Microsoft's Plan to Be King of All Media

An anonymous reader writes "Saul Hansell from the New York Times spoke with Microsoft's J. Allard, formerly of the Xbox games division and now in charge of their push on Apple's captive audience with the Zune. Allard lays out Microsoft's media battle plan, highlighting their longterm goals for expanding beyond games and software. 'This service will at some point add more options for video and mobile phones, Mr. Allard said, without offering details. Actually, Microsoft has been quite successful selling video downloads and online movie rentals through the Xbox Live service already. This seems a bit too much like the initial plan for MSN. This new network would be the switchboard through which all entertainment content and communication flows. Pretty much everything else in the technology world now is revolving around open systems where the Internet, and some simple standards, are in the middle.'"

Re:All media?

[bigstrat2003]

They're already there. They have the #1 OS, the #1 office suite, and other apps (Visual Studio, for example) which do quite well, although they aren't the undisputed #1 like Windows and Office are. What more do you want from them before they qualify as "king of software"? Games is another story, of course. The 360 isn't king yet.

Re:Divx/ xvid support

[Ross D Anderson]

"DivX followed up Tuesday night's earnings report with a presentation at the JP Morgan SmMid cap conference. JP Morgan analyst Paul Coster coyly probed Kevin Hell about whether or not we were about to see DivX support on the Xbox 360. The question seemed to catch Hell off guard, and while his initial reaction was enthusiasm, there was something about his tone that suggested that Coster might be onto something. Here is the exchange verbatim, but in order to appreciate the awkwardness of the exchange, you should really listen to the quote at the 24 minute mark of the presentation and make your own decision as to whether or not you hear a sense of urgency in Hell's response. Coster - "Just a minor point here, but there was a recent Microsoft (MSFT) conference where I believe their media extender now incorporates the DivX codec on it, is that correct? Can you confirm that and does that mean we're soon going to see Xboxes with DivX on them? Hell - "Yes! that, uh, we're in discussions with Microsoft on that at this point in time, so I can't go into any great detail on that. Um that is not a certified, that is not a certified or licensed product at this time." At that point DivX CFO Dan Halvorson jumped in and quickly changed the subject." From Deeko.com [deeko.com]

Re:Divx/ xvid support

[CSMatt]

Which is why it was already submitted [slashdot.org] a few days ago.

as always

[Anonymous Coward]

C'mon. This is the same crowd whose icon uttered gems like these?

• "The Internet? We are not interested in it"
  -- Bill Gates, 1993
• The Internet is a passing fad and unimportant
  --Bill Gates, 1996