New Microsoft Xbox, Winner or Loser?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Xbox 360 logoMicrosoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) will release its new Xbox this week. The common wisdom is that, even if the console is more popular the Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation and Nintendo Wii, the the movement of gaming to smartphones will make a success impossible. Of course, as with all new products, the devil is in the details, and the details of the new Xbox may be good enough to keep it competitive in the new game world.

The Xbox is expected to have the minimum features any new product in the industry would have. Among these are broadband connections which support HD movie downloads and streaming, and multiplayer gaming that allows users to compete across the world.

The critical feature will be the extent to which the console supports free games which world on smartphones and tablets. And, whether the Xbox platform can be migrated to an owners portable devices without any fee. In a game world, where many new products are free, offering a lot of free features could be Microsoft’s path to a successful product.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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