copyright/ 'IP issues' that they'll bring to bear in court, MS will also be able to tell the judge that 't

  • "We always pursue those." (Score:5, Funny)

    by BitwizeGHC ( 145393 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @07:51PM (#6037495) Homepage
    "Vinnie! Guido! Go 'pursue' the X-Box Linux intellectual property issue. To a satisfactory conclusion."

    Goons: "Daaaah, right away, boss! Heehee heheh!"

  • MS handheld consoles? (Score:4, Funny)

    by knightinshiningarmor ( 653332 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @07:52PM (#6037498)
    Why would I want a portable blue screen? I get enough of that at home. :)

    • Re:MS handheld consoles? (Score:5, Funny)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @08:06PM (#6037574) Homepage Journal
      "Why would I want a portable blue screen? I get enough of that at home. :) "

      Ugh. BSOD jokes are so 1998. It's about as funny as somebody saying "Who'd want a Linux portable gaming machine? It'd be a pain in the ass to type 'jump -high' on that little thumbboard."
    • Why would I want a portable blue screen? I get enough of that at home. :)

      As amusing as this is, your message just struck me that since I installed XP, I haven't seen the Blue Screen Of Death, except maybe once, and that's over the course of a couple of years with my computers at home and another 16 at the office.

      Except for my crash-happy HP notebook. Right now, I'm still blaming HP for that.

      • I've gotten plenty of individual apps crashing, but the only blue screen I've seen with XP was "unmountable boot volume" after fiddling with some registry settings. Setting LargeSystemCache to =1 is a bad idea. Fortunately, I was able to burn everything on \mnt\nt to a bunch of cds under Linux. (Weirdly, the installer for Windows couldn't make any sense out of its own partition and had to reformat it.)

  • intellectual property issue..... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PS-SCUD ( 601089 ) <peternormanscott&yahoo,com> on Sunday May 25, 2003 @07:54PM (#6037508) Journal
    and we always pursue those.

    Yes, far be it from you to let a great injustice, like someone using their Xbox how they see fit, from going unpunished.

  • Your Rights Vs. Microsoft's (Score:5, Insightful)

    by theodp ( 442580 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @07:54PM (#6037509)
    In one breath, "For example, we can sense and disable an Xbox modified with third party "modchips" and not allow it to play online." In the next, "Telling us what we can or can't create, we think is unconstitutional."

    • Re:Your Rights Vs. Microsoft's (Score:5, Interesting)

      by wfrp01 ( 82831 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @08:37PM (#6037726) Journal
      Wow, that's beautiful.

      As a citizen of the United States of America, we can expect to have certain rights. As employees/customers of an American corporation, we can expect diddley. And according to Microsoft, that's just the way it should be. The guy at least deserves credit for being forthright about where things stand.

      It's not just Microsoft, though. We live in a democracy. We have a free market. Nonetheless, corporations whose modus operandi resembles that of a feudal fiefdom by and large dominate our working lives. And when we leave work, we owe them our allegiance as 'customers'.

      But who cares? We all have bread on the table. A glass of wine. A Tivo. A comfortable chair.

      Society today is as hierarchical, class-based, and inequitable as ever. Perhaps more so. The only reason people aren't storming the castles with pitchforks is that they're too busy watching TV. That's the scary part. Seems to me that things are just getting worse and worse, but nobody cares. Why should they?

      The reason why, of course, is that they deserve better. And if wealth was distributed more equitably, they would have better. But people are just too damn content to agitate for change.

      So Bill Gates will continue to bitch-slap mod-chippers, all the while crying about his constitutional 'right' to do what he wants. Asshole.

      • Excuse me? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @11:11PM (#6038422) Homepage
        How is he an asshole by saying, "If you are on our Xbox Live! service, we reserve the right to boot you if you have a modchip or other cheat device (such as Action Replay hacked saves) turned on for your Xbox Live! games."

        I love that they ban cheaters and people who are just assholes. Why do you think I stopped playing PC games? People'd always accuse me of cheating if I was winning.

        Whinning that he has rights but won't let you mod chip Xboxs that are on Live! is like Bill Gates whinning that he can't just come into your house and pee on your floor. It's your private property to use as you please, just like the entire Live! network is MS property to do with as they fucking well please.

  • Xbox handheld? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jolyonr ( 560227 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @08:02PM (#6037546) Homepage
    Well, if Microsoft did an Xbox handheld, you'd need a damn strong right hand to hold it. Still, I guess if the market is adolescent makes, requiring a strong right hand isn't a problem.

  • Related: XBOX-2 info (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Frederique Coq-Bloqu ( 628621 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @08:03PM (#6037552) Journal
    Apparently the highly anticipated XBOX-2 will not carry [xbreporter.com] an nVidia graphics chipset. I must inject my opinion that, the way the GeForce 5 cards exist in their bulky and unoptimised state (can you say leafblower?) make me glad that Microsoft may be going with ATI or having a custom chip made for it. I know I could definitely do without heatsink-enabled RAM.

