Software And TV
Software and TV
Well, let's now talk about TV. As I said, TV is, of course, a big activity and one that we see software really surprising people with what it can do. The best realization of this is when we have software working on your behalf, creating an individualized video feed to you, to the screen that you're watching.
So what does that mean? That means that the ads can be targeted to you based on the things that you're interested in, and so therefore far more relevant, far more impactful, something that you won't want to skip over as much as one that wouldn't mean anything to you. It means that as you get into a new show, the subjects you care a lot about, you can get more in depth information about those, the subjects you're not interested in you can either easily skip over those or actually have it in advance understand that you don't really care about some sports and you care a lot about others. You might have a ski resort you'd like to see the weather of every time you sit down for your nightly news that you're seeing whenever you want and when you're particularly rushed you just say that and it will condense things, just pick the highlights that are the most important there.
This platform will lead to creativity in doing shows of all types: learning shows, game shows, sport shows with extra information, multiple views.
It's important to note that it completely blows open any of the limitations that channels used to create. We talk about tail video, things like a physics lecture or a high school sports game that never would have made it into that broadcast world now can be sourced in and if it's something you're interested in easy for you to navigate and find. And that's one seamless experience, not your normal TV here and your Internet TV over there, taking that remote control and having that just work that way.
So interactivity, choice, personalization are all things that never were possible before we had this platform.
Now, where are we on this? Well, last year was the year that we did trials, very successful trials, and this is the year that the lead customers - AT&T, Verizon - are rolling out in commercial deployment. Over the course of this year these deployments will really scale up into very large numbers, and that's when you'll really start to see the innovation come in, and people recognize that it blows away the previous video platform, and allows for an opportunity to create lots and lots of new things.
Windows Media Center
Now, as that video comes into the home, it will be received on many different devices. You want to be able to see it anywhere, and on those same screens you want to be able to see your own information, your own photos, select music, all those things brought together on every screen in the house.
And that's where Media Center comes in. Media Center is, of course, the other special version of Windows besides what we've done with the tablet. And this was a pretty unbelievable year for Media Center. When I stood here a year ago, we had about a million and a half copies out; now we have 6.5 million. And we're not stopping there but those are big numbers. Most pieces of software don't ship anywhere near that and we're going to drive that up even further for portable devices, devices anywhere you want to get at media, we think Media Center can add a lot of value.
We've got 130 manufacturers doing that, we're in 33 countries, the U.S. is where we're the furthest along, so some of the additions that we make will make us even stronger on a global basis.
Now, there will be special enhancement, a lot of work that gets done with Media Center as we move into this Vista version.
One of the partnerships that's going to be very important for Media Center is our partnership with Intel on this. Of course, we do a lot of things with Intel. We've benefited from their incredible innovation over the years and we've worked to make sure our software takes full advantage of that.
Centrino is a great example of that. We did lots of portable features and they drove those scenarios to the mainstream. Centrino is a great example of each of us doing what we do well.
You're going to see another great example of this with Vive. I got used to saying it right, it rhymes with "five" and "live," so don't make the mistake if anyone from Intel is around, it's Vive. And you're going to see a lot of information about the kind of breakthrough experience that Intel technology enables here, combined with the Windows Media Center, so that's our strengths coming together. This is things like the 7.1 surround sound, which at the chip level they make that very, very straightforward, the dual-core processor helping out on that.
Now, Intel is our key partner here but we have many others that are doing content that exists in the Media Center environment. You can record, of course, it's fantastic at that, and you have special people, over 150 partners who have designed on our online spotlight new capabilities. And this spans all sorts of video experiences, really giving people a glimpse of those new capabilities. And so we're excited that that's a list that keeps on growing, neat new things that go on there.
We're also partnering up with people who provide video connections. One of this, who's very important here in the United States, is DIRECTV. They've been a leader in a lot of things, and the partnership we're announcing that's new today and a very broad multiyear partnership includes the ability to get that DIRECTV video onto the Windows Media Center PC. We'll also connect up to our portable devices, connect up to Xbox 360, and so these Media Centers will let you enjoy the high definition and normal definition DIRECTV content and take that away on a portable media device, so a lot of flexibility there.
Also we're working with BSkyB, who's sort of a sister company of DIRECTV over in the UK, who's done a lot of innovative stuff there and they'll be setting up through our alliance a video on-demand capability, which is one of the things DIRECTV will be doing, and here that video on-demand will be for Media Center customers both to get things on a two-foot experience and on a ten-foot experience. And they've got over 8 million subscribers in the UK who will be able to do those downloads and use those great capabilities.
