
I think Microsoft knows this...
...and will not play "chicken" with the EU.
Instead, we'll see a stripped down, "crippled" version of XP, without media player, costing maybe 1 euro less than the "full" verson - and major functionality will not work until Media Player is downloaded and installed off of Microsoft's website.
Kinda like the IE-less version of Win 9x that was released a bit back.
"I'll stop calling this crew 'Orwellian' when they stop using 1984 as an operations manual." - J. Bradford DeLong