MICROSOFT TOLD me today at the ECTS show in London's Earls Court that it is preparing plans to make a common code base for PC games and for the Xbox, a shift from its past strategy. Whether this means that the Xbox II and future PCs will use the same code base is still unclear, however. Microsoft, with the first iteration of its Xbox machine, made things so that it could sell different products on its hardware, although the usual protests were heard that it was just attempting to milk consumers. It appears that Microsoft has listened to such plaints, and is considering a different direction in the future.