The best way to understand this I think is to take a look at some samples of how that works, and it's great to have the vice president who's led the Media Center, Joe Belfiore, here to give you a look at that. So let's welcome Joe to the stage. (Applause.)
JOE BELFIORE: Hello. Thank you. Good evening, hello. It's good to be here. I'm going to take you on a quick, hopefully quick 15-minute tour of Windows Media Center and where it is today, where it's going in the future, and how this Windows platform software can tie together content and services and devices in a very compelling way to deliver fantastic entertainment experiences to consumers.
A quick housekeeping note: For those of you interested, last I heard, at the half, Texas 16, USC 10. (Cheers, applause.)
Let's start out and talk about some of the things that are going on with the Media Center today. And I want to talk about some of our terrific partners and some announcements that we have to make at the show. As many of you know, Media Center is a platform and it enables content providers and software developers to create all kinds of compelling application experiences and services that work with a remote control either on your PC, your Media Center PC, or streaming through extender devices like the Xbox 360.
Today, we're announcing five additional online spotlight applications and services, and the one that I want to demo and show is the Comedy Central Motherload. The idea of the Comedy Central Motherload, think of this as an interactive TV channel. I choose the Comedy Central Motherload from my online spotlight guide, and instantly I start getting streamed content like you see here, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."
But it doesn't stop there. Although the experience is programmed, I can use my remote to navigate around and find different types of content that I'm interested in. I might get clips from old Daily Shows if I'm a new fan, I might get previews about what's coming up on the Chapelle Show, I might watch background information about "South Park." I can even dive into the Comedy Central archives and get clips from old shows or get video of new and up and coming comedians. It's a terrific way for content providers like Comedy Central to have a great deep relationship with their viewers and offer a fantastic interactive experience to those viewers in lots of rooms in the house.
With these five additional partners, our total number of online spotlight applications promoted around the world comes to 110 right now, and those are all live and available to anyone in an integrated way in today's Media Center experience.
So that gives you a sense for some of the application experiences. Now, I want to talk a little bit about some hardware innovation. One of the things that's been very interesting about Media Center is the degree to which our OEM PC vendor partners have done cool, interesting hardware, and this year we want to show you a piece of up and coming hardware that we think is cool and interesting. This is a PC from Averatec. It's really small, as you can see, I'll pick it up, pretty lightweight, very quiet, runs Media Center, and in this configuration, of course, you can either set it on your desk like this or it's flexible enough to go into your entertainment system. And this particular model actually has all the remote control capabilities built in and has a tuner.
And Averatec will make these PCs available this spring with a tuner for under a thousand dollars and without a tuner for 499. So we think this is a great example of the continuing innovation that we've seen from PC OEM partners like HP and Sony and Dell and Gateway, building great interesting PC form factors for Media Center.
Of course, the hardware innovation doesn't stop specifically with the PC form factors. Our idea, as Bill said, was to try to create a software experience that a user could enjoy with a remote on their couch or could take with them in a portable form factor.
So I also want to show you another new device that is now becoming available this spring, and it's kind of small so I'm going to walk up here and try to give you a reasonable view of it. This is the Toshiba Gigabeat. There we go, you can kind of see it there.
Now, I actually have small hands, so in my small hands this is a really tiny device. This particular model has a 30 gig hard drive and when playing videos you get about four hours of video playback time on the battery.
And as you can see, it's really little, and one of the cool things about it, of course, as a Media Center guy, if I turn it this way and hit the Windows Start button, you can see that in its up and down mode you get the familiar Media Center user interface, which lets you sync all of your music, all of your pictures, all of your personal videos, broadcast video like my recorded TV shows, and of course videos that I might download or load online from service providers like this one that I have running here.
What this actually is is the movie "Hitch," which we purchased before the show from the newly available, the newly announced Starz Vongo Service. The Starz Vongo Service, and I'm going to take a walk over here while I explain this. The Starz Vongo Service is one of many services that are coming online that let consumers get access to digital content that they can use either on their PC or on a portable device like this Toshiba Gigabeat.
