Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer has moved to dim overaggressive projections associated with the market performance of Windows Vista. In New York, Ballmer met with Wall Street analysts and shareholders to discuss Microsoft's strategy and forecasts for the 2008 fiscal year. Microsoft's CEO referred to the Vista projections as being overly aggressive and optimistic. However, Ballmer failed to reveal Microsoft's own projections as he asked analysts to tamper their own.

"I'm really excited at how enthusiastic everybody is about Vista. The thing people forget is a new Windows release is a chance to sustain the revenue we have, every new Windows release is not necessarily a huge revenue opportunity. People are a little bit over optimistic, or more optimistic than we are about Windows revenue," Ballmer said.

And the fact of the matter is that Vista's main role is to ensure that Microsoft's dominance over the operating system's market remains as high as 95%. According to Wall Street analysts Microsoft is forecasted to announced earnings of $1.47 per share in correlation with revenue of $50.55 billion for the 2007 fiscal year. This revenue is predicted to grow as high as $56.43 billion in fiscal year 2008 with earnings of $1.70 per share.

"Some of the revenue models and revenue forecasts I've seen out there for Windows Vista are overly aggressive. I don't think that much new money will race out of the consumers pockets into PCs," Ballmer predicted.

Ballmer also noted that he expects Windows to be at the core of Microsoft's revenue throughout the 2010 fiscal year. Additionally, Microsoft's CEO sees the Windows business growing on the background of reduced piracy, but not at a major scale.