Gates Confirms Xbox 360 Media Hub

First a note to Elysium, dude don't judge Spong against the yank media outlets you might otherwise indulge in. You might not agree and a lot of us might not meet eye to eye (it would be boring if we did all the time) but we respect your opinion.

This whole convergence biz sounds nice in practice and to be honest I'd rather pitch my flag in Sony's camp than MS. Why you ask? Because one the best things I like about the games industry is that it's one of the few remaining industries where western powers do not rule and to be honest be it Sony or Nintendo I'd like it to stay that way for the very sake of gaming as a whole. The other thing MS haven't told you is that all their stuff will no doubt come with their damn DRM tech tied into it all (which could spell bad news for many).

I'm not anti american before all you yanks start getting on the high horse. I just think that in a world where America sneezes and the rest of us feel the whirlwind and catch a cold it's nice that a small nation like japan does well in the face of such huge competition. This is the reason I did not want MS in the games market in the first place, because sometimes small is beautiful. I also like the cultural exchange that I get through gaming and very little of it comes from america and I'm glad for that (Hollywood already does enough of that).

Sure, Xbox has done well with Live and that's good but the experience was already there with PC gaming and only needed to be bended and twisted to suit Xbox, in that MS have done well. From Sony's point of view this could have been harder because though Sony have some online PC games the online gaming in japan isn't that big as say South Korea. Broadband uptake in japan might also be less too though this may be changing still. Sony will be raising their PS3 online game next gen especially with Nintendo enteriing the online arena. That next online round will prove interesting as we are hearing all MS online plans but no one elses (except Nintendo's recnetly), which in no way means there are none in the works.

I grow tired of so much coming out of America but them accepting little from the rest of the world because to them we only exist to fill their pockets and dnace to their beat. It's not about hating america but rather about making them see what everyone else can and they can't. This very fact of not understanding others is why Xbox bombed in japan and while Xbox may or may not have been a baby step in their larger agenda, Xbox should have done so much better there. Perhaps it did not because as I once said before the very fact that japanese want the yanks out of their country might have played a vital part in japanese Xbox apathy. MS were totally thinking selfishly of the u.s audience and their pockets when they designed Xbox. The fact of the things size says it all.

While they are being honest about their media hub intentions MS are still gonna lock things up in DRM so you can't use your mp3s (even if you create them yourself) unless you buy them, play your rom collection or heaven forbid try to mod your Xbox. That sucks eggs. If Sony do the same kind of thing they'll more likely do it without stealing your soul too or killing games and most likely give you more freedom.

Now where's that pinch of salt.

Well, you can't blame the US for acting like a former superpower trying to hold on to it's golden years... becasue well that's what the bloody country is.
here in Europe we needed 2 World Wars and a direct treat to our democratic system to get the message. Maybe someone has to crash another couple of planes at the Pentagon to get the yanks the message. End US rant here...sorry about that.

the internet and multi-media should be a very decentralized something thats centralized at the same time. At the center you have a PC-like something of brand x, connected to it is a HDTV of brand y, your browser is of brand z, your mp3-player is one from win-amp and so forth.
Any company that tries to go against it will fail eventually, why do you think MS moves to the console scheme, they're slowly loosing their grip on the PC-market.
And everyone with a few meters of wires and some 3d party software (and a solid TV-card installed) can make thier PC into a media center how it's supposed to be... complete freedom in all its illegalness (stealing music isn't stealing actually, it's not like all those artist are out of a living... by illegal downloading you put the music artist back where he belongs: on the stage. record sales are a very very recent phenomenon if you take the whole history music in thought)