The latest series of patent requests from Microsoft are showing that the war for the living room, PC, Entertainment and Games might be realized by MS first as they are the only player besides Apple with any hope of getting there, the only thing that apple is missing is a console. PMPToday States:

What does this mean to us, that there will be various combinations possible for the system that would allow the user to have the system share resources to do certain tasks. Now does this mean that you’ll be playing Halo 3 on your Zune while Xbox is helping out with all of its CPU power? Maybe. While we think that you will not going to be cruising in your warthog on your Zune any time soon, the possibility that this gaming system describes can definitely utilize all your devices to create an ultimate experience… Source PMPToday

This makes all sorts of long range sense, in that the company that can provide DVD/HD DVD, games, music, TV downloads, and have an ecostructure to support interoperability will mean more in the longer run than the current state of the living room with a little something from everyone.