Bill Gates on the Xbox 360 being more than a gaming machine

We’ve already reported to you folks about Bill Gates‘ time with Mercury News, and how good ‘ol Bill Gates was doing his job of promoting the Xbox 360 in his opinion better (and it should be, it is his baby) than the the PS3. So now, we’ll take a look at his time with Engadget.

While the interview talks about everything and anything Microsoft, from the Zune, all the way to Bill’s eventual departure from the company, we’ll just focus on the Xbox 360 related things (which is pretty hard since Microsoft is trying to make them all interconnect through Live) and just leave the rest for you to discover through our read-link below.

Gates on downloadable content on the Xbox 360 and IPTV
…the content people have to take the leap of faith. With Xbox, where we’ve got pretty rich protection capability, we’ll probably get slightly more video on Xbox than on today’s PC hardware. We’re going to have the same video service on both, but the catalog might be larger where you’ve got a stronger hardware protection. We think HD-DVD is great. It’s a fantastic experience. I bought a lot of the discs, played with them. It’s neat. But over time, eventually online is going to be more important.

The full article awaits after the jump!

We’ve already reported to you folks about Bill Gates‘ time with Mercury News, and how good ‘ol Bill Gates was doing his job of promoting the Xbox 360 in his opinion better (and it should be, it is his baby) than the the PS3. So now, we’ll take a look at his time with Engadget.

While the interview talks about everything and anything Microsoft, from the Zune, all the way to Bill’s eventual departure from the company, we’ll just focus on the Xbox 360 related things (which is pretty hard since Microsoft is trying to make them all interconnect through Live) and just leave the rest for you to discover through our read-link below.

Gates on downloadable content on the Xbox 360 and IPTV
…the content people have to take the leap of faith. With Xbox, where we’ve got pretty rich protection capability, we’ll probably get slightly more video on Xbox than on today’s PC hardware. We’re going to have the same video service on both, but the catalog might be larger where you’ve got a stronger hardware protection. We think HD-DVD is great. It’s a fantastic experience. I bought a lot of the discs, played with them. It’s neat. But over time, eventually online is going to be more important.

On why they got into the Xbox in the first place
…it’s a general purpose computer. In terms of that first generation in particular where we were still known as a PC company, the need to make clear how we were prioritizing the needs of demanding gamers, that was super important. That was super important in terms of the culture of the team that was doing the work and how they thought about their marketing. But, we wouldn’t have done it if it was just a gaming device. We wouldn’t have gotten into the category at all. It was about strategically being in the living room. And this is not some big secret. Sony says the same things. During that first generation, they had more latitude to talk about it since Sony has already gotten their gaming credentials but they were not there even more than gaming.

His vision for the Xbox
For us, people sort of take it for granted — hey, you do phones, and set-tops, and IPTV and all these things so it’s easier for us now that that’s part of the message for people to say, of course Microsoft’s is going to make Messenger work on the Xbox. They’re going to let you look on your phone and see that someone beat your record on this game and schedule an Xbox gaming thing. There’s a huge milestone this year — I’m basically agreeing with what you’re saying — Xbox was a gaming device. Now you can download videos on it. I sit and watch high-def videos never touching a plastic disc. You can take all the PCs in the home and use this extender capability so you get your PC richness up on that screen, in Media Center or whatever, and we’re announcing that it’s a set-top box so if you’re somewhere that’s got IPTV now you’ve got live TV, the most state of the art experience; downloading movies, state of the art; gaming, state of the art; and projection of the full PC experience. It’s not a PC but it brings that PC into the living room. So when you talk about convergence it’s the first device that says, oh yeah, this is convergence. It’s real.

We’re now thinking that the next version of Xbox 360 will absolutely focus on convergence. Much in the same way that the Xbox 360 is currently capitalizing on the Xbox Live Network that its predecessor built. Gamerscores on our phones? We’re all for it.

Via Engadget