Is it possible that someone overheard a discussion about dropping the 3rd party royalties in making devices FOR the 360 rather than making the 360 itself? Having 3rd parties make the 360 is nuts and I can't believe there would even be consideration of this unless MS was exiting the console business. It would make sense, however, to allow 3rd parties to start making devices without having to pay huge royalties -- i.e. wireless devices. There aren't any peripherals outside of the MS ones purely because of the royalty lockdown. If MS was truly trying to get their box open to the more casual crowd, they will need more and more innovative devices/controllers/etc. to please the masses. These would be dance mats, controllers for small hands, keyboards, mice, microphones, and so on...
I hate trolls.
Systems I currently own: 360, PS3, Wii, DS Lite (2)
Systems I've owned: PS2, PS1, Dreamcast, Saturn, 3DO, Genesis, Gamecube, N64, SNES, NES, GBA, GB, C64, Amiga, Atari 2600 and 5200, Sega Game Gear, Vectrex, Intellivision, Pong. Yes, Pong.
