Microsoft's on track to portable gaming and media hardware?

Just about everyone and their mother (including Jobs) has called it or called for it by now: Microsoft. MP3 player. Portable gaming device. When's it gonna happen? Well, BusinessWeek apparently has it on authority that Microsoft's sick of all the supposed "iPod killers" that are failing in their assassination attempts, and that they're matters into their own hands. So how would theirs theoretically differentiate from the rest of the pack? Says Peter Moore, "It can't just be our version of the iPod," and BizWeek states that "in addition to playing music and videos, a Microsoft device would include games." We'll cede the possibility that Microsoft may be working on Gizmondo-like portable gaming and media device -- vague though it may be -- but honestly, what would a story like this be without the grandiloquent Sim Wong Hoo, CEO of Creative, making his standard-issue self-aggrandizing statement? Says Hoo, were Microsoft to build their own hardware in addition to their own portable software platform, their hardware partners would branch off and "what [they were] trying to build will collapse." Uh, yeah.