Bill Gates has rarely been accused of being coy when defending his company and its products. In an interview with Red Herring magazine, Gates spoke passionately about Microsoft's upcoming Xbox console and Sony's competing PlayStation 2. Gates feels that the Xbox will provide a technological leap in graphics over competing consoles and sees the console industry as conducive to new entrants like Microsoft.

　　"PlayStation is the leader at the moment. Nintendo was the leader. Atari was the leader. If there was ever a business where no company has been the leader for two generations in a row, it's video games," commented Gates. "There has been a company who has dominated operating systems for several generations. No, we weren't at first the leader in word processors, or network software, or browsers. But in video games, as new platforms have come along, it has been the company that has been able to conceptualize the platform as being more powerful who have been able to take the lead. Now, Sony is a great company and is actually a partner of ours in a huge number of things. But in the case of video games, Xbox and PlayStation 2 are actually going to compete. They're only slightly different time frames: PlayStation 2 is out this year and Xbox is out next year. In terms of richness of its graphics, having a hard disk storage, and what you can do with stored images and music, with interactivity - the disk, and the power we have in the platform, just brings it to a whole new level. You won't even think of PlayStation 2 and Xbox as being in the same generation."

　　The PlayStation 2 will be released in October in the US. The Xbox is currently on schedule for a fall 2001 launch. Gates and Microsoft plan to implement a US$500 million marketing campaign to support the launch of the console.