  • Handheld Possibilities (Score:3, Interesting)

    by agg123456789 ( 593765 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @08:04PM (#6037560)
    With the emergence of smaller form factor PCs like the oqo [oqo.com] it really does not seem SO far fetched that MS might introduce a handheld gaming system.

    However, it seems that absolutly everyone is entering the market including Nokia [n-gage.com] and sony [com.com].

    Does MS really want to fight it out with sony on the handheld platform, when they have been utterly beaten on the console one?

    Regardless, since it would probably be based on x86 hardware, it might make an excelent portable linux system ;)!

    • Re:Handheld Possibilities (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ceejayoz ( 567949 ) <cj@ceejayoz.com> on Sunday May 25, 2003 @08:08PM (#6037583) Homepage Journal
      they have been utterly beaten on the console [platform]

      I'm curious as to how you consider going from 0% market share to 20% market share, beating out the formerly #2 player (Nintendo) to be "utterly beaten" in the console market?
      • Because 20% doesn't count for shit in that industry. Nobody wants to write games for 20% of the market just like hardawre manufacturers don't want to drive drivers for linux.

        • Re:Handheld Possibilities (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ceejayoz ( 567949 ) <cj@ceejayoz.com> on Sunday May 25, 2003 @08:39PM (#6037738) Homepage Journal
          Nintendo's gotten along just fine selling to small portion of the market. Apple's another fine example of a niche market.

          Not only that, but 20% is a pretty good amount for a new product introduced in competition with a very popular system with a large install base. Xbox has exceeded MS's hopes for the first iteration of the system.
      • Market share only counts for so much. I'm sure Nintendo is perfectly happy to be beaten, given that they're actually making money, whereas Microsoft has been bleeding money and still, despite superior hardware, can't seem to get an upper hand on Sony.
        • I'm sure Nintendo is perfectly happy to be beaten, given that they're actually making money, whereas Microsoft has been bleeding money and still, despite superior hardware, can't seem to get an upper hand on Sony.

          MS fully expected to lose money on the Xbox to get a foothold - when Gates approved the Xbox, he was told that MS might lose up to $3.3 billion in the first couple years. Given that they make $10 billion profit a year and have $40 billion cash on hand, they can easily absorb the losses.

          Costs ar
          • My point was that Nintendo is playing a different game from Microsoft; the only sense in which MS is "beating" Nintendo is market share. The XBox may be around for a while, but Nintendo will still exist when all that's left on this Earth are cockroaches.

            By the way, where do your get the idea that the XBox is doing better than MS expected? Were MS's expectations really that low? It seems that it's doing just about as badly as everyone else expected (perhaps a little bit better) but still getting drubbed
            • By the way, where do your get the idea that the XBox is doing better than MS expected? Were MS's expectations really that low? It seems that it's doing just about as badly as everyone else expected (perhaps a little bit better) but still getting drubbed by Sony, which still sells (last I heard) three times as many PS2s as MS sells XBoxes. I think MS had higher expectations than that. It wasn't too long ago that Sony itself broke into the market when it had two well-established players and cornered the sucke

      • Re:Handheld Possibilities (Score:5, Insightful)

        by NortWind ( 575520 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @08:56PM (#6037813)
        I'm curious as to how you consider going from 0% market share to 20% market share, beating out the formerly #2 player (Nintendo) to be "utterly beaten" in the console market?

        Compare either Nintendo's or Sony's profits to MS's loss of $300M (claimed by MS in the article for division) or loss of $1B (as claimed in PC World article). The other two companies made more than infinitely more than MS. That's a pretty good beat down.

        • If MS had expected to make a profit on the Xbox, then yes, it could be considered a disaster. MS expected to lose billions - that's the only way for them to muscle in on an established market.

          Same thing Amazon.com does - lose a lot of money establishing a store, then use the eventual profits for that store to branch out into new products. No one's calling Amazon.com "utterly beaten" despite their cash losses (well, except for those who predicted Amazon's demise in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and will continu
      • Um... only in the US is the XBox #2 in sales. Worldwide, #2 in sales is Nintendo.

        That being said, I'm completely amazed at what people will pay and tolerate to be able to play uh, hmm... *goes to go look up a name of a game for the XBox*... Halo.

        One thing I will say about the XBox. It's amazing what pumping an endless amount of money into something can do to grab marketshare.

  • Pr0n from MS? (Score:5, Funny)

    by teslatug ( 543527 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @08:05PM (#6037563)
    I don't know if N.U.D.E. will be available outside Japan, off the top of my head. A lot of the new content you will see is more interactive, social community...people want a competitive but fun social experience and we are experimenting with a lot of new concepts like project N.U.D.E.
    I just hope they don't borrow from Clippy's personality...although, in this case, hmmm...
    I see you're trying to beat off. Would you like a hand with that?