One of the things that's great about it is, it offers a flexible way for users to decide how to pay for their content. They can either buy it, or they can sign up for a subscription for $9.99, and get all the movie downloads that they want. And the Starz Service actually has a lot of movie. Right now it's getting up to about a thousand movie titles, the same great content that you see on the Starz channel through broadcast. So, whether you get your content from broadcast on your Media Center using its tuner and record it, or whether you download it over the Internet, maybe because you don't have a tuner, you still get a great flexible platform that lets you watch it either on a handheld device, or on your big screen. And the devices that we're seeing in terms of the portable devices, are getting more and more interesting and flexible. The Toshiba was compelling because it had such a nice small form factor.
And now I want to show you this one, this is a new LG Electronics Portable Media Center device. The thing that's really cool about this one, of course, is the killer wide screen form factor for watching video. And, again, you see, here I have "The Aviator" from the Vongo service playing back on my LG Portable Media Center device. And, of course, if I push the friendly green button, I get my consistent familiar experience with access to all my personal content, again, whether I've created it myself, downloaded it from the Internet, or recorded it straight from broadcast TV, a huge wealth of available stuff.
Windows Live
So, that gives you a couple of examples of portable devices, and hardware, and how the hardware industry is starting to do some more great things overtime with this Windows platform. And now, I want to change gears a little bit and talk about how services can further make the user experience related to entertainment and discovery of content even better. So, imagine now that I'm at work, or I'm on the road with my laptop, and I'm accessing the Windows Live using my Web browser wherever I am. What we're looking at here is the Live.com, a beta of the Live.com Windows Live home page. And the idea in general is that I can customize this with all kinds of different software services.
And what we've done here is precustomized it with a TV service for Windows Live. So what you see here is, this shows me what's happening on my Media Center PC, the shows that I have scheduled, recordings I've already made. Down here, I can get a program guide of content that's available for me to choose to record. And up here is one of the new things our team is working on, a recommendation service that helps you find shows that you might like to watch.
If I click on that, immediately you see it's a service offering me a bunch of choices that might be things I like simply based on what I've already been watching, and what I've already been recording. Now, if I provide the service with more information, like I don't really like reality shows, and I love medical drama, then the service gets a lot smarter about what it can recommend to me. So, here you see, it gives me a recommendation for "Gray's Anatomy." When I move my mouse over that, the service detects that "Gray's Anatomy" is the name of the TV show, and offers me information about when that show is available in my broadcast lineup, and gives me the opportunity to choose to record it right then and there. So, that gives you a sense of some of the service work we're doing that will come online a little later this year.
What I want to show you to expand your thinking on this is how the service can offer lots of different ways of interacting that fit with the personality and care of the particular user who is using it. So, switching over to the beta, a beta of Windows Live Messenger, you can see I have my buddies in here. One of the buddies that I have is a TV service. So, think of this as me interacting with a smart agent that's part of the TV service that I signed up for. So, here I am, and if I'm like some of the people in my family, addicted to instant messaging, then this is an incredibly comfortable and natural way for me to communicate with the service. So, I'll say hello, and it looks like our service might be offline, the risk of Internet based demos. So, I will close that and give it one more try. Let's see, okay, TV service are you there? Hello. Here we go.
Hi, Joe, would you like some help figuring what to watch. The TV service is inviting me to start a TV service activity. This idea of activities is new to the Windows Live Messenger, and when I click accept you can see over here it presents me with a bunch of interactivity. The service says, these are the shows your friends like. That's kind of an interesting thing. Immediately the idea of community becomes something that's factored in and the service can use to do a better job of helping me find things that I like. It knows who my buddies are because I've signed up with buddies, and as Bill described, if I choose to share information about my preferences, and what I like, then that could be used to make everyone's experiences better. So, these are shows that my buddies like. I can just move over there and choose one of those to record.
That's not what I want to do, how about what's on tonight? So the TV service is finding out what's on tonight, it switches over to a grid based guide, only reminding me that I'm here with you instead of watching the Rose Bowl, that's OK, because that's not actually what I want to be doing. How about showing SciFi. I like SciFi. OK, well, here's what's on in SciFi tonight. It further filters the list to show me that. And even better it says, I have a strong recommendation for you and a trailer to watch, cool. The trailer is for "Battlestar Gallactica," would you like to watch the trailer? Yes. Show me the trailer.
And instantly, the service can find promotional material, trailers, background information on content I might be interested, and it starts streaming it to me directly so that I get better information up. It says, if you like this trailer, would like to record it let me know. OK, record it. It finds my Media Center PC, sets up the recording, and now in the future I'll have this show available to watch when it's convenient for me.
