Microsoft, at its Worldwide Partner Conference this week, hinted at a future with some big changes in store for the company and its biggest brands. Microsoft's Andy Lees described a future where the company operates a "single ecosystem" for all things, including PCs, tablets, phones, TVs, and consoles like its Xbox platform.
"You can have full PC compute power available in whatever form factor you like,” said Lees. “We won’t have an ecosystem for PCs, and one for phones, and one for tablets — they’ll all come together.” Lees noted that the goal is to provide “coherence and consistency” across different devices and “particularly with Xbox.” Devices won't simply share a user interface, but they'll also utilize core technologies like Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
A source close to the situation told tech blog This is my next... that Windows for PCs and Windows Phone would somehow be harmonized with the Xbox within the next four years, which would have course line up nicely with the 10-year lifecycle of the Xbox 360. It also lends credence to the rumor that Xbox games might be playable on Windows 8, since everything will essentially be one ecosystem. Ultimately, what this could all mean is something pretty radical: Microsoft’s future operating system could run on PCs, tablets, phones, and the hypothetical Xbox 720 in 2015.
And, even more interesting, is that this futuristic OS from Microsoft may ditch the 'Windows' brand name entirely. That would be quite a drastic change for Microsoft since its bread and butter has been Windows from the start. But sometimes change is necessary to shake things up, especially with increasing competition from the likes of Apple and Google.
I wish there would be a pc version. If it was available now I would stump £75 for it!