Jeremy Charette
11-22-2005, 09:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.latimes.com/business/custom/cotown/la-xboxwirestory,1,6173661.story?coll=la-headlines-business-enter' target='_blank'>http://www.latimes.com/business/custom/cotown/la-xboxwirestory,1,6173661.story?coll=la-headlines-business-enter</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Gates said he's also expecting a new Xbox service called Microsoft Points, which lets people pre-pay for things like virtual armor or other game-related items, to eventually work with Windows Live, so people could use a single account to pay for offerings there, too. "The PC and the Xbox are very complementary," Gates told The Associated Press. Windows Live is Microsoft's newly launched effort to better compete with free, advertising-financed Web services like e-mail and search technology from competitors led by Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. Analyst Rob Enderle said the move to more closely link Xbox Live with Windows Live intends to bolster loyalty to Microsoft products. Microsoft "can tie that stuff together so that you as a customer become wedded to the Microsoft platform for everything you do," he said."</i><br /><br /> <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/790007b.jpg" /> <br /><br />This is the key motivation for Microsoft: to make money. With the Xbox 360 they have come up with a variety of ways to make money with a continous and renewable revenue stream. This is crucial, since the consoles themselves are a losing proposition. This may be one of the many competitive tools Microsoft needs to distance itself from Sony in the next-generation console wars.