So, you get a sense of how the service, both by having a lot of data on the back end, and knowing things about me, can do a good job of recommending things that I might be interested in watching.
OK, we're going to change gears now a little bit, and I want to talk about some future things that are happening with Media Center in terms of great content, and content experiences that are coming. So, I'm going to move over here, and I'm going to talk for a minute about high-definition DVDs first. High-definition DVD is coming online this year, and the first thing that I want to show related to this, this device right here is a Toshiba HD-DVD player, and this device will actually be available this March for $499 as a device that consumers can get to start watching HD-DVD disks. It's a straight-forward player device, as you would imagine, available really soon. What I want to demo is the HD-DVD playback capabilities as a user might get benefit out of interactivity and compelling content running on a WindowsVista Media Center PC.
So, let's switch over and start taking a look at HD-DVD on a Windows Vista Media Center PC. Now, the first thing that you think about when you think about HD-DVD is incredibly great looking high definition content. Well, we've got that. And as you'll see in this movie from Universal, "The Bourne Supremacy," the video content looks fantastic. And this is a great way for consumers to get access to it.
What I want to spend some time talking about, which I suspect many of you have not seen, is how the interactivity capabilities of HD-DVD can really change the viewing experience for consumers who use HD-DVDs. So, you'll see the movie has started here, and now I'm going to start interacting with it in some ways which I can with standard DVDs, and some ways that are new. And I want you to see how much more fluid and immersive the environment stays while you're watching the movie.
So, the first thing we'll do, we'll jump in, and let's say I want to jump to some other scene. I can choose scenes, and I'm not taken out of the movie experience. I can browse around and see what's available. We'll jump to chapter three, and you can see we've jumped there, and now we're back to watching the movie. And the other thing that happens to me a lot when I watch movies, I'm watching this movie, it's rented, and I see someone in the movie, and I could swear I recognize this actor or actress, but I have no idea who they are or what they've been in. With HD-DVD's interactivity layer I can go to the features area and it immediately shows you recent actors. This is smart enough to show you, in order, the actors that are in the scenes you're watching. So here I'm watching the scene and I see this woman, I think I've seen her before, silly as that, click a button, it's Franka Potente. Done.
I now have the answer to my question, I didn't have to leave the immersive experience of my movie. So I find out more about her, I can click, get her bio, and what I really want to know is what other movies she's in. There we go, I now get the answer to my question, staying in my immersive environment, and if you imagine a family setting, everyone isn't angry at me, because I stopped the movie to figure out what other stuff this person is in. Another great thing about HD-DVD is these players can be aware of the Internet and make sure this content is updated, so you really get a fantastic experience related to this interactivity.
OK. Let's look at another example. Another thing that I like to do, a great feature of today's DVDs is being able to get extras like commentary. Although, today when you get a commentary you get a faceless voice talking to you about what's going on. Well, with the interactivity layer of HD-DVDs you get a much better experience. So here I've asked for producer commentary, and in this case, in our prototype, you can see the producer sitting here talking to me about what they intended to do in the movie. Now imagine the possibilities, imagine if this person could actually be walking around and pointing things out that are happening in the movie, or showing me props, models and things that were used to create the special effects. Suddenly my ability to get extra value through the movie is greatly enhanced by the power of the interactivity capability.
The last thing I want to show here that I'm excited about in HD-DVD, is a feature that is part of every HD-DVD, which is that it enables digitally legal copies to be stored on the hard drive of a device like a PC. In this case I can go to the menu, choose manage copies, there are offers that are available here from Universal, in this case I'm going to choose to copy the high definition movie, rather than the full disk image, and you can see here a user interface has popped up that enables me to complete this, the high definition movie is being copied to my hard drive, and now I can put the shiny disk away somewhere safe, and have complete access to my movie library in a compelling, exciting way, as I get more and more of these high-def HD-DVDs.
So that gives you the sense for some of the things that we're excited about in terms of the consumer experience around this particular type of high definition content. And now what I want to do is switch over and talk to you about a feature that's coming in the Windows Vista Media Center, and give you a quick demo of it, one that I'm very excited about, and that is Media Center's ability to receive digital cable natively.
