I think, honestly, that they’ve pretty much locked themselves into place with the 360. They killed the Xbox too early in order to put their eggs in the 360′s basket, so they pretty much have to commit to this generation. The’re never again going to get as golden and secure position as they have now, with Nintendo doing their own thing and Sony fumbling to the point where MS can screw up this big and still be sitting pretty. This will probably be the generation that sees them either getting their shit together for real, or ending up with a bizarre mix of what killed Sega and what’s killing Sony.

The wildcard is the Zune, since they’re still going the route of “multimedia device” for the 360. It’s a piece of shit now, but there looks to be huge potential for the two devices to play really nicely together. They’ve got something that can eventually compete with the iPod, and on top of that they have in LIVE something that could easily become a competitor with iTunes, which people are starting to feel the limitations of anyway.

A lot of work and a lot of money for something that’s marginally better than what exists. Isn’t that the Microsoft M.O.? And too bad the salvation of a system like the 360 doesn’t look like it will actually be anything to do with, you know, VIDEOGAMES.