Microsoft Game Console

Nukelear writes "MS will be releasing a gaming console in Fall of 2000. The box will be running Intel OR AMD chips (not yet decided) and NV10 graphics. The full story is here." Note that it hasn't been confirmed yet, however. Assuming it's true, it means MS is going up against (primarily) three companies with well established brands - Nintendo, Sega, and Sony. Even if MS is MS, it still sounds like they would be up for some stiff competition...

Ouch...

Talk about using your friends as stepping stools... development on this must've began while they were working on Dreamcast with Sega!

Control of the Box

The issue comes down to who gets to control the standards for interfacing to your future digital TV (I beleive analog transmission is due to be phased out by 2004?) and thus eye-ball time (if stories of teenage 40 hour/week watching TV is true). By aggressively pushing the brand awareness, alternative choices don't even get a look-in, especially if you can default to your content site. Selling hardware is not profitable, but claiming a slice of the on-going revenue stream for services is. By defining and thus controling the OS standards, they can get advanced notice of future applications and thus breathing space to put a foot into high growth areas before others catch on. Time to market is a killer advantage which is worth a fortune if you can establish leadership in a game category (witness Quake, C&C, etc).

Now the technical question (considering this is SlashDot) is should the x86 family really suitable as a media processor compared with alternatives such as Sony Emotion Engine or SH4? Would the component count be low and cheap enough to support broadband, ASDL or even wireless? And would the Japanese consumer electronics manufacturers be taking this lying down?

LL

Consoles could be the next pc's

The whole idea of integration between television and computer has been around for quite a while now and is happening, albeit slowly.

You see, the PSX2 will have a DVD drive and the ability to attach a modem. And it'll be available for around £250. Well cheaper than most pc's today.

So..kids will use this to surf the net and play interactive games..... they will not be using a large PC and not using windows.....The PSX2 will eventually become a PC with added periphials....Microsoft could be fucked.

What I want to know is how Microsoft intend to compete with Sony who substitute the hardware costs with game licencing.

Intel will not sell the x386 chips at a loss so MS can dominate a market, and neither will any 3-D board manufacturer. And since MS cannot control the hardware, they cannot control the software that runs on it, nor make any money licencing games (They don't on a PC.)

It's one this distributing IE over the net and CD's everywhere to crush Netscape when the actual costs are are tiny compared to hardware manufacturing and distribution costs.

The only thing going for it is the fact that the games can be a lot cheaper as the will not have to pay licencing fees to sony and saga. By the sheer fact that the could be a high volume of cheap games very, very quickly could mean that this console will get a lot more shelf space in the games stores.

Games volume and quantity (and quality) dictate console success. Not poly-fill-rate.


A linux console anyone?

Now this is interesting.

The entirety of Microsoft's success has been based on its ability to use its Operating System monopoly to lever its way into the market until its product matures into the defacto standard.

The problem Microsoft will face is that it'll be in an entirely alien position. Sony, Sega and Nintendo are not small-fry software startups waiting to be crushed by the Microsoft juggernaut. Nor are they lumbering giants past their use-by dates. Between them they've owned the console market for about as long as MS have owned the PC market, and they don't seem to be showing too many signs of vulnerability.

Microsoft's OS monopoly will be meaningless in this market. Sure, they could stick CE on it, and make it do email and web-browsing, but in the end, a gaming console is about the games, and the OS is just the screen you get when you've got no CD/cartridge in the slot.

On the other hand, if they fix it so that their console games will also run on a Wintel PC with a 3d card and DirectX, then that'll get the developers on board pretty sharply. This is something that console manufacturers could never do, because every PC version of their game that sold would be a reason not to buy the console. But for MS, it's just moving from one of their products over to another.

So the big, and very interesting question is how Microsoft is going to adjust to being the small fish in a big pond, and what cards they're going to play to drain some of the water.

Charles

Arrrgghh! No one gets it!

