Of all the game companies out there, Microsoft has easily had the biggest presence at CES this year. We saw what Robbie Bach had to say about Kodu, Halo Wars, and Primetime during the keynote, though the folks at Microsoft apparently had more to say once they were off the stage.
- Tech site TechFlash sat down with Robbie Bach to discuss a number of things, from the effect of the economy on Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division to that whole Zune 30GB Y2K9 snafu. The real point of interest here for me is Bach's response to the notion of adding Blu-ray support to the 360, which he shoots down fairly authoritatively. I agree that it doesn't make a lick of sense for the 360, though I'll be curious to see what Microsoft's position on Blu-ray is like once the next hardware generation rolls around and there's still not the usage or infrastructure to support a pure digital distribution model.
- The folks at Joystiq chatted with Xbox Live's Aaron Greenberg, who revealed that Microsoft is looking into upping the current limit on the number of friends you can have on your Xbox Live account beyond the current 100. While he gives no timeframe, he does say that it's “on the list.”
- Apparently Greenberg is a real Chatty Cathy at CES, as he also talked to Michael McWhertor over at Kotaku about Sony's console-comparison spreadsheet. His comments are mostly civil, company-line stuff, though I do believe that Sony would do well to adopt the philosophy behind Greenberg's statement that he "would rather talk about why you should buy our console than why you shouldn't buy the competitor's system." The PlayStation 3 is actually a phenomenally kick-ass piece of hardware already. Sony should be capitalizing on that rather than trying to push the other dudes down.