Wait. You wanna do what?
While this is all heresay so far, it appears as though Microsoft is going to try and expand it’s XBox brand into a portable unit. From the Mercury News article:
By anchoring its entertainment device as a handheld game player, Microsoft is starting from its position of strength in the entertainment business that it hopes Apple cannot match, even with its iPod. Game industry publications, circulating rumors of this development, have dubbed it an “iPod killer,” but its functions would probably more closely resemble Sony’s PlayStation Portable multimedia gaming device, sources say.
[…]
The product might not be ready for market for at least a year, and maybe two. While details are sketchy, the pedigree of the people in charge of the business show how strategic it is to Microsoft’s future.
[…]
In an interview with Business Week in January, Xbox corporate vice president Peter Moore referred to a new product under development and said, “It can’t just be our version of the iPod.” He said the Xbox brand “is an opportunity” if Microsoft decides to enter the mobile entertainment competition.
Okay, so I can’t really fault them for taking the approach that, “Hey we have some success in the console market with the XB360 why not take it a step further and make it portable?” But I question the validity of it. If think that if your companies name isn’t Nintendo and your not selling a GameBoy, your gonna have a tough time. Take Sony for example, they tried with the PSP and have failed miserably. Not that there isn’t room for competition in this space, I just think that when you start throwing a shit-ton (metric) of features into a portable device your gonna start loosing people. The DS proves that theory time and time again.
Also, why is every multimedia device that comes out an “iPod killer”? What is going to make this XBox portable unit better then when Sony tried? PlayForSure functionality and integration with Napster? Please, if that was so then the PMC’s (Portable Media Center) would have exploded. Even if they try to be an “iPod killer” your looking at a year or two before we actually see a device. What will Apple have done in 2 years? They will have developed a true “iPod killer”, either a video iPod or one of those fancy rumored touchscreen iPods. I think at the stage of the game the only one that can “kill” the iPod is Apple.
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