Digital Home Thoughts: The Seattle Times: Argo Aims Guns at More Than iPod

"Microsoft is indeed developing a digital-media player to compete with Apple's iPod, and there's much more to the story. A few details trickled out last week from music companies that Microsoft is lining up to support the device. Microsoft isn't commenting, but I was able to piece together a broader picture with some research, reporting and information from a source close to the project. What's being developed is actually a complete line of Xbox-branded digital-media products, including a device that plays media, a software media player and an online media service. The project, or at least part of it, is referred to internally at Microsoft by the code name Argo — a reference to the huge warship used by the hero Jason in Greek mythology. Argo is being developed within the Xbox group under the leadership of Xbox co-founder J Allard. His team includes people who previously worked on MSN Music, an online music service that had a promising debut in 2004 but fell victim to Microsoft's dithering over its music strategy. Now the company is firmly behind Argo. It has committed hundreds of millions to produce and market the devices."

Being named Jason, I can't help but think highly of a product that is named after the ship that carried the Greek hero on his mythical quests. More than that, however, I'm interested in seeing what Microsoft can do in this arena if they really take off the gloves. Microsoft is a massive company with billions in the bank, and a huge amount of R&D efforts - yet most of that money sits unused, and most of that R&D is offered up to partners with encouraging words of "Hey, maybe if you added this to your product...". With so many products, whether it be laptops, Tablet PCs, Portable Media Centers, Pocket PCs, or Smartphones, Microsoft can only advise their partners on how to make the product better. Then their partners turn around and decide to save 90 cents and the out of box experience is second fiddle to the iPod.

Now I'm not saying that Microsoft will have perfect execution on this, but I do feel that with every Microsoft product I've seen (keyboards, mice, Xbox, wireless routers) the overall experience and quality has been very high. Can they replicate this success with the Argo? What will their partners such as iRiver and Samsung do if they're suddenly competing with Microsoft? It will be an interesting year, that's for sure.