CES: Moore Talks X360 Manufacturing, Xbox Live

Following initial coverage of Bill Gates' keynote at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, further information on corporate vice president Peter Moore's remarks on the Xbox 360 at the keynote have been made available. In particular, Moore said that Microsoft intended to become "market leader" in the console market, and addressed Xbox 360 hardware manufacturing issues that were hampering the process by revealing a third manufacturing plant. In addition to existing manufacturing partners Flextronics and Wistron, Microsoft has selected Celestica to produce additional Xbox 360s to meet the company's goal of selling between 4.5 and 5.5 million systems by the end of June. "We need to meet the consumer demand worldwide," said Moore, "and having this ability now to do that with three manufacturing partners helps us do that." Moore also heavily played up the system's Xbox Live service, which is an advantage for the company in the fight against Sony's coming PlayStation 3, which SCE executives have said will contain no unified online service comparable to Xbox Live. Moore announced that Xbox Live was getting greater advertising support from Hollywood, with music videos and movie trailers such as Paramount's Mission: Impossible 3 becoming more prevalent in the Xbox Live Marketplace. As for downloadable games on the service, Moore announced that Capcom would make both a fully downloadable version and "one-quarter" version of Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting available through Xbox Live Arcade. In addition, the service's first "fully-sponsored" and therefore presumably free to play game, Texas Hold 'Em sponsored by River Vale, will soon debut.