Microsoft Wishes it was as Agile as Sony

Microsoft's Neil Thompson^* has said that the plan to make the Xbox 360 the "home entertainment hub" has been realised. However, he's also said that Microsoft is not as agile as Sony.

In a recent interview Thompson responded to a question as to whether the ambition to make the Xbox 360 the entertaiment hub has been realised, "I think so, yes, but it's an ongoing process - we're not stopping here.."

He also continued to press the point that hardware is no longer the pointer to the future of the Xbox, "...the evolution of consoles in the future is all going to be around software and services".

In terms of the competition from Sony's PS3, and the fact that Sony has been pushing non-game aspects such as Vidzone, movies on demand, and Home, Thompson says, "In some ways I wish we were that agile."

That said, Microsoft's console appears to have a number of 'core' strengths, "...we're just focusing on what we think are our core strengths. We think gaming is a core strength of ours, we think the breadth of our entertainment offering is a real core strength. And Live, in many ways, is just our unique value proposition."

Full interview here.

^{* Senior regional director for Northern Europe at Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division}