Microsoft Positioning Itself to be the Center of Your Media Streaming World
Well it looks like Microsoft is making a huge push to become the de facto media streaming solution in your house. Just about every time they try and break into a new market they start with a product that doesn't match up against the already existing competition in that space. But they have more money then just about anyone so they keep at it. They throw so much money at the product that after awhile, say 2 or 3 years, people just come to see it as the standard in the space. There was a time when people laughed at the
Xbox and saw the PS2 as the best console around. Microsoft actually lost billions on the first Xbox, but they knew they just had to wait and improve. Make your beachhead and don't give up. Well here we are at the end of 2007 and the new
Xbox has become the platform of choice in the States.
One thing they have concentrated on was the online presence of the device. While the
Wii went for funky control mechanics and the
PS3 went for sheer power the
Xbox made sure that its Xbox Live network was a fully robust infrastructure that was pervasive in all the games and throughout the device itself.
Well now they are pushing it even further. With the slow success of the
Zune we are seeing a similar pattern. The first
Zune was laughable, but the reviews about the newest generation has been fairly positive. You can bet that they will keep this trend up. Throw so much money at the Zune as to make it a decent competitor to the
iPod. Where the Zune sets itself apart from most other MP3 players is the WiFi aspect as well as the ability to hook into the Microsoft network. You can get Xbox live friends notes on the Zune since both devices share the same underlying technology you even share the same user name across both accounts.
The next stage for Microsoft is to start selling more content over its Live network and syncing it with the Zune. The current ability to rent movies on the Xbox is crappy at best. We saw a blog post over at the
New York Times that had parts of an interview with the chief techie behind the Zune. He alluded to a bunch of new additions to the system to add all kinds of new streaming options. It is a very interesting read and it raises a lot of good points. Can Microsoft pull off this ambitious push to be the everything for your media. If you want to download music you they want you to use their Zune network, download games - the Xbox live network, rent movies, well you get the point. They want to unify all of these networks and make the process as easy as possible for the end user.
We aren't sure if they can pull this off, heck we aren't even sure we want them to pull this off, but their attempts will bring a lot of public eye to the media streaming space and that can only be good...right? We enjoy open standards and freedom to do what we want with our media. If Microsoft becomes the one stop shop for all of your purchased media then who knows what restrictions they will put on it or how they will control it. Time will tell, but one thing is for sure, we are headed into very interesting times. Streaming media is hitting big and we thing next year will be the year where the average person starts to think seriously about media streaming products.
OK we will get off our soapbox now.
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Posted by David Ficocello at December 12, 2007 6:00 AM
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