Microsoft’s home entertainment strategy is predicated on the idea that consumers will replace their current devices with a new class of connected devices, with the PC playing a central role. Microsoft must not only convince consumers and partners of this vision but must also overcome challenges, such as making its digital media technologies easier to use and aligning partners to support critical pieces of its strategy in a consistent and coherent fashion. However, if Microsoft continues to push home entertainment scenarios based around the Xbox 360 and other devices, OEMs and other PC partners might have to realign their strategies.

Why a Computer?

The most significant challenge to Microsoft’s home entertainment strategy is habit: consumers are accustomed to using dedicated consumer electronics devices for home entertainment, such as DVD players, digital video recorders, radio tuners, CD players, televisions, and stereos. Occasionally, consumers might buy a home theater system that lets them combine two or more of these functions in a single device.

The .NET Framework is a critical piece of Microsoft’s developer strategy, and version 3.0 includes a number of important new features, including the ability to create better UIs and support for emerging Web services standards. But the update is shipping without the usual set of developer tools and comes at a time when the company is facing renewed competition for developers. Most notably, Adobe is taking aggressive steps to extend its Portable Document Format (PDF) and Flash technologies into a full-fledged developer platform.

Waiting for Visual Studio “Orcas”

Past releases of the .NET Framework have shipped with immediate support from Visual Studio. But this time around, Visual Studio (VS) is lagging the Framework and the “Orcas” release isn’t due until sometime in 2007. Developers have two options: use VS 2005 to build .NET Framework 3.0 applications, or use some of the prerelease tools Microsoft expects to provide in the interim.

In some cases, Microsoft is providing add-ons to VS 2005 to target the new version of the Framework, but in other cases, using VS 2005 will be more difficult: for example, it will be harder to edit a XAML file with a text editor than with a visual design tool.