Comment: Maybe thinking about Virtualization (Score 1) 780
Could they possibly be thinking about making HyperV on gui-less server 8 competitive with ESX? VMWare has been eating their lunch for a good while now, and the licensing changes in 5.0 have rocked the boat a little. HyperV was a tough sell before due to, among other things, the extra resources you had to dedicate to running the host OS. If MS could slim that down, maybe they get some market share back.
2008 Server Core was/is an OK start, but there wasn't really enough you could do with it. It is great for the stuff you can do.