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Monday, April 8, 2013

Microsoft Sheds Old TV Baggage to Focus on New Xbox

Microsoft is planning to reveal details about its new Xbox video game console at an event in May, as the games industry prepares for a new generation of hardware that it hopes will lift sales.

Microsoft is currently aiming to hold the event May 21, though it was previously scheduled for April and could change again, according to a person briefed on the company’s plans, who declined to named because the plans are confidential. The Redmond, Wash., company is eager to announce the new console before E3, the big video game conference in Los Angeles beginning June 11.

Paul Thurrott, a blogger who focuses on Microsoft, first mentioned the May date in a Web talk show last week, and the technology news site the Verge confirmed the event on Monday.

Wayne Hickey, a spokesman for Microsoft, declined to comment.

Details about the new Xbox, which is code-named Durango, are sparse so far, although people familiar with the product say it will advance the boundaries of realism in game graphics, as all new game consoles typically do. Microsoft plans to release the product in time for the holiday season this year.

The games industry is craving new hardware to help lift the business out of a multiyear sales slump. Sony, Microsoft’s closest competitor in the game console business, has already announced plans to release its new console, the PlayStation 4, which features a new motion-sensing controller, this holiday season. Nintendo’s new game system, Wii U, went on sale late last year, but sales have been disappointing so far.

When it introduces the new console, Microsoft is also expected to make a renewed push to make the Xbox the central hub for all forms of entertainment in the living room, not just games.

On Monday, the company broadcast its intention to focus on the Xbox as its conduit for television programming when it announced plans to sell Mediaroom, its technology for Internet-based television services offered by telecommunications and cable companies, to Ericsson, the Swedish provider of telecommunications and video equipment.

Mediaroom was the most recent incarnation of a long-running effort by Microsoft to claw its way into living rooms through partnerships with cable companies. Those initiatives stretch back to the mid-1990s, when interactive television was a big buzz phrase in technology and media circles.

Mediaroom wasn’t exactly a flop â€" it powers 22 million set-top boxes in 11 million subscriber households through pay television services like AT&T U-verse â€" but it never achieved anything like the grand ambitions that Microsoft once set.

Xbox, meanwhile, has shown far more promise as a way to consume Internet content on televisions. The company has sold 76 million Xbox 360 consoles and has 46 million Xbox Live members, a good portion of whom access video on the service through partners like Netflix, Hulu and an array of video channels that Microsoft itself has assembled directly from programmers.

In a blog post, Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of marketing, strategy and business for Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business, said the company’s decision to sell Mediaroom, “allows Microsoft to commit 100 percent of its focus on consumer TV strategy with Xbox.”