What will Bill say?
11:23 PM, January 5, 2007
This coming Sunday at 6:30 pm in Las Vegas, Bill Gates will deliver the pre-show keynote speech at the annual Consumer Electronics Show. Last year, he unveiled the external HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360 during his oration.
So let's guess what Xbox rumors he's going to finally fulfill or debunk this time around.
*The biggest rumor currently floating on the fetid winds of the Internet is that an updated 360 with a built-in HDMI port and a 120 gigabyte hard drive is on its way. That sounds reasonable, and the larger drive is long overdue. There's also some thought that the new console might include a built-in HD-DVD drive, as well, for HD-DVD movie playback. That one seems doubtful, though. I think Microsoft is a lot more excited about digital delivery -- downloading movies and shows through Xbox Live -- than it is about fighting another stupid format war.
*If the updated 360 is unveiled, I'm guessing it means the welcome death of the Core system. That hard drive-less abomination will likely slip into oblivion, while the current premium system slips down to the $299 price point and the updated console -- supposedly code-named Zephyr -- glides into the $399 slot.
*Speaking of digital delivery, here's hoping Microsoft is ready to announce that tons of new content -- particularly HD content -- is coming to the video download service. It's a technology whose time has come, and Microsoft could really take the lead in designing the future of digital entertainment.
*Expect Bill to also announce that Microsoft has in fact hit the 10 million 360s sold threshold. That was Microsoft's biggest goal for the system by the end of 2006, and I'm sure everyone on the Xbox team was given one of those "failure is not an option" lectures.
Those are my predictions. I'll check back in after the speech.
Victor update: Well, how'd I do? Not so well.
You can read the official Microsoft press release here of all the new junk that Gates announced.
But the relevant Xbox stuff is that, yes, they did surpass 10 million 360s sold in 2006 (10.4 million, to be exact).
Unfortunately, there was no news of a larger hard drive or an HDMI-equipped 360, but Gates did announce an upcoming Internet protocol television (IPTV) service for the 360, which will let users watch and record TV on their consoles. While there will be some additional interactive services, it seems like the basic idea is that your 360 will be able to do everything that your TiVo can do, as well as play games.
There are still a lot of questions about the IPTV service (what regions it will be available in, how much it will cost, whether current 360 owners will need to buy new hardware or whether a software update will be enough), but I'm guessing that once this service is launched sometime before Christmas 2007, Microsoft will be releasing the larger hard drive, HDMI console and so forth.
Personally, I think the IPTV service is a little underwhelming, and I would have been a lot more excited to see a bunch more high-def TV shows and movies coming to the Xbox Live video download store. Gates did announce that movie studio Lions Gate will start offering its content on the store, but I was hoping for a lot more.
Fellow bloggers, any thoughts?
