Amid much pomp and fanfare in Las Vegas--including an appearance by pro wrestling's The Rock--Microsoft's chairman takes the wraps off the long-awaited game platform.

Microsoft's entry into the video game business will no doubt inspire a number of marketing gimmicks, but it will be hard to top Saturday's--Bill Gates sharing a stage with professional wrestler "The Rock."

The only-in-Vegas pairing happened as Gates took the wraps off the Xbox, Microsoft's highly anticipated bid to gain a chunk of the lucrative video game market and the software giant's biggest detour yet from the PC business.

"There's a revolution that's about to take place in game consoles," Gates promised before removing a black shroud covering an Xbox unit.The Xbox debut was the finale of Gates' keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show, during which the Microsoft XBox chairman also previewed Whistler, the next consumer version of the Windows operating systems, and showed prototypes of a number of Pocket PC-powered gadgets.

The technical details of the Xbox--scheduled to go on sale this October backed by a US$500 million marketing campaign--have been known since March. Gates, however, used the CES appearance to show off the actual box and its sophisticated graphics capabilities.

The main unit is a squarish black box that looks more like an expensive clock radio, and the controllers are not surprisingly similar to Microsoft's Sidewinder game controllers for the PC.

More important than the plastic, though, were the game demonstrations. Graphical software performance is one of the factors that will determine how well the Xbox will do against Sony's PlayStation 2. If the demonstration is any indication, the companies are destined for tight competition.

Gates and Seamus Blackley, head of Microsoft's Xbox division, ran demos of several Xbox titles, which featured detailed graphics and smooth animation that looked more like a Disney movie than current video games.

"If there's an area where breakthroughs in hardware and software could really change the business, it's got to be video games," Gates said. "This is a breakthrough device. It's a new thing for Microsoft."

Power to the artists

Numerous game developers have complained that market leader Sony made its new PlayStation 2 console so difficult to program that current games harness only a fraction of its power.

"One of the basic premises of the Xbox is to put the power in the hands of the artist," Blackley said, which is why Xbox developers "are achieving a level of visual detail you really get in 'Toy Story.' "

Among the Xbox titles in development is a World Wrestling Federation game, leading to the closing appearance by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who noted a number of similarities with the software guru. "Both The Rock and Bill Gates are known worldwide for their vast array of catch phrases," the wrestler noted.

In addition to the Xbox shenanigans, Gates also echoed Intel CEO Craig Barrett's keynote the night before by describing a future where theatre systems in wirelessly networked homes. Naturally, Gates opined that Microsoft software will be the glue that binds it all together.

"The PC is going to be the place where you store the information and really the centre of control," he said. "Software is the key to making sure we don't have islands of information."

XBox Console Tour