Microsoft sees Nintendo as its main rival, has Sony already in the bag

[happydolphin]

RolStoppable said:

happydolphin said:

The thing is, it's not a video game system. It's clearly an entertainment system. It's an all-in-one box. It's going to be marketted like that and its feature-set and provided content define it that way.

Though I agree that people wouldn't want to pay twice to use netflix (I know I don't), they may want to pay to get advanced interactive features for their TV subscription, provider content, online features and many other all-in-one content that are part of the xbox live subscription. If you isolate one application, of course it doesn't make sense to pay for. But if you put it all together, if you have live then might as well enjoy all the features.

Lastly, turning your tv into a sort of ipad experience is in and of itself a selling point, out of the box, for non-gamers.

The only market that may be less interested in this are the gamers, but they are a more niche market either way.

Really? Most TV is about shutting your brain off, so it's hard to imagine that there is a big audience who would like it to be more than that.

I think so, Rol. Traditionally TVs are about shutting your brain off, but more and more we're entering a multi-connected era where you can do everything at any moment at the click of a button while combining different source of content (dual-monitors, multiple devices, multiple apps, multiple services). People want to be in control of their content more and more and the iPad is an example of that need being addressed. At the touch of a finger you can open, close, move flip, stretch, drag without effort and without delay and I believe that's really desired in our uber-technological society. The apple TV tried doing that but it is not nearly the same experience as what we saw in Microsoft's presentation. You can almost control your windows like a windows system by using gestures, that's big. With almost minimal cost they are going to pull this off I believe it will be very attractive.

In contrast, back in 2008 they showcased a device called the Microsoft Surface (before the 2012 "Surface"). It was planned to cost some 2000$ or something like that I'm not sure anymore. The thing is that they can now achieve that to a degree with Kinect, which is really impressive.