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Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface

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41–50 of 78 posts

Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface

#41
post #29

I wonder if they could sell Xbox to Lenovo for $huge. I don't think consoles are going to do very well this time -- mobile gaming killed the market for 'people who will tolerate lower spec hardware because it's convenient', and IIRC the PS3/360 were better relative to $2k PCs when launched than the PS4/Xbone are today relative to $2k PCs. The PS3/360 have been pretty mediocre for years, so the PS4/Xbone are going to…

I don't play games at all but saying that gamers moved to mobile games is beyond silly.

Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface

#43

It doesn't make a lot of sense for Microsoft to kill XBox. Killing XBox would mean throwing away a successful line of business that is finally generating substantial profit after nearly a decade of investment. It would also be terrible for morale at the company. Here is a scrappy part of the business that went into a market where Microsoft was laughed off when it entered: game consoles. And after a dozen years, they'…

> to a dominant, #1 position with the XBox 360

Only in the US. Globally it certainly wasn't dominant and was probably behind the PS3.

Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface

#44
post #15
post #12

Killing Xbox is a slippery slope; this would slowly kill Windows as a gaming platform.

Well they already killed their XNA framework...

Regardless how much XNA was praised, it was a indie only thing.

The majority of professional studios still use C++ based engines.

Unity is the Microsoft's endorsed replacement for XNA, as announced in the Visual Studio 2013 release keynote.

Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface

#45
post #20

One word: Idiots. Seriously, those investors are morons. MS has never been a a company that fits the adjective: "lean". MS is practically a post-secondary institution unto itself! MS' far-reaching speculative research is the stuff of legend, and far too infrequently translated into the commercial sphere. Anyone who thinks they should narrow their focus and ignore more of the fruits of their labor instead of less is a…

Well, not necessarily idiots. I'm sure they understand the longer term value of those brands and products to Microsoft. Investors are not necessarily in it for the long-term, though. They might buy a substantial stake, pressure the CEO into cutting valuable (but currently loss-making) divisions, and be looking to sell that stake after a couple of really strong-looking quarters.

None of that is good for Microsoft, but the investors are potentially behaving quite rationally. (if a bit destructively...)

Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface

#46
post #13

Killing XBox brand and not killing Windows Phone? I don't understand. WP8 is getting numbers hugely thanks to very cheap Lumia 520, which, to my understanding, is barely generating any profit or is even generating loss. And even then I haven't seen anyone who said "Wow, this is great, my next phone must have WP in it!"... a priori fanbois aside.

Anecdotal but I've seen a few friends, some techie that want /use the windows phone. Seems to appeal to the "I just want a damn phone" crowd.

Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface

#47
post #32
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering just how big of a financial black hole Xbox has been throughout the years, it's not surprising. Some sources say the 360 lost about 3 billion[1] while others that it lost 2.5 billion PER year[2]. The Xbone lost about 1 billion dollars so far (was expected to lose 2)[3] And it's not just Microsoft that is losing money on these consoles, Sony is in the read as well. [4] [1]: http://www.neowin.net/news/repor…

Why should MS invest in hardware, when PC's offer better hardware, run the windows store to share profit with MS and have good enough DRM(as steam shows, and might even be improved by working with pc manufacturers) ? Most likely in the future, MS will do something similar to steam - just sell software for so called "consoles", and have hardware partners. That will help with the losses issues.

I honestly don't know, especially with Valve's Steambox on the way. It was a losing fight from the beginning, and this generation is already doomed right from the start.

Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface

#48
post #20

One word: Idiots. Seriously, those investors are morons. MS has never been a a company that fits the adjective: "lean". MS is practically a post-secondary institution unto itself! MS' far-reaching speculative research is the stuff of legend, and far too infrequently translated into the commercial sphere. Anyone who thinks they should narrow their focus and ignore more of the fruits of their labor instead of less is a…

More or less...

Microsoft started as business software company, then switched to be a OS company, when this happened, their dev software divisions for example were assigned to support Windows, not develop on their own.

After Bill Gates left, that Ballmer tried to do several things at the same time, resulting specially into a Windows division detached from everything else, MS stopped making good games for windows, stopped making tools specially geared to windows (tools obviously still work, and depend on windows, but Visual Studio team is not a "windows API" team anymore, and a team on its own, with its own profits and vision), and so on.

Then they alienated windows costumers with a insistence in driver changes and creating shitty drivers (like... Xinput, instead of using the still much better Direct Input). And the destruction of some of their most popular services (ie: MSN Messenger, in Brazil people used solely the MSN Messenger to communicate, and mostly on windows, MS killed it in favour of Skype, and shot themselves in the foot HARD, because Skype is crap, and so people use other stuff)

Then they alienated Xbox costumers with the shitty Xbox one (less power than PS4, more expensive, and their headless chicken policy decision making).

They don't have a choice now, the only stuff that they are STILL making right is the business software side, everything else (costumer facing windows, xