CES: Gates keynote News
PC Xbox 360 News by Patrick Garratt
Microsoft uber-king Bill Gates delivered a CES keynote in Las Vegas this morning that kept gaming at its core and showed an extended vision for connectivity between Xbox 360 and Windows Vista.
Making several announcements - including an IPTV service for Xbox 360 and Live play between Vista and 360, both of which will be made available this year - Gates and Microsoft's entertainment head, Robbie Bach, delivered yet another compelling update to the corporation's involvement in gaming.
Gates in your face
After queuing for over two hours to get a seat at the speech, attendees were greeted with an intro movie, during which Gears of War was shown prominently, as was a group of "youths" using the Xbox 360 DVD remote.
Some of Gates' speech was performed in semaphore.
Gates came on to a storm of camera flash, the scene suddenly reminiscent of the chaos everyone in the room endured to get through the door. Sweeping platitudes and reams of figures about the success of the PC and Windows finally gave way to a hands-on with Vista, which launches on 30th January.
A Vista feature called Windows Live became the first application to hint at the way games have been integrated into the new version of the OS. Using the Xbox 360 controller, we were flown around Las Vegas on a fully 3D modelled map reached using Windows Live through a link for the Hotel Bellagio in the new version of Word. The controller can be plugged into any Vista PC to play any Vista game, apparently.
A few video desktops and digital photo applications later, the next mention of gaming was in conjunction with HP MediaSmart Server, a home data networking system. Literally a mention. It hooks up to Zune as well. Like, cool.
Bach to the future
Then Gates brought out Robbie Bach, president of the entertainment devices division and perennial favourite of 360-lovers. Mobile, music and games are his bag, said Bill. Bach blasted on about Zune and mobile phones, finally arrived at gaming. He started with Games for Windows, saying Vista "will revitalise gaming for" the platform. He reckoned 200 million people per month play games on Windows.
10.4 million units ought to keep him in a job.
"One of the cool things about Games for Windows is that, while it's for hardcore gamers, it's for casual gamers too," he said. He showed a video to prove it.
AOE III The Warchiefs, Supreme Commander, Shadowrun, Alan Wake, Spinworld, Luxor 2, Bioshock, Flight Simulator X, Bliss Island, a new Train Simulator, The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, World in Conflict, Hellgate: London, Company of Heroes, a PC version of Geometry Wars, Lego Star Wars 2, Halo 2, Age of Conan - Hyborian Adventures and Crysis all got an airing. None too shabby.
Then the meat. Bach spat the words: 10.4 million consoles sold worldwide by December 31, 2006, he said, the machine now sporting 160 titles in 37 countries. Hitting the 10 million mark before the end of 2006, as they said they would, is big news, and he certainly knows it.
"We're setting records every step of the way for a console at this stage of its lifecycle," he said. And with over 2.7 million copies of Gears of War sold, "That title is now a Halo-like franchise," he added, claiming more than 300 titles will be available for the machine before the end of 2007.
Moving onto Xbox Live, Bach claimed the service now has 5 million members, and that it's the most popular network service on TV.
Living the dream
He demonstrated Live on Windows. That's "Live on Windows". A nice lady called Lisa turned up and played a game of UNO with an Xbox 360 controller on a Vista-running laptop.
"It's drop dead simple," she said.
Live looks pretty much the same on Vista as it does on 360. We saw a Friends list, and Lisa found a guy called Albert playing Geometry Wars on Xbox 360 (he's sitting in a "lounge" on the stage). Live will hit Vista this summer, says Bach.
There was more, specifically the HD-DVD add-on drive and Xbox Live video. He pushed Media Center and how it can link to Xbox 360, and showed slides of partners offering downloadable video for Live video. Lisa demoed it using the DVD remote, downloading Superman Returns in high definition.
They showed IPTV running on a 360. "This is going to be the next generation of channel surfing," said Albert, and showed browsing through hundreds of channels. He took on a gaming invite for Gears of War while watching TV, and pointed out that he can chat to his friend through his headset while they both watch TV. Any way you look at it, that's pretty cool.
"This is everything I want," said Albert. "It's all in one box. It's all on Xbox 360."
IPTV will launch on Xbox 360 "Holiday 2007".
Gates came back out, but before anyone can stop him, he's off about cars and futuristic homes. He demoed voice and touch-screen technology in a kitchen. He shows off live mobile stuff standing next to a dummy bus stop.
"Because I'm so used to bus stops," he smiles. There's a low chuckle. Night, Bill.
Hasta la Vist… sorry, that's unfair
Microsoft looked brutally confident at CES tonight, and those Vista and 360 announcements should be genuinely exciting for gamers. Also highly significant is the 10.4 million sales figure Bach bounced around the stage, and in terms of gaming, it's doubtful anyone will be talking about much else at CES over the next three days.
