WSJ.com - Real Time: You Look Like You Need a Hub

WSJ.com - Real Time: You Look Like You Need a Hub: "But Microsoft has broader aspirations for the Xbox than simply a really great game machine -- one that has barely a wisp of a head start over rival Sony, which plans to unveil its next-generation game shortly. The new Xbox, you see, will also serve as a digital hub. The box will play DVDs and CDs. But it will also stream music and video stored on a household's computer, as long as it's running the Media Center version of Microsoft's Windows XP. (If sometime rival Apple Computer aims for insanely great, Microsoft tends toward insanely synergized to dominant operating system.)
To be sure, the marketing positions it as game system first, reordering of couches, extension cords and torch lamps second. But media hubbing is still a major theme. Microsoft executive Jeff Henshaw, in an interview with the Washington Post, called the Xbox 360 a 'catalyst that jump-starts not just the game industry, but the entire entertainment and consumer-electronics industries into the high-definition era.'"

Also the cover story in Time this week, but Time annoyingly requires subscriber login now...