I had the chance to stand next to Bill Gates and interview him with a group of reporters after his keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show. Here is part one of the interview with all of the questions related to video games. This is a good place to point out the separation between my two blogs. Part 2 of the interview has the non-game Q&A and will be posted on the TechTalk blog at www.mercextra.com/blogs/takahashi.
Q: Is there some potential that AT&T would give away an Xbox 360 in exchange for a long-term IPTV service contract?
A: I don’t know what they plan to do. We haven’t even signed the exact deal. But there is a lot of upside for AT&T and Microsoft in that customer in terms of the kinds of things they can do, including signing up for Live, buying more games. So there ought to be a great win win for us. The question is, “Is AT&T – most likely they will have a basic set-top box.” I can’t speak for them. Most likely they will have a basic set-top box and a fancy set-top box. That’s the kind of thing we’ll talk about. They have been very focused on rolling out. They have a lot of integration to do. Content licensing. Franchising. They have a ton to do. They have their merger to get through. They got locked down in 2006.