All eyes now will turn to the Vista launch for both business and home users and gamers in general, and we should get a much better look at the new Windows this week. Lucky us, huh?
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Wasn't that along the lines of
- When Sony says "sold" they mean produced - When Microsoft says "sold" they mean sold to retailers - When Nintendo says "sold" they mean sold to consumers ? All in all, you're better of only trusting more or less independent third parties for such figures.
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most recently on 08/01/07 @ 09:01
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vgcharts.org is pretty nice, too.
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most recently on 08/01/07 @ 09:07
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richardiox
08/01/07 @ 09:12
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So no mention of the rumoured "Zephyr" Xbox Mark II? I take it no announcement pretty much means that if it is real then we wont see it until second half of 2007.
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MaskedDave
08/01/07 @ 09:24
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Er... surely the retailers have to *buy* the console from Microsoft? So why does it matter if they might not have all gone to customers? They've already got the money, which is the whole point.
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Yes, retailers buy consoles from Microsoft. But they will stop doing so if consumers don't take them off their hands. Also, the "installed base" that is so crucial to possible developers is those consoles sold to consumers, not retailers. That's why it's also interesting to know how many consoles are actually in a living room somewhere.
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"Yes, retailers buy consoles from Microsoft. But they will stop doing so if consumers don't take them off their hands."
So how many 360s do you reckon are "sitting on shelves"? Do you think retailers are just enjoying having all that captial tied up, or are you willing to admit the lag between being bought by a retailer and bought by a customer isn't more than a week or so? |
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asphaltcowboy
08/01/07 @ 09:46
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Cos they are probably already about to release GeOW lunchboxes, cereals, pyjamas ... ;)
I'd buy them! anyway, great news for MS and nice to see someone actually hitting a challenging target for a change! |
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So how many 360s do you reckon are "sitting on shelves"? Do you think retailers are just enjoying having all that captial tied up, or are you willing to admit the lag between being bought by a retailer and bought by a customer isn't more than a week or so?
How would I know (or you for that matter)? If you take the mean between vgcharts and nexgenwars and substract it from MS figures, that would be 1,5 mil. on shelves worldwide. I'm not "admitting", as I'm not arguing. Don't feel threatened. :) |
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"How would I know (or you for that matter)? "
Well you're the one setting yourself up as some kind of retail guru. "If you take the mean between vgcharts and nexgenwars and substract it from MS figures, that would be 1,5 mil. on shelves worldwide. " That's really really unscientific though, and it'd mean either retailers absolutely suck at JIT or the 360 is selling 1.5 m consoles every two weeks, right? |
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Well you're the one setting yourself up as some kind of retail guru.
Wow. How did I do that? That's really really unscientific though, and it'd mean either retailers absolutely suck at JIT or the 360 is selling 1.5 m consoles every two weeks, right? JIT is more of a manufacturer thing, as a retailer can't really know when / if someone walks into the store to buy something. And Microsoft only dreams of 1.5 mil consoles every two weeks. :) |
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I've changed my mind about MS a little bit... windows isn't too bad... BUT the EU or another trading regulator needs to stop them pushing the whole link the xbox to your pc thing and your pc to your telly and your xbox to your dvd players and your kettle to your pc thing. Its not fair competition, and in the long run its not good for any of us.
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@Garulon
My point there was that the parent company of a console will usually quote a figure that looks most favourable, the intention is to make your console look like a hot item (duh, that's why I said "All in all, you're better of only trusting more or less independent third parties for such figures. "). The whole Sony "shipped" numbers where around the news, as well as the Nintendo and the Microsoft habit, that is not something I as a "guru" know. |
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superdelphinus
08/01/07 @ 10:26
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Whatever you think of them i reckon Microsoft really look like they are nailing stuff at the moment. Still not convinced it's going to be this generation cycle where everyone buys into the cross platform networking stuff though
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"My point there was that the parent company of a console will usually quote a figure that looks most favourable"
Well their most favourable figure is the number of 360s they've shipped to their main distribution centres, like Sony's figure, but they didn't use that. I think Microsoft here are trying to give the most accurate figure they actually have visibility on, and one which pretty much reflects reality (give or take a lag of a few weeks). BTW if you're right about Ninty how on EARTH do Ninty know each retailer's sell-through figures? NPD take WEEKS to figure that out and N were bragging on a million sold back in early Dec. |
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*clap clap clap*
One year ago, I would have never thought of getting a 360. The console didn't have anything really that interesting for me... and all in all the only thing that looked like it could interest me in this "next gen" was the then unnamed and unknown Nintendo Revolution. Personally, I thought gaming for gamers was almost dead. The 360 proved me wrong on a lot of fronts, and managed to become a very interesting palatform with a lot of great games both for hardcore gamers and non hardcore gamers... and selling a ton of machines in the meantime (and, yes, "sold" for a producer means sold to retailers). So, good work M$oft. |
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rhinoxious
08/01/07 @ 10:48
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"JIT is more of a manufacturer thing, as a retailer can't really know when / if someone walks into the store to buy something."
