Microsoft Working on Hybrid Xbox Project
Reuters | at | by Mike
Microsoft Corp. has been quietly working since last fall on a device combining its money-losing Xbox video game console and with its digital video recorder, technology magazine Red Herring reported on Tuesday. The publication also cited a source as saying internal Microsoft estimates showed that the software giant would lose $750 million on the Xbox game console this fiscal year and $1.1 billion in the next fiscal year, ending June 2003. That compares with an estimate given to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates in 1999 that the Xbox project could lose $900 million over eight years, author Dean Takahashi said. Meanwhile, Microsoft engineers have been at work for about nine months on a project combining the company's UltimateTV recorder with the Xbox, Red Herring said.