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Microsoft Employee Blogs on Xbox 360 with HDMI Port
>> I think those guys at Microsoft's Xbox division really don't have enough work lately (just kidding ;)) ... another 'Xbox blog' has been launched, this time by Andre Vrignaud (alias/gamertag Ozymandias), he's Microsoft's Director of Technical Strategy for Xbox Live. As always this is no "official" Microsoft blog, these are his personal opinions and they shouldn't be taken as Microsoft's per se.
Anyway ... he talked about our leaked picture of the Xbox360 motherboard with HDMI port:
[QUOTE]
Engadget ran a rumor a few days ago about the possibility of the Xbox 360 getting an HDMI port. I don't know anything about this (and couldn't share if I did), but I did want to share some thoughts about what I think Microsoft should do if this were the case.
I may be showing my age here, but I remember back in the 90's when Intel had a floating point bug in the Pentium processor. I won't go into all the details, but the gist of the problem was that in some rare cases, the processor would return a slightly off value. Most independent evaluations of the bug said that it wouldn't affect users in the slightest, and Intel offered to replace the processor to those users who could prove it affected them (but not all users). This quickly turned into a PR nightmare as consumers clamored for a general replacement policy. I recall talking to some of the marketing folks who were at Intel at the time, and they talked about how adamant Andy Grove was about not replacing the processors. He was approaching it from an engineer's perspective, and as he saw it, if the users couldn't even see the bug in their daily use it was an unneccessary cost to go and replace them.
External pressure from consumers grew, and the marketing and PR teams starting having almost daily meetings with Andy to explain to him that in spite of it being not logical, people felt very passionately about the issue and that the negative press was piling up. In the end he capitulated and agreed to replace all flawed processors at what could have been significant cost. What actually happened was that very few people took Intel up on the offer, consumers felt as though Intel had listened, and the day the announcement was made the stock actually rose.
I personally see a possible HDMI port for the 360 as being a similar issue to Microsoft. Other than taking away one of Sony's few differentiating factors, it's not really going to do much for existing gamers. A few will want it to use it to connect to their HDTV, and some will want it to playback HD-DVDs that might enable the image-constraint token in the distant future. For those few, my opinion is that Microsoft should offer some sort of upgrade program - even if it's one where you pay some reasonable amount for the upgrade. I doubt many people would actually take the company up on it, but the goodwill would be significant, and our core users (that's probably you!) wouldn't felt left out in the cold.
This is obviously all my personal opinion, and I don't even know if Microsoft will need to consider these issues in the future. But the whole scenario just seemed so eerily similar to the Intel floating-point bug issue that I thought I'd share. Enough deep thoughts for today. :)
[/QUOTE]
Original news about the Xbox360 motherboard with HDMI: www.xbox-scene.com
Ozymandias' Blog: http://www.ozymandias.com
Discuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com
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