Interesting J Allard Interview.




Posted by Axis

[B]J Allard is hauling *** downhill on a mountain bike when he sees the hikers. A pair of unsuspecting women strolling through the woods at sunset suddenly find themselves in the path of a mass of titanium, plastic, and taped-together skin and bone barreling toward them at 42 miles per hour. They freeze. Allard grabs the brakes, trying to remember the golden rule of skid management - keep at least 60 percent of the braking pressure on the rear wheel. He slides wide of the hikers only to have his tires lock up in the mud, sending him careening toward a trailside bench. If he hits it, he'll pinwheel over a cliff, into the trees, and back to the emergency room, a place he knows all too well.

Allard, who looks like a sturdier version of REM singer Michael Stipe, slows his bike just enough to squeeze past the bench and avoid the plunge. He leans into a turn and, with a howl, resumes his headlong descent. He makes it to the bottom without sustaining a life-threatening injury, which would have been a shame for a couple of reasons. Aside from Microsoft's losing the leader of its ambitious Xbox initiative, a crash would have deprived Allard of his favorite part of the ride, which he's been taunting his riding partners with all afternoon: the long haul back up the hill. "It's on - like Donkey Kong," Allard says over his shoulder as he starts the steep 500-vertical-foot climb.

Allard is all about uphill climbs. He helped drive Microsoft's entry into the Internet arena in 1994 and, in 1999, persuaded Bill Gates to build a videogame console and take on the powerhouse of the gaming business, Sony. Now, after a six-year ascent, Allard claims he can finally see the crest of the hill.

With the launch of Xbox 360 later this year, Microsoft, hell-bent on getting a jump on Sony, is tossing the original Xbox into the backseat only four years into the traditional five-year console life cycle. Despite Xbox's recent success - it outsold PlayStation 2 domestically for the first time in fourth quarter 2004 - Allard and company are convinced that the time to move is now. From a gaming perspective, Microsoft has the momentum and the clout with developers to beat Sony to what Allard sees as the next era of gaming: hi-def. From a larger viewpoint, Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer are counting on Xbox 360 to help the company beat Sony in the war for control of the broadband home.

Microsoft has made no secret of its desire to dominate the living room. Three years ago, it unveiled the Media Center PC operating system, a version of Windows that enables computers to function as TV tuners, DVRs, audio/video jukeboxes and editors, DVD players, and digital photo albums. Microsoft products typically start to function as promised right around version 3.0, and Media Center is no exception. Now that the company has worked out many of the bugs, there's talk that Media Center will be a standard part of Microsoft's next operating system, Longhorn. Which means that soon every PC will have the capabilities of an entire living room entertainment setup and, thanks to VoIP, be able to take care of your telecommunications needs as well.

The hurdle, of course, is to try to get everyday consumers to think of a PC as something other than a productivity tool for the home office. Which is where Xbox 360 comes in. Microsoft sells Media Center Extender boxes that slide into the console stack and connect a TV to a home network, which lets you control the Media Center from as many as five rooms in your house via remote control. The first Xbox supported an Extender add-on, but you had to remove the game you were playing, pop in a disc, and restart. That interruption only reinforced the office versus living room dichotomy for all but the most determined convergence geeks. Xbox 360 has Extender capability built in, giving users an effortless link between all the combined features - games, videoconferences, phone calls, a music library, photos, and all the high-definition video programming stored on Media Center's DVR. All of which makes Xbox 360 more than just the next generation of gaming. It's the latest iteration of Microsoft's infamous "embrace and extend" strategy. Microsoft is spending billions on IPTV technology to try to become the video platform for the post-broadcast future of television. If the company can get consumers to embrace Xbox 360, Microsoft can extend into the entire house.

"This is absolutely one of the most ambitious things our company has ever set out to do," says Ballmer, adding that Allard is "a little crazy."

By the standard rules of engagement in the console arena, he'd have to be. Console makers earn much of their money in the last two years of a console's life, when game royalties begin to offset the immense up-front investment in hardware development. And while coming out with a new console later this year gives Microsoft a one-year head start on the next-gen PlayStation - allowing Microsoft to court game developers and convert gamers - it's not exactly a flawless strategy. Sega introduced Dreamcast in 1999, a full year before the arrival of PS2. Consumers stayed away, and Sega never recovered.

But Allard insists that his plan is different, because a new era of high-definition gaming is upon us. To him, hi-def is about more than screen resolution. Xbox 360 will introduce gamers to a world where they can create and maintain a persistent, evolving online persona regardless of which game they're playing. A user profile, maintained at a Microsoft data center, will follow you around and track your progress from game to game. That way, if you're a Halo 3 ace, you won't get thrown into a multiplayer Splinter Cell session with a bunch of newbies. The Xbox Live network will also tie into real-world payment systems -