Having said that, as I pointed out elsewhere, it's now how many things your device does, but how well it does the thing that'll define its function. If it's an entertainment system, it's how well it entertains people. If it's a videogame, it's how fun the games it plays are.
I find that particularly interesting in light of his sort of decrying the digital-social culture we've developed in the last decade. Strange guy with a lot of really different opinions; was a lot of fun.
The Xbox including the new Kinect definitely lowers margins, but if Kinect becomes an integral part of the gaming experience it will be a sound bet.
Indeed. Bundling it is the best way to ensure the Kinect is used in every title.
Currently, the Kinect is a peripheral, which means that developers can't assume that it's there. If they want to use it, they have two options: be a full-on Kinect game that doesn't make sense without the device, or have controller-only options for everything. That's a lot of pain. But if they can assume that the Kinect is always there, there's no tradeoff.
Although I personally have little love for Visual Studio, most Windows developers would never leave it.
Were it programmable in Lisp, I suppose developers would use it to read e-mail and chat on IRC ;-)
Modern day indie developers are making products which we would have called AAA games in 1998 and many of them are selling extremely well (just see Kickstarter). I think they have a HUGE role to play this generation, and holding them hostage in the "app" sandbox will be a massive mistake.
If either Microsoft or Sony opened up their SDK to indie developers, and created some kind of arrangement where these developers could sell digitally for a fee, I think they will effectively "win" this round. And I do not mean "apps." I mean full power of the console level stuff.
I understood that SRAM was only really 'expensive' in that it chews up masses of die space (which isn't a bad bet going forward because there'll inevitably be a new version at some point with a smaller process)