Microsoft: Xbox will see music and movies on demand
Peter Moore reveals convergence dream.
Watching...
The Xbox was launched as a gaming console, with the promise that, aside from DVD functionality, it was not a Trojan media hub to enable Microsoft, having already completed its founder’s dream of having a computer on every desk in every home and office, to do the same in the living room.
Of course, this was not the case. The media hub theory was posited as soon as the Xbox project was announced, and slowly but surely, the firm has been paving the way to announce full-blown 'media on demand' roll-out.
And speaking at X03, former Sega executive Peter Moore gave the clearest indication that this is likely to happen during this generation of Xbox hardware.
“Some people call it convergence, and they've been predicting its arrival for a long, long time,” said Moore. “They've been on the lookout for the big infrastructure technology like cable, or fibre, or wireless. There's like five hundred channels of TV, video on demand. The big deal, like AOL and Time Warner, or Microsoft and Comcast. People have been waiting for the killer application, the next big thing, the revolution that signals the coming of convergence in technology and entertainment. But meanwhile, in our opinion, convergence has quietly, simply happened.”
He continues, “The video game industry is all about digital lifestyle, and today's gamers have embraced that lifestyle big time. They are the digital hardcore, make no mistake about that. After all, video games were the original form of digital entertainment. It took CDs and MP3 format for music to go digital. DVD is the consumer standard for movie watching. It's still less than a decade old even now. But videogames have always been digital. And though some of us may be too young to remember, video games were around even before the personal computer. Our industry has been part of the digital entertainment lifestyle from the beginning. And now that lifestyle has grown up, and out, and all around us.”
Now get ready for this: “Xbox was designed and built for that lifestyle.”
Moore has essentially confirmed that the Xbox is more than a games machine. It has been a long time coming and Microsoft has been quietly chipping away at its launch pledges for some time. But this is without question the clearest indication of what is to come, what Xbox truly is, in the purest sense.
Moore compounds the revelation: “Because remember, the digital entertainment lifestyle is all about convergence. We added more connections to the digital entertainment lifestyle.”
It’s here, folks. We’ll let Peter Moore finish. "But as always, we have two choices. There's business as usual, with the incremental road, and the risk of suffering from the traditional boom and bust cycles with generations superseding each other. Or there's the opportunity for explosive and sustained growth, the opportunity to make interactive entertainment pervasive, of the order of music, movies and TV. At Microsoft we've made our choice. We're expanding our audience. We're expanding the definition of video game entertainment through continuous innovation.”
And there you have it. Microsoft, for the most incredible chameleonic and evolving standpoint ever seen, take a bow, as we prepare to sate all of our digital entertainment needs through Xbox Live.
Of course, this was not the case. The media hub theory was posited as soon as the Xbox project was announced, and slowly but surely, the firm has been paving the way to announce full-blown 'media on demand' roll-out.
And speaking at X03, former Sega executive Peter Moore gave the clearest indication that this is likely to happen during this generation of Xbox hardware.
“Some people call it convergence, and they've been predicting its arrival for a long, long time,” said Moore. “They've been on the lookout for the big infrastructure technology like cable, or fibre, or wireless. There's like five hundred channels of TV, video on demand. The big deal, like AOL and Time Warner, or Microsoft and Comcast. People have been waiting for the killer application, the next big thing, the revolution that signals the coming of convergence in technology and entertainment. But meanwhile, in our opinion, convergence has quietly, simply happened.”
He continues, “The video game industry is all about digital lifestyle, and today's gamers have embraced that lifestyle big time. They are the digital hardcore, make no mistake about that. After all, video games were the original form of digital entertainment. It took CDs and MP3 format for music to go digital. DVD is the consumer standard for movie watching. It's still less than a decade old even now. But videogames have always been digital. And though some of us may be too young to remember, video games were around even before the personal computer. Our industry has been part of the digital entertainment lifestyle from the beginning. And now that lifestyle has grown up, and out, and all around us.”
Now get ready for this: “Xbox was designed and built for that lifestyle.”
Moore has essentially confirmed that the Xbox is more than a games machine. It has been a long time coming and Microsoft has been quietly chipping away at its launch pledges for some time. But this is without question the clearest indication of what is to come, what Xbox truly is, in the purest sense.
Moore compounds the revelation: “Because remember, the digital entertainment lifestyle is all about convergence. We added more connections to the digital entertainment lifestyle.”
It’s here, folks. We’ll let Peter Moore finish. "But as always, we have two choices. There's business as usual, with the incremental road, and the risk of suffering from the traditional boom and bust cycles with generations superseding each other. Or there's the opportunity for explosive and sustained growth, the opportunity to make interactive entertainment pervasive, of the order of music, movies and TV. At Microsoft we've made our choice. We're expanding our audience. We're expanding the definition of video game entertainment through continuous innovation.”
And there you have it. Microsoft, for the most incredible chameleonic and evolving standpoint ever seen, take a bow, as we prepare to sate all of our digital entertainment needs through Xbox Live.
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