Well, I finally got to listen to this episode. So many podcasts, so little time.

Steve, you didn't cover all of the subject of a standardized gaming platform in your reply to one of the Q&As. With the 3DO you had various hardware manufacturers producing 3DO. If I remember correctly you could buy a 3DO console from either Sanyo, Goldstar, or Panasonic. And Creative even came out with an ISA card that you could add to a CD-ROM equipped PC and play 3DO games. I think it was called the 3DO Blaster.
The GameBoy was never a standard in this same sense. Yes, it was a de facto standard for handhelds in the 90s, only because the competing products never gained significant market share. However, you never saw a GameBoy made by Panasonic, Philips, etc. That's a key difference and is what I thought the person asking the question was trying to get at.
Will we ever see, for example, Sony licensing the Playstation 2 technology to another electronics manufacturer, such as Samsung? Or would Microsoft sell the Xbox technology to LG for inclusion in a DVR/DVD combo unit? I don't see Sony doing this as they are a consumer electronics company. Why sell their IP to another consumer electronics company when they can make any form factor Playstation they want themselves.
However, I don't think its as far-fetched an idea with Microsoft. They are primarily a software company. They license their technologies to all kinds of computer and electronics manufacturers. Could we ever see, for example, a future Creative Zen device that plays Xbox games that you download from the web? I don't think so, but crazier things have happened in this industry.
Now on to episode 36 on my drive home from work.