True, but large retailers like GAME can estimate very precisely how much stock they will need over a given period (launch craziness aside of course). The stock rooms of most GAME stores are very small and having a lot of a extra consoles about just wouldn't be possible in many branches.
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most recently on 08/01/07 @ 10:52
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SeesThroughAll
08/01/07 @ 10:51
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Having used a number of Sony programs, they are well designed, work well and do a grand job.
Sony rips off Open Source software (i.e., uses source code often without giving due credit). Even the OS that runs on most of their appliances is usually based on FreeBSD. |
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"Whats this IPTV thing all about then, do you have to pa a subscription, what can you download, is it an alternative to Sky+, needs more info and less irrelevant arguments! "
IPTV is basically telly over yer broadband network. You need something like a 5MB+ broadband connection for it (and way more for HD), but it allows personalised two-way content - for example, you could tailor a news channel to show the stories you're more interested in rather than wading through the whole thing. It's good, but we're going to need much thicker broadband pipes before it takes over Sky or Freeview. |
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GingerNathan
08/01/07 @ 11:26
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Looking at the reported figures from all regions I very much doubt they've sold ten million yet, in terms of consoles in the hands of customers which is important as shops will only stock a certain amount thus if Microsoft start to ship more then demand then you get bottle necking of stock. I don't know about any of you but I haven't seen any Xbox360 Sold Out signs for a long time. :/
But to be fair it doesn't really matter whether Microsoft have sold Eight million, ten million, or twenty million, only time will tell how much of an achievement that was. If in two years time Microsoft are spanking Sony and Nintendo in terms of hardware sales then the decision to launch early was critical in amassing a head start on their competition. If however the reverse of that happens Microsoft will be slated for rushing into the market too soon, and criticised for not capitalising on twelve months without any next gen competition. For now I'm working off the rough values that Microsoft have shipped ten mil. Nintendo have shipped four mil wii's, and Sony have shipped somewhere along the lines of two million PS3's. With only the Wii that's really sold out, whereas the other two you can find easily (except Europe of course - cheers Sony). |
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I don't get why people are trying to call foul over this 10 million sold/shipped malarky. Microsoft know they would get called on bullshit by any number of agencies that work out the numbers worldwide, so there's nothing to be gained from outright lying.
If they've shipped 10 million to retailers then there's no reason to doubt that well over 90% of those will have sold on to customers by now. Like someone else said, there are more interesting things from this keynote to talk about than debating sales figures... |
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wonka wrote: In the back of my mind i'm secretly hoping Sony are developing an operating system.
That put shivers up my spine... can you imagine a more concentrated source of pure evil? *gnnnh* They could use your webcam to check that you were not violating any digital rights at the other side of the room... /back on topic Have they mentioned whether all the current Media center to 360 functionality will be available on vista? It seems logical that they would do this, but is seemed strange that they mentioned media center seperately to vista in that presentation. |
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chupachups
08/01/07 @ 12:00
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"PSP figures are pretty nice too - especially for a first effort into the market. So why is everyone going on about how "PSP is t3h d00m3d!!!111!!"?"
Because Sony and various tech journalists hyped it up so much that people expected it to be an instant market-dominating runaway success like the PS1 and PS2. If you believed the hype, the reality seemed a let-down: the PSP was outsold by the DS, which many of the same journalists had described as a clunky ugly white elephant with pathetic outdated graphics and a novelty control system. Sony's image problems are at least half their own making, they hype things up so much that when they don't reach their impossible goals it seems like a total failure. They really need to rein in their PR people, stop building up people's expectations on things they know they don't have the ability to deliver. |
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"For now I'm working off the rough values that Microsoft have shipped ten mil. Nintendo have shipped four mil wii's, and Sony have shipped somewhere along the lines of two million PS3's. "
Sony have announced 1m PS3s in NA; working on Japan's data it looks like they've sold something like 400,000 in Japan (optimistically) - this puts the PS3 pretty much neck-and-neck with the 360 which sold 1.5m worldwide by January. I very, _very_ much doubt Wii has sold beyond 2m yet. Anyone got N numbers? |
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Uh this sold to retailer, sold to customers nonsense is dull and reeks of fanboy insecurity.
Business don't buy in stock that isn't going to sell, read the opening chapter in any business or economics literature, it will probably be called "supply and demand". Units solds to retailers are as good as sold to customers, can we stop this now? I thought bill recently retired and gave billions of $$ to charity or was that one of my wierd dreams. |
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