Microsoft quiet on Xbox 2 at CES

By Tom Bramwell Published 6 January, 2005

But Bill Gates did have time to talk about hardware and Halo 2 sales.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates used his keynote address at this year's CES trade show to announce various initiatives in music, photos, movies, television and communications, but made no mention of company's next-generation Xbox 2 platform.

Gates did touch on the Xbox's progress briefly, however, claiming "industry-leading sales for the 2004 holiday season," with a projected 40 per cent console market share for the months of November and December, and said Microsoft expected to have sold 20 million units worldwide by July 2005.

He also paid tribute to Bungie's Halo 2, which generated $125 million in revenue in its first weekend of availability in the US and Canada, Gates said, and has sold more than 6.3 million units to date - exceeding sales of the first Halo.

Halo 2 has also driven adoption of Microsoft's Xbox Live online games service - which now has more than one million unique users according to Gates - and generated 69 million hours of play to become the most popular title on the service by far.

Gates also commented on Lionhead/Big Blue Box's Fable, sales of which topped one million in two months on sale, and outlined what he sees as three major trends driving "the gaming phenomenon": HDTV, broadband and wireless connectivity, and "rich personalisation" - something he illustrated by racing against Conan O'Brien on a Manhattan track in Forza Motorsport using custom cars.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (11) Latest comment 7 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Bezzy #1 7 years ago

    You seen that bike race in City of God? I imagine each of the dudes were probably feigning politeness so hard that their feet never left the brake pedals.

  • drumbaby #2 7 years ago

    Learning the Forza control scheme?

  • ssuellid #3 7 years ago

    So if HDTV is one of the 3 major trends - were is the PAL Xbox support? Gits.

  • Lutz #4 7 years ago

    Glad to see the sale of Fable was healthy. Hopefully this will lead to a sequel.

  • #5 7 years ago

    XBOX2 will probably be called 'The Halo Game console'...

    Look at the stats... seems like that's all that gets played on it...

  • Zero Beat #6 7 years ago

    Get the registered user comments only sorted ASAP PLEASE Eurogamer.

  • Zero Beat #7 7 years ago

    No. So I can ignore you.

  • Whizzo #8 7 years ago

    Click on edit profile, click tickbox for "Please check here if you would like to ignore unregistered users.", non-registered posters disappear.

    Not that I'd recommend it, some non-registered people actually talk sense at times.

  • Zero Beat #9 7 years ago

    Exactly.

  • Kami #10 7 years ago

    Not that I'd want to agree, But Trigger Cut isn't too wrong. Both titles fell short of the hype - not that they were BAD, far from it, but just overhyped and failed to deliver on the promises made.

    Of course, Fable and Halo 2 were the more high-profile titles on the X-Box this year, so it doesn't surprise me that Gates focused on them. And theres no doubt both titles were going to sell pretty well. I'd love to see a Fable sequel - sales were clearly good enough to warrant that. Halo3 is a guaranteed I feel, and as sad as it sounds and as disappointed as I was with Halo 2 - I still would like to see Halo 3.

    But I want to see more of X-Box 2. I want to see some launch titles in full swing. Meh, who knows, E3 may be the best place to do that...

  • Zero Beat #11 7 years ago

    Hype may well affect some people's opinions of a finished game but I've experimented with following every detail released on some games and ignoring others until they're released. It doesn't make a blind bit of difference to me.

    The only proper article I read about Fable until release reviews was the first look OXM did years ago. I imported the game after watching some finished game videos in which the atmosphere and combat caught my attention. The game still disappointed me, playing like a tarted up single player Phantasy Star Online with combat that feels like it's emulating but fails to come close to the melee combat in 3D Zelda.

    Halo 2 is brilliant, I don't like some of the level design yet again and the waves of enemies seem like another poor design decision but it's still on the whole excellent.

    Trigger Cut's just trying to piss people off however.

  • #12 7 years ago

    billy boy was going to mention the xbox 2 but he was to busy staring through the windows (must sort out xp more updates must please the customers more cash needed! hmmm cash.20 planes is not enough!