  • Microsoft Wants Patent For Denying Online Services (Score:5, Interesting)

    by theodp ( 442580 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @08:05PM (#6037571)
    Here's Microsoft's patent application [uspto.gov] that covers disallowing participation in online services.
    • You've got to be shitting me. But you're not. They are essentially attempting to patent host-based authentication 'for a gaming console'. Oh, for a 'gaming console' - that's unique. And this should be considered innovative? Goddamn I hate this company.
      • After doing a bit of reading, I'd have to say that I think you're right, but only to a point... observe

        "[0008] The public key architecture involves writing a private key and a digital certificate into each game console during manufacturing. The certificate contains the public key corresponding to the private key. The certificate is part of a certificate chain that includes a certification authority certificate associated with a certification authority at each manufacturing site and a root certificate from

  • Unconstitutional........ (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PS-SCUD ( 601089 ) <peternormanscott&yahoo,com> on Sunday May 25, 2003 @08:06PM (#6037573) Journal
    From the article: Telling us what we can or can't create, we think is unconstitutional.

    But of course if MS tells YOU what you can or cannot create, that's perfectly OK.

  • Oh yes... Halo (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @08:19PM (#6037643) Homepage
    Q. Do you ever get impatient with Bungie, the developers of Halo 2, the sequel to your flagship title Halo?
    A. Software development is part science and part art. I have a lot of faith in those guys to execute and produce on time, just like they did for Halo for the Xbox launch.

    Because Bungie can always be relied on for release dates. I'm still waiting for my Q1 2001 Halo PC release.

    How quickly we forget.

  • Stupid question (Score:4, Funny)

    by JohnFluxx ( 413620 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @08:45PM (#6037766)
    > Q. How important is the Japanese market to you?

    This question bugged me. Imagine you were answering, and had no idea what was happening, what would you say?

    A. Not very. We find the japanese insignificant.
    A. Very - the very existance of the xbox'es fate, lies in their hands!
    A. We want to be successful in Japan because it's a gaming market and an important territory where we have a lot of third party game publishers.

    bah

  • cheating and linux (Score:4, Funny)

    by nuintari ( 47926 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @08:48PM (#6037781) Homepage
    Q. Folks have even built a Linux-Xbox computer. How can you control this?
    A. Electronic hobbyists will do what they want to do...the numbers are not really that big. It's not a commercial as much as it is an intellectual property issue and we always pursue those. If someone finds a way to cheat, we close it down and do an update so people can't anymore.

    First off, he is being vague, intentionally no doubt, so no one really knows what he means by "we always pursue those".

    Secondly, how is this question dealing with cheaters? I modded my xbox to run Linux on it, not cheap, I have no interest in the xbox live service, its just one more way to connect me to people, and I hate people. Are you comming to get me because I like to tinker?

    I don't even play pirate games on my modded xbox, not for lack of options I might add, I could have every game I wanted. But there is still only one game worth playing on my Halo Machi..... I mean xbox.

  • Go with PS2 (Score:2, Troll)

    by borgheron ( 172546 )
    At least Sony supports Linux and supports, for the most part, the right of its customers to tinker.

    What else should we expect from MS except for Fear & Control and all of those things we hate, but when has it been any different?

    Thanks, GJC
  • BBC News Article is quite illuminating, talks about how they made the Xbox too expensive to begin with, and how outside of Halo they dont really have any "must-have" titles. Also mentions some about Microsoft's purchase of Rare, and how that will play into their strategy:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3051331.stm [bbc.co.uk]

    The last sentence is the article is a whopper:

    "The software giant is slowly laying the groundwork for total market dominance in the coming years.

  • Expanding the console market... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Blondie-Wan ( 559212 ) on Sunday May 25, 2003 @10:17PM (#6038215) Homepage
    Pulling back from M$ and the X-Box for a moment to look at the broader gaming world...

    From the article (emphasis in bold added):

    Q. Who else do you want to sell the Xbox to?
    A. What we haven't done as successfully is reach out into the broader market place. We just announced the Xbox Music Mixer with interesting non-gaming features, something that a variety of different audiences, like women, might want to engage in. Or getting text messages on your cell phone on your virtual league?s standings.

    Q. What fires Bill up about the Xbox?
    A. He looks at the whole concept and says how do we bring console gaming into the mass market. How do you enable the 90 per cent of women who don't play games, want to play? How do you make it easy enough in our generation can pick up a game console and have a great entertaining experience?
    Q. Do you play?
    A. Mostly with my 12 year old son.

    I find it interesting that even someone in the industry, who obviously has an interest in drawing women to the hobby, himself admits he mostly plays with his 12-year-old son. I wonder if he's tried "selling" the women in his own personal life on it? Does his wife play? His mom? His sisters, or women friends?? (Granted, as he's in the industry, it's likely a lot of his friends, including women, are also in the industry, but aside from that...)

    I frequently see articles on modern gaming demographics that say more women are playing video games than is generally thought, though the numbers seem to vary. Is this really the case? If so, why are so many of the games obviously targetted toward 12-year-old boys (or older males, who arguably have largely the same interests)?

  • Long Term investment (Score:3, Interesting)

    by frankie_guasch ( 164676 ) on Monday May 26, 2003 @05:34AM (#6039552)
    For those who won't read the article, here is an
    interesting question:

    How long will Microsoft support a platform that seems destined to be in the red for the next few years? ... this is a 10, 15 and 20 year investment.

    So MS is gonna inject cash in this project for many years. Expect a hard fight in the console market for ever.

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