NEWS - Friday, July 30, 2004
"No New Xbox, Next Year" Says Steve Ballmer
Though hair-splitters can of course dispute just what "next year" means, Microsoft’s next game console won’t debut next year, CEO Steve Ballmer said at the software giant’s recent financial analyst meeting. "There’s no new Xbox in the next year, but, man, are we hard at work on that next Xbox; that’s all we’ll say," said Ballmer. Presumably he meant the next calendar year, although the hopeful could argue that with Microsoft’s fiscal year ending in June, the console could see release in the fall of calendar 2005, halfway through its subsequent fiscal year. Conventional wisdom has long predicted that Microsoft would release its new console around the fall of 2005, ever since the first round of development kits -- code-named "Xenon" -- reached key developers early this year. Beyond that, Ballmer had little to say about the Xbox business, though he was bullish regarding the potential of Xbox Live in the coming holiday season. "Xbox Live, new games, interesting games, now new games coming from Electronic Arts and others that will really drive interest in our online gaming platform," he said. "We have over 400 games, Halo 2 on the way; so innovation’s driving growth."Source: http://www.1up.com
