What's to come from Microsoft? The X Box and Whistler. I'm Fred Fishkin with Bloomberg Bootcamp. The X Box is Microsoft's new high powered game machine that will go up against the likes of Sony's Playstation 2 later this year. Chairman Bill Gates gave the crowd a peak at the X Box at the Consumer Electronics Show... .and he tells us...

"X Box is a completely new generation for video gamers. And we've been spending the last few years talking with people who write games, people who play games... seeing how we could apply breakthrough software and chip technology to building a new game platform. It's probably one of the coolest things Microsoft has ever done."

There is lots of competition... especially from Sony. But Gates points out...

"Well five years ago when Sony got into this business, people didn't think they really had a chance versus the Nintendos and Segas and Ataris, people who had really been the leaders. "

Also new from Redmond this year... .the next generation of Windows, code named Whistler...

"That's taking the Windows 2000 technology and putting it onto all the consumer PCs." Consumers might say Yikes! That sounds complicated. You're putting NT on my home machine. "That's right. That's exactly what we're doing. And so the reliability and the power of NT is there, but we're also taking the user interface and making it simpler, even more approachable than Windows Millennium has been."

Gates calls it the biggest change since the introduction of Windows 95. Bootcamp, I'm Fred Fishkin, Bloomberg Radio.