This is Microsoft's MO, copy, make a competing product, crush the original producer and own the market. Or if the competition is willing, just buy them out, they are very aggressive that way. MS is a sales oriented company, Steve Ballmer is a salesman, not an innovator.
Companies like Apple, Google even our Ninty, value innovation because they want to make better things and expand into new markets. Microsoft don't have this innovation culture, so they copy or buy.
MS Office - MS copied Lotus 123, made it better and owned the market, MS Excel is a copy of VisiCalc. Windows 95, finally they made it better than Mac OS (7 i think) and cheaper too, Bill Gates borrowed a Mac from Steve Jobs by telling him they are making software for Apple OS, copied everything they could and made Win95, the Steve Jobs then was so full of himself, he didn't pull his head out of his ass. Even DOS, they wanted to buy CP/M but that guy refused to sell, so they ripped him off by writing an identical program, this is to compete with IBM, they beat IBM at their own game, MS dominated computers back then due to this. I'm randomly spewing this stuff out lol :p
MS tried to copy RIM (blackberry), Palm and other smart phones, I say copy here because, MS didn't create this market, other companies did, they made Windows Mobile and wanted to dominate that market, I tink they did at one point, but FFS, Apple went and made iPhone, and MS is once again trying to copy the way iPhone works. Windows Mobile looked or worked nothing like iPhone, look at the latest versions, they are totally trying to copy.
Zune, 5 years late, tried to catch up, had about identical specs at one point, then iPhone happened, MS just didn't even think to go that route of combining phones and MP3/Media player. These people are not innovators, it is not their company culture. Actually I think Zune is a cool product, but you see, this MS, they have Windows Mobile division and Zune division, but it never occurred to them for some reason to merge these devices, are they too poor to do R&D? jeeze ...
For consoles, all I know is MS wanted a presence in living rooms, and gaming was becoming a huge market, so they jumped into the fray. U'all know this part. So after motion controllers were made popular by Ninty, they saw 3DV Systems's demo of controller free gaming in a gaming expo (I forgot which), they went and bought 3DV Systems and started Project Natal eventually, to do what? Take the casual market, a market another company created, see the pattern?
Ok that was very messy :p
Checkout history of modern computers as we know them, these 2 documentaries are very interesting:
Triumph of the nerds (1996)
http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Nerds-Bob-Cringely/dp/B00006FXQO/ref=pd_cp_d_1_img
Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)
http://www.amazon.com/Pirates-Silicon-Valley-Anthony-Michael/dp/B0009NSCS0/ref=pd_bxgy_d_img_c
