NYT: Bill Gates’ Last CES Keynote Was a "Snore"

January 6th, 2008 at 2:00 PM - Conferences by John Martellaro

LAS VEGAS - Bill Gates, the soon to be ex-Chairman of Microsoft, had little that was interesting to say at his CES keynote on Sunday, according to the New York Times Monday. In fact, it was a "snore."

"The headline from the speech was a series of partnerships to bring some movies and television programming both to Xbox and to MSN. At best, this is more of the same," Saul Hansell reported.

Mr. Gates mentioned that his [former] company will run the 2008 Olympics Website, and its Adobe Flash competitor Silverlight will be the only way to watch Olympic video online. Those without Silverlight will be out of luck.

In addition, Mr. Gates spoke of the digital decade, an often repeated theme about how "computers will change everything," Mr. Hansell wrote. "In a world where greeting cards talk to you, and shopping carts have display screens, there isn’t a luddite left who doesn’t understand this. And to the audience of CES, it’s a monumental snore."

Later, Mr. Robbie Bach, the president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division, joined Mr. Gates and was able to tout a Microsoft success -- it sold 17.7 million Xbox 360 consoles in 2007.

With some other minor initiatives announced including the Tellme voice recognition telephone service, Mr. Hansel was left unimpressed and thinking that nothing new would be forthcoming from Microsoft. "...the largest software company seems to be missing the most exciting game in the world," he concluded.