The XBoy? The iBox? The Xberry?

As many of you may know rumors are circulating wildly that Microsoft is soon to unveil their new portable media device. While no name has been announced it should probably be called "Rashomon" since everybody seems to have a different perspective on what the device actually is. Audiophiles and casual gadget mongers see it as Microsoft's answer to Apple's iPod: a portable music and video player. Gamers look at it and see a rival to Nintendo's DS and Sony's PSP portable gaming systems. A third group even sees this device as a new attempt to unseat the Blackberry from it's perch atop the business gadget heap. The thought of all of these features integrated into the same portable device is enought to send even the most casual of gadget-philes into a state of near sexual euphoria. What do I see when I think about this digital Chimaera? A bloody mess.

Not that I wouldn't love a device that can do all of these things, unfortunately I just don't expect it to do any of those things particularly well. It's the old jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none quandry. One of the things that made the iPod so successful was it's simplicity; it just played and organized your music. Apple could have slapped on e-mail functionality, or a wireless connection, or a web browser, but they chose not to. They realized that those features would make the iPod more expensive, more complicated and worst of all, less accessible to the general public. The same could be said about Nintendo and their portable game systems; they could have included a web browser with the DS, but why? A good example of 'cramming' is Sony's PSP. They tried to make a device that could do just about anything digital: videogames, music, video, web browsing, the works. But in the end it really didn't do any of them particularly well. The games are mostly PS2 ports shoe-horned into a crappy control scheme, importing music & movies to the system is needlessly difficult, and the web browser has yet to materialize in the US.

Now I'm not saying it can't be a useful and successful product; in fact I think it, whatever 'it' is, will probably be one of the hottest items this coming Christmas season. But if Microsoft tries to be all things to all people it assuredly won't be the hot item for Christman 2007. So what if they are not trying to do a Chimera, but instead a more streamlined product? This also may be a bad idea.

Let's say the big M is doing a music player. What can they offer that Apple and the iPod don't? It won't be cheaper. It won't have any fewer restrictions on the media you buy. Could they possibly offer a larger library than iTunes? What's left? A larger, hi-def screen? When the screen is 2" or less what does it matter? Wireless connectivity? It would be nice, but not nice enough to get very many people to switch over. Finally Microsoft doesn't have a tenth of the brand loyalty that Apple does, so nobody is going to be buying it just for that reason.

Is the mystery device a challenger to the Blackberry? Not likely. Big M has been trying unsucessfully for years to unify the portable OS market the way they dominate the PC market. The Palm OS and RIM's Blackberry are just too good to trounce, and besides the handheld market just isn't profitable enough to spend the megabucks they would need to dominate.

Okay, what if they're making a portable game system? This one is a lot more fesable for one reason: digital distribution. The thing that kills the PSP the most is it's media. Those little UMDs have hellatious load times and require a ton of power to run, so you end up with a system that has a miniscule battery life, for which you spend most of that time watching static load screens. Say what you want about Big M, they aren't stupid. They have to know from watching Sony's struggles that an optical media based portable just isn't practical right now. The solution? Ditch the lasers. If Microsoft put out a hard drive (or flash memory) based portable they could eliminate most of the loading and battery issues that plague the PSP. And the fun doesn't stop there. I have two words for ya: digital distribution. In this scenario Microsoft sells most, if not all, of the titles for this system over the internet, either through the Web or Xbox live. Games are downloaded straight to the system; no discs, no cartridges, and best of all (for Microsoft), the brick and mortar game stores don't get a cut, either on the front end or through the sale of used games.

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