So what I have here in my hand is a device from Dell. This is a digital cable receiver. And you see here, let me show you how this works, on the back I have a spot where I connect my cable, pretty straightforward, and on the front I have a spot where I slide in the cable card. And this cable card is courtesy of Cox Cable here in Las Vegas. I connect to my PC. In this particular case I could connect it to a laptop or a desktop. We're super excited about this, because the benefits that it will bring to consumers are very compelling. Today, with a Windows Media Center PC, you have an analog connection or you can receive HD over the air. And what that means is that you're missing out on some of the really terrific content that your digital cable, your cable company is offering today.
You can't get high-def simply by plugging a cable in. You can't get great stuff like ESPN HD, or Discovery HD, and you can't get premium, or pay services like Showtime HD, or HBO HD. With Media Center, and it's digital cable ready capabilities all of that will change. A consumer can buy a digital cable-ready PC, attach the cable, slide in the access card, and now they have access really to the most compelling and broadest set of terrific content, from standard definition to high definition, even in its premium form.
So we're thrilled to have worked with the cable industry in the U.S. to have reached an agreement. We're excited to announce that that will be a part of Windows Vista this fall, and I'm going to give you a look at what that actually looks like. So let's switch over to Windows Vista Media Center and take a look.
So here you can see, pretty straightforward, I've used my Windows Vista Media Center to choose the Starz Channel, and I've made a recording of "The Aviator" on Starz, and here we are watching high-definition, premium content that has never left the digital form, it's stored on my PC hard drive, and it's available for me to watch either through my PC itself, or streaming through an extender like the Xbox 360 in another room in the house, also a high definition capable device.
So that's something that we're very excited about. Now, I'm going to wrap up by giving you a look at the newly revised user interface to the Windows Vista Media Center Edition. Here we're pressed the start menu, and you can see I'm still watching my high def movie in the background there. As I move through it should look pretty familiar. We've tried to enhance it so that not only do you have quick access to very common tasks, but we really wanted to take advantage of wide screen, high definition displays in an incredibly compelling way.
So let's take a look at well take my music library as an example. If we go into the music library, what you'll see here, keeping in line with what you saw earlier in Windows Media Player we can handle incredibly large libraries very well, both because of our user interface design, but also because of the performance work we've done. What you're looking at here is a library of over 10,000 songs with a few styles and albums. You can see how quickly and smoothly I can scroll through it, and how much more content I get visible on my wide screen display.
In addition, taking advantage of Windows Vista's deep and powerful capabilities for searching and querying to give you lots of great views on their content. I can look at albums by artist, which is a compelling view, and one that we hear a lot of people asking for is being able to view my albums by year. If I want to go back in my collection to find all that great '80s stuff, I know where to scroll back and look for it. We think that the PC is a terrific device for creating these kinds of views, and don't forget, of course, all of this remotes through the Xbox 360, and can be available in any room of your house through its extender capabilities.
The last thing that I want to show, we'll go down here and take a look at the movie library. This will give you a sense of how this user interface design change applies not just to music, but will also apply to photos, and does to movies, as well, in a compelling way. Here are the movie libraries showing me everything that I have available right now, whether it's because I have a DVD changer hooked up, or in this case, with "The Bourne Supremacy," because I've done a digitally legal copy onto the hard drive on my PC, there is the movie we were watching a minute before, and if I wanted to click it, I could jump right in and be watching it again.
Xbox 360
So that gives you a quick look at some of the things that are happening today with Media Center, and some of the places that we're going in terms of trying to really bring together some of the world's best and broadest set of content into the PC, get it delivered on a wide range of really compelling companion devices, and make that experience compelling and great for the user. The one device that I actually haven't spent that much time talking about, although I've spent an awful lot of time using lately, is the Xbox 360. So to pick it up from where I've left off, I'm happy to introduce Peter Moore, who leads out Xbox and gaming for Windows businesses to come out and talk to you a little bit about the Xbox 360 and what's happening with that.
Thanks. Good night.
(Video segment.)
PETER MOORE: Good evening. So let me get this out of the way: USC 17, Texas 16. (Cheers.)
All right, let's focus on some important things here.
So it's five years ago today right on this very stage that we used CES to unveil Xbox, challenging the conventional wisdom we got in the future of what console gaming was about. Xbox as we all know is now a success story in more than 22 million homes worldwide. We envision with Xbox a community connected through Xbox Live, the first and only unified online gaming service. Xbox Live is now a movement of more than 2 million members that grows and diversifies each day. We believed that Halo would be a great franchise. Well, not only is it a great franchise but Halo 2 recorded the greatest day in retail entertainment history with $125 million in sales in one day.
