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Microsoft Freon

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the chilly dept.

Veramocor writes "MSNBC.com has an article posted from the WSJ about MS's new plan for living room domination, codenamed Freon. Freon will be capable of 'playing games but also offering television capabilities, such as pausing live TV and recording shows onto a computer hard drive.' The article then goes on to explain future potential business plans for XBox incarnations. The system does seem to have some great advantages. I must question their naming question however, we all know what a disaster the actual chemical Freon was. Here's to hoping, Cheers!" We mentioned the Xbox's planned evolution the other day, too, but without the fancy codename.

3 of 419 comments (clear)

  1. funny names by dago · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think that some of the marketing/PR people of MS have been sick / on holidays / away these times.

    Palladium : was originally the name of the statue of Pallas-Athenas, which was supposed to protect the city of Troie. Which was later invaded by greeks which used a subterfuge which will be known for centuries as trojan horses.

    Freon : according to this web page, apart from evident utility in refigerators, "Only decades later did people realize that such chlorofluorocarbons endangered the ozone layer of the entire planet." and, even worse for MS : "The trade name Freon® is a registered trademark belonging to E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company (DuPont)."

    --
    #include "coucou.h"
  2. Step carefully... by weave · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Being quite an old flock()er, I can recallthe video game boom of late 70s early 80s. Atari was champ, then something happened. The market became too fractured. Atari 5200, Colecovision, and some others I can't remember. Then Atari announces 7800 shortly after 5200 was out and no one wanted to buy a 5200. Eventually, it all just died out.

    It wasn't until the NES rose out of the console market's ashes did things kick back in gear. One thing that was great about the NES was it was stable and long lived. The same goes for the next market leader, Playstation.

    Microsoft could very well risk killing the entire console market if it introduces too much confusion and churn into it. If they make consoles as complicated as PCs, a lot of buyers may just be turned off. Think of all the people, right down to the poorest you know, that have a console but no computer in their house.

  3. Are they nuts?! by prockcore · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is really quite amazing to me. Microsoft truly is the most braindead company.

    Why in the world would anyone buy an xbox now? We now know it's going to be replaced with "something much much better" in a little while.

    Now instead of making money selling xbox's and xbox games, everyone will just hold on to their cash and wait for Freon(tm).

    In the meantime xbox-exclusive game makers will bleed red, and drop support for the xbox.. when Freon actually makes it out the door, it'll have no games because the game makers aren't going to invest the time and money on a product that already burned them once.

    Freon will kill all of MS's hopes in the console market. And you can bookmark me on that.