Gates: console war winner won't be declared until 2007

Speaking to Bloomberg, Bill Gates commented on the recent launch and his feelings toward the future of the console war:

By the end of 2007, you'll have kind of a sense of how much did Microsoft increase its market share: dramatically,
not so dramatically, did Sony mess up, what happened?

The console war is somewhat allegorical to a cold war – there is a constant back-and-forth of technological gains, a lot of propaganda, and in the end there is no clear-cut winner. Even this generation, the PlayStation 2 holds a massive market share, but it is unclear how it has prepared Sony for the next round (it is possible they could "mess up" – look what happened with the Nintendo 64).

As with most interviews, there are a few amusing quotations, first with Mr. Gates calling the Xbox 360 ?the
hottest product we?ve ever had,? and then relating a perpetual fear he has had since before the console launched:

For the last six months, we?ve been on the edge of our seats. I hope I don?t get an e-mail saying ?Gosh, processor
yields are too low, or this plastic factory burned down in Malaysia, so we?ll have boxes but no controllers.