I'm just gonna lose it if I hear one more post like this. For some reason, people (even some Slashdotters) are eternally blind to the real problem with Microsoft. And it sure as hell ain't marketing. Of course they're not killing people. But you have to realize the significance of Microsoft controlling computers. Computers are at the heart of our world. Everything revolves around them. They are information source, entertainment sources, gateways to communication. Computers and design are my passion. They are what I want to do with some significant part of my life. To have a single company walk up and dictate what that will look like is frightening. People hardly realize what Microsoft is trying to control -- personal computers, household appliances, cable access, internet access, press/media, games, web servers, web browsers, document management. You name it. The problem is, too many people see computers as merely and industry -- purely dollars, which is SO frustrating to me. For me, computers are a canvas. They are what I use to create artwork in many forms -- design, programming, websites. The equivalent of Windows taking over everything for me, is the equivalent of somebody telling me "you can no longer use the color red in your artwork." That's the significance. Do you really want somebody to dictate to you how to write software, how to create artwork, how to access information? I sure as hell don't. But it's apathetic people like you that are going to allow it to. Just because it's not literally life and death, doesn't mean it's not worth fighting for. Our society holds the arts at a very high value as well. - Scott
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Scott Stevenson

New spin on MS investments...

What are the chances that the cable companies are going to support this little box? Pretty high, I'd say. The console is truely the only popular and accepted form of set-top, and MS realizes this. Given their obsession with set-tops, this move was a nobrainer.

But, as the first poster said, I'll keep my computer. This doesn't look to be a killer thing hardware-wise; at least, nothing that you couldn't get for the PC. And knowing MS, this thing will run like a PC, none of the traditional advantages of a console. A thought; it might also have the advantage of a PC, the ability to run Linux.

Basically, I think that this console will be marketed on the basis of a fast connection. That's the one advantage that the other consoles don't, and can't, have. Well, that and the GeForce.

Can't see it being up to much.

I'd imagine an MS console would look like this: an X86-descendant CPU, a 3D accelerator, a swish sound card, USB, presumably all built into a single board. Peripherals (controllers, lightguns, mouse, modem etc) would be USB or similar. There would be a DVD-ROM drive on board. We already know it'll run something akin to WinCE.

But let's take a look at the only Next-Gen console currently available -- the Dreamcast. As well as upping graphic/sound/CPU performace, Sega have *innovated* in several areas.

The VMU (visual memory unit), for example, is a stroke of genius -- it's like a PS memory card, but it slots into your controller, and gives you an LCD screen which a game can use for whatever it likes (speedo, stuff the other player shouldn't see, etc).

That's clever -- but the VMU also works as a standalone mini-gameboy-type-thing, into which you load software via the Dreamcast.

That would be enough to convince me that Sega are having good ideas; but there's more -- the VMU's connector is the same shape as its socket, so you can plug two VMUs together for two-player pocket shenanigans.

That's just an example of innovation in consoles. I can imagine Sony doing similarly clever stuff with the PS2 if I could guess what, I'd be earning a whole lot more than I do now.

I really can't imagine MS doing anything that imaginative. They are doomed to imitate.
Still, the public might fall for it.... they usually seem to.
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That'll be a laugh...

Consequences of Microsoft making a game console:

• When your character dies, instead of "Game Over" the screen is the Blue Screen of Death.
• Your VCR will start accepting only Windows-compatable tapes.
• Everyone has to get MSNBC to download software updates to the console over the Vertical Blanking Interval. (This of course takes 6 straight hours of watching MSNBC.)
• TVs have to meet Windows Hardware Compatability tests and be on the Hardware Compatability List.
• All MS game consoles will have more RAM and storage than your current machine, and will have expansion ports for more (and of course the ports are all proprietary).
• One word: WebTV.
• Records your TV watching preferences and sends them back to Redmond for analysis. Microsoft buys the Nielsens.
• Games display ads for MSN, Win2k, etc. either full screen or as subtle references.
• MS would make it illegal to use Game Genies and such, and would attempt to harm/kill anyone attempting to modify the system by strobing the picture and causing seizures.
• Dramatic increase in sales of TVs and replacement parts as the tubes and projection screens suffer burn-in and wearing out of the blue phosphors from constant Blue Screens of Death.
• Apple makes a combination HDTV/VCR/game console/internet access device/satellite receiver/etc. that you only have to connect three cables to at an affordable price, and it comes it various colors to match your interior decor. It sells well in educational, computer novice, and Sega-fan markets, but everyone else blows it off as not being a serious computer.
• And of course, once it is available, someone makes an effort to port Linux, *BSD, etc. to it.

I made my attempt at humor. If you're someone famous and you liked it, drop me a note.