Good bye Windows, Hello Consumer Computing on Xbox and Linux on commercial PCs

Microsoft is graduating the Xbox from Game Console to PC Replacement and it means big changes for PC users. Behind all the hype of Microsoft's Natural User Interface (NUI) that utilizes your physical movements as opposed to a mouse, is a quiet revolution that is about to be unleashed that will potentially replace the Windows platform with their "Consumer Computer" Xbox platform to compete with Apple's burgeoning iOS platform and further pressure PC makers to adopt Linux.

To be blunt, Microsoft is opening the Xbox gates to the community of application developers and it's going to create a gold rush that will result in the Xbox platform being Microsoft's platform of choice for consumers looking for a user friendly computer. Microsoft is releasing a developer kit to make it easier to build applications using their Natural User Interface and sell those applications in the Xbox "Appstore". The New York Times reports, "The tools will make it easier for them to write more sophisticated programs." They quoted Don Mattrick, the president of Microsoft's interactive entertainment business as saying, " “We’re embracing that community. This is the next step in the journey.” If you open it they will build on it and that's exactly what software developers have been doing already on hacked versions of Xbox consoles. This willingness to ebrace the community will alllow the Xbox platform, which has been mainly for games, to spawn new consumer applications based around web services with the added benefit of a NUI.
The iOS has touch, Microsoft's Xbox platform has motion.

Now if Microsoft can unify their Xbox platform and Windows Mobile platform, they'll give Apple a real run for their money. But with Microsoft possibly abandoning Windows and promoting their $250 Xbox Consumer Computer, where will that leave PC manufacturers like Dell computers? There is already a huge push abroad to adopt Open Source Softare, most notably Vladimir Putin ordering all government agencies to adopt GNU/Linux by 2012, and Dell has already prepared by partnering with Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux. Canonical even has an iron in the fire of Consumer Computing with the next Ubuntu distribution of Linux to drop it's old UI for the simplified Unity Interface as well as an Application store for paid and free applications. This is all in preparatin for Dell's upcoming "Smartbook" which will run both Android and Ubuntu. And don't forget that you can already run the Linux based Android platform on your PC (albeit a hack).

For those who loved watching the PC wars, I think the CC (consumer computer) wars are going to be a blast.