And we built partnerships to create an incredibly diverse portfolio of high quality games that will number 800 by the end of this year.
In the Xbox generation we were the thought leader.
Let's fast-forward to Xbox 360. We're quickly moving from thought leadership to market leadership. And tonight I'm pleased to announce that Xbox 360 achieved an unprecedented global launch for the world of videogame consoles. In the first 90 days we will have launched Xbox 360 in nearly 30 countries, and Xbox 360 is on track to ship between 4.5 and 5.5 million consoles by the end of June.
Xbox 360 has a stunning attach rate of four games per console, and an accessory level and attach rate of three per console, both of which are nearly double the previous record.
Now, it's no secret to anybody in this room that our biggest challenge has been meeting the high consumer demand for the console. We are working to deliver consoles as quickly as we can manufacture them. To further bolster our capacity for output, I'm happy to announce that next month Selectica will join both Flextronics and Wistron as our third manufacturing partner. We need to meet the consumer demand worldwide and having this ability now to do that with three manufacturing partners helps us do that.
Xbox Live continues to lead the way in defining online entertainment for this global audience that we're delivering. Xbox Live is regarded as the standard by which all over online game services are measured. It's a seamlessly integrated world through the entire Xbox 360, and players are instantly connected to a vibrant online community the moment they power on the system.
Now, on Xbox 10 percent of customers connected their box to the Internet, on Xbox 360 more than 50 percent of all consoles worldwide are now connected to Xbox Live.
And Xbox Live doesn't only connect people around the world via games and entertainment, it also offers access to high definition content. Xbox Live marketplace is a one-stop digital download center where you can access high definition games, music, movie content from our leading industry partners.
Using our free Silver level of service, all Xbox Live players can connect to the Xbox Live marketplace.
As evidence of this, tonight I'm pleased to announce that in just four weeks since the launch of Xbox 360, more than 4 million Xbox Live marketplace downloads have enhanced the games and entertainment experiences of Xbox 360 owners around the world.
With numbers like that, Xbox Live is a proven form of mainstream entertainment. In fact, on a share basis, the 18 to 34 male demographic that we deliver through Xbox Live is comparable to network programs such as "CSI" or "The Office," and that fact and the popularity of Xbox Live has not gone unnoticed. Movie studios and record labels like 20th Century Fox and Epic Records have recently released movie and music video content on Xbox Live marketplace, and just two weeks ago Paramount Pictures chose Xbox 360 to world premiere the "Mission Impossible 3" trailer on Xbox Live marketplace, spotlighted right there on today's Xbox Live marketplace blade.
Now, digital distribution of content isn't limited to just music and video content. Watch out for Xbox Live arcade, where hundreds of thousands of people are downloading and playing casual, classic, puzzle and new action pack games like Joust or Geometry Wars or Hearts.
By March, we'll be proud to announce that more than 20 games will be available through Xbox Live Arcade, games like Streetfighter 2 from Capcom, games like Texas Hold 'Em and Marble Blast Ultra. Texas Hold 'Em will be the first fully sponsored game on Xbox Live Arcade, sponsored by our partners at (River Vail ?).
Xbox Live marketplace and Xbox Live Arcade are proof positive that high definition content delivery via the Internet is real and it's happening right now.
We're on the verge of an explosion in the kinds of high definition content available. Similarly, we're seeing a revolution in the way consumers can access all of that high def content, download it from the Internet, streaming over the whole network and, of course, high def optical disks.
Five years ago, we envisioned the future would include the convergence of high definition movies, things like games and photos, movies and, of course, television. Today, Xbox 360 is delivering on that vision.
Tonight, I'm proud to announce that later this year we will be launching an Xbox 360 external HD DVD drive. Soon millions of Xbox 360 owners can pop in an HD DVD disk and enjoy high definition movie playback.
In fact, Xbox 360 is the killer app for HDTV adoption. It's driving HDTV monitor sales. A recent study concluded that 9 out of 10 Xbox 360 owners have either purchased or intend to purchase an HDTV in the next six months. And 90 percent of them say that it was Xbox 360 that is the primary reason for making that purchase, 90 percent of them say it's about Xbox 360.
But exciting as all of this is, Xbox 360 continues to be about great games. It's my pleasure to announce that by June of this year Xbox 360 will have 50 high definition games from the best names in publishing, including 2K Games, Capcom, Electronic Arts, and Ubisoft.
