It’s the holidays, and you are a happy and spoiled child. All you want from your caretakers is an Xbox 360 because you’d really not like to be the only kid in school without one. You’d also like to trash talk to people anonymously online because you’re short. That’s sucks for you kid, because there might be no Christmas for you if the U.S. decides to ban the Xbox 360 (if you’re in Germany right now, this scenario is already true!).
The Xbox 360 is apparently violating four patents of Motorola’s, including WiFi and video codec patents. The best case scenario for the U.S. population who are fans of Xbox would be if the International Trade Commission (ITC) viewed in favor of Microsoft, and that Motorola would provide access to those patents of concern under reasonable terms. The worst case scenario is obvious. A Microsoft representative released a statement to IGN that cast Microsoft in an optimistic light and gave readers out there hope that there would still be an Xbox 360: “The recommendation by the Administrative Law Judge is the first step in the process leading to the Commission’s final ruling. We remain confident the Commission will ultimately rule in Microsoft’s favor in this case and that Motorola will be held to its promise to make its standard essential patents available on fair and reasonable terms.”
Even though this looks like it could go really badly (with Germany already banning both the Xbox 360 and Windows 7 phone earlier this month), the process for this ruling will take quite a bit of time anyway. If the decision passes through the ITC, it will ultimately end up at the White House where President Obama and his advisers hold the final ruling. Hey, let’s hope Obama is a fan of Xbox, right?
Microsoft has argued to Judge Shaw (Mr. Xbox 360 buzz-kill) that a ban on the sales and import of Xbox 360 would be unfair to consumers because then we would have limited options. Shaw’s response was the Sony and Nintendo would have to pick up the slack. I know only having a choice of two consoles instead of three may be a #FirstWorldProblem, but there are reasons why I play my Xbox more than the other systems I have. Can you ban awesome? I guess we’ll find out. There are no indications of what would happen to existing console’s services (such as Xbox Live) if the ban really did go into effect, and no indications of how this will effect developments of mysterious future consoles. Stay tuned!
[Source: IGN]
