microsoft gamefest

flew from la to seattle on sunday to attend microsofts annual gamefest event. picked up some inside information on the windows vista release and support of 'live anywhere' -- microsofts attempt to extend the xbox live community features to the pc and mobile market. they had a few different content tracks during the conference. I attended the production and xbox live tracks that were more relevant to online.
got some insight into the xbox live guide interface and microsofts plans to alllow developers to customize it to their own needs. they will start to offer consumable digital goods and are building more support for ingame marketplace transactions. they're still ultimately owning the business relationship with the user however. i'm thinking that sony will adopt the same strategy as it just makes sense to do so.
i think the more compelling area of investment for developers will be in creating the in-game relevant shopping experiences. figuring out how to create a sense of value of purchasable objects within a game that will push the customer to purchase micro pieces of content within the game. this is where i plan to focus my energy and attention.
microcontent business transactions will ultimately be controlled by the services/platforms, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for the software companies to step in and establish their own business relationships with customers. MS policy is to not allow developers to gather user billing info through the xbox live service, however, there is nothing that i'm aware of that is stopping EA from creating business relationships with the customer through other mechanisms (web or pc). the question is, will xbox live support the distribution of content to the xbox when ownership is tracked through other means? will the xlsp allow distribution of content to hard drives or not?