Microsoft Building iPod and PSP Killer?

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2006/03/microsofts_plan.html' target='_blank'>http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2006/03/microsofts_plan.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"In a bid to capture the huge audience for handheld entertainment gadgets, Microsoft is designing a product that combines video games, music and video in one handheld device, according to sources familiar with the project. The Microsoft product would compete with Sony, Nintendo and Apple Computer's products, including the iPod. And Microsoft has some of its most seasoned talent from the division that created its popular Xbox 360 working on it. Game executive J Allard leads the project, and its director is Greg Gibson, who was the system designer on the Xbox 360 video game console. Bryan Lee, the finance chief on the Xbox business, is leading the business side of the project."</i><br /><br />This news has been bouncing around the 'net this past week, but I held off on posting about it to see if any further details were revealed - they weren't. Everything is pretty much vague at this point - we know that a group of Transmeta engineers were hired by Microsoft for a secret project, and when Microsoft hires hardware engineers that specialize in lowering power consumption on portable devices, you know that Microsoft is working on some hardware. <br /><br />Few people realize that Microsoft has hardware guys for many of their groups, such as Windows Mobile, but they mostly work on reference designs and try to encourage the OEM partners to come up with better designs. This case sounds different - it sounds like Microsoft is going to release a device themselves, which is very exciting. Why? Because Microsoft makes quality hardware - everything from their (now discontinued) networking products and joysticks, to their current keyboards and mice, has always been top-notch in terms of design, aesthetics, and build quality. So in many ways Microsoft understands hardware better than their partners who are supposed to be the real experts. This makes for an interesting scenario!

[Felix Torres]

The reports would be a bit more credible if they were more accurate with their headlines; MS may or not be contemplating doing an iPod-*competitor*, but it is not up to them to kill the pod.
The only person who can kill the pod is Jobs.

As for competing with the POD, at this point, Apple's economies of scale are good enough that only a subsidized-hardware business model, like AMAZON is looking at, is likely to make any significant short-term impact.

Longer term, the whole media-player category is likely to vanish (like standalone connected organizers), subsumed into some thing or things that is/are more flexible; probably cell-phones with massive onboard flash stores, cheap mini-tablets/super-pdas, or updated game players.
The hardware is all the same at the conceptual level, anyway.
The only difference is in the software.

Still, its not impossible that the Transmeta guys are helping with the backwards-compatibility of the XBOX360 since Transmeta has pretty good x86-code conversion tech inhouse that they're not getting much use out of these days.

Most realistically, I think MS is targetting the PSP size and form factor, not the Pod.

What I would like to see is a UMD-based XPAD that runs XBOX games atop some form of CE. UMD would allow for movies and if UMD burners materialize as promised, the RW version of the discs would hold recorded HDTV shows just fine...

[Brendan Goetz]

Jobs and Gates should deathmatch! Winner gets to rule the media world like Stalin!

[Felix Torres]

Jobs and Gates should deathmatch! Winner gets to rule the media world like Stalin!

To be fair, Sony should be allowed to send a rep.
But he probably would bring a soccer ball to the gunfight. :twisted:

[Jason Dunn]

To be fair, Sony should be allowed to send a rep.
But he probably would bring a soccer ball to the gunfight. :twisted:

Yeah, and it would be a soccer ball that's square, doesn't bounce, and weighs 30 pounds. And when asked about this curious "soccer ball", the Sony rep would say "Oh, this is how Sony thinks people want to play soccer!" :roll: