"Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates spoke with USA TODAY reporter Edward C. Baig about CES and the future of the company. Edited excerpts:"

"Q: Other than Vista, what is Microsoft's biggest product at CES?

A: The Xbox 360 is our biggest thing because of what a phenomenon it is. The only real question people ask me is how they get ahold of one.

Q: OK, how do you?

A: We are making them as fast as we possibly can, and we do expect over the next three to four months availability will get a lot better.

Q: Sony will soon launch the PlayStation 3 video game system. If people can't find an Xbox, might they buy it instead?

A: We'll actually have shipped ... over 5 million (Xboxes) before anyone else comes into the market. Then (Sony) will have a year where they're supply-constrained, most likely, unless the thing is a complete flop. I mean, every video game that (sells) decently at all is supply-constrained for its first year.

I played with my family, over the holidays, over a hundred hours of Xbox. We spent over a third of the time on the arcade games, things like Zuma, because adults can sit down and feel very confident very quickly. It was a great mix, along with Kameo and basketball and golf.

Q: Two next-generation DVD formats, Blu-ray and HD DVD, are fighting to become the next standard. Where does Microsoft stand?

A: The best thing would be if both products would adopt (features such as) the ability to work well in the Windows ecosystem. As yet, we've only seen that from the HD DVD format.

That doesn't mean that Blu-ray couldn't do those things. But some of the studios involved there have had concerns about the digital world." [more]