The blokes over at Bloomberg have a good story about M$ swallowing the bitter pill of defeat in Japan. And hoping to do better with Xeon.

"A lot of what we're doing today is to position ourselves. We're looking at the future generations where we'd like to be successful.'' said a M$ spokesperson.

Japanese consumers bought about 60,000 Xboxes last fiscal year, compared with 2.9 million Sony PlayStation 2 consoles, according to Tokyo-based market researcher Enterbrain Inc. The Xbox ranked third by sales behind PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Co.'s GameCube, according to Tokyo-based market researcher Enterbrain Inc. The companies don't report console sales by country.