Another team member, chief Xbox exec Robert J. Bach, is tapping Microsoft's growing consumer software expertise to build the next Xbox and expand its tech dominance beyond the workplace and home offices. Bach recently talked about Microsoft's consumer strategy with BusinessWeek Seattle Bureau Chief Jay Greene. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow:
Q: You've talked in the past about how success in Xbox would feed some of Microsoft's other businesses such as MSN or Windows Media Center PCs. Has that happened yet?
A: It's one of those things that's in the process of happening. You see the opportunities for integration coming. We're taking advantage of those. It takes time for that to take effect in the marketplace.
A digital lifestyle is developing that incorporates things you do online with things you do with entertainment, with things you do with gaming, with things you do with music, movies, TV. As that all comes together, Xbox is certainly going to play an important role. And that means it needs to integrate with other parts of Microsoft that are going to play an important role as well.
Q: Are there key products to look for from Microsoft?
A: You're going to see us take a paced approach to this. It's important at the foundation level for things like Media Center, MSN, Xbox to be successful in their own right. You're seeing with all three properties that their success is broadening. Then the opportunities to integrate them become more palpable.
The Extender product, which I use at home, is a great product and proves that integration can deliver great customer benefit. The number of people doing distributed video in the home today is not large now. It's increasing. It's a market for the future. But you're not going to see, and nobody should expect, huge numbers for that product. What they should see is a great customer scenario that proves that we're going to be able to deliver value over time.
