So, Bill Gates gave his final keynote at CES yesterday. There were no earth-shattering revelations made regarding the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 Ultimate turned out to just be a rumor, so no built in HD DVD anytime soon. Here are the main bullet points of the event.

  • The biggest announcement seems to be a deal with ABC/Disney and MGM to bring content to Xbox Live Video Marketplace. This is probably a pretty big deal for them, given that ABC/Disney is Blu-Ray exclusive.
  • The other “big” announcement was the partnership with British Telecom to 360 IPTV service sometime in 2008. I say “big” in quotes because they made the IPTV announcement last year, and we’ve seen nothing actually happen since then.
  • Xbox Live has reached 10 million subscribers

As you can see, there really wasn’t anything special announced. On a related note, however, Dean Takahashi has posted on his blog a letter that was sent by Microsoft games chief Don Mattrick to the MS Games employees. One of the employees forwarded it to Dean and he was kind enough to post it on his blog. I actually found this letter more interesting than the announcements made at CES. Was this a missed opportunity by Microsoft?

Hit the link for Major Nelson’s post where he provides the audio from the keynote.

Link: Microsoft Keynote at CES 2008