| Nem said: I kind of dont get it. If Microsoft is so determined to go into television why dont they just make their own channel and productions and go from there? I am not interested in some set top box or whatever they are called. The Xbox was a games machine i thought, but all we get is television this, block that, big brother is watching. I get the feeling they are in the wrong market for this. |
Microsoft has been "in" television for years. Over 23% of the set-top box market was theirs until they sold MediaRoom to Ericcson. They've been doing IPTV since 2001. Many services that provide Internet-based television/movie content delivery use Microsoft software and services to do so.
They don't want to be a "Channel", though they do have a division called coincidently enough, Channel 9. Essentially, the video production service for Microsoft. They don't want to own the content. They just want to build and provide a layer to access it. That layer being software integrated into the Xbox One.
The Xbox One is still a video game machine. Nothing added to the capabilities of the Xbox One prevent it from offering gaming services. Your smartphone (if you have one) is still a phone, but doesn't it do more than just make phone calls? Doesn't that extended feature set make it more useful? You probably aren't old enough to remember or even had a black book. Or later a Personal Data Assistant (PDA) and a mobile cell phone (aka a bag phone). Or a Pocket PC Phone which offered the capabilities of a Pocket PC, a PDA, and a cell phone. See, technology evolves to add features that are useful (sometimes some that aren't) to things we think are fine the way they are.
For most people (the majority of people) the console is in the living room, family room, or media room. A place where people congregate to do more than just play games. Enhancing the capabilities of a device, so it is used more often, increases the importance in the use and daily lives of those people. Anyone who had the opportunity to be in 77m homes would do what they can to position their device so that not only are the people who bought it for gaming using it, but the rest of the family has a use for it too.
