Perhaps, but Microsoft (and in a way Stardock) are in unique positions to leverage their other existing technological assets. If Gameboy, PSP, etc. each run on a custom-made OS, that must have taken a lot of development time and money to create. Rather than re-invent the wheel and have to invest assets into something new, Microsoft - thanks to its existing OS tech - was able to just modify something they already had.

Anyway, my point being that while a potential side-effect is that other vendors see how flexible Microsoft's OS is, it's not the primary reason behind MS using the Win2000 core. IMO, the primary reason is that it saves them a lot of time and money to reuse existing assets. In a way this harkens back to one of my articles on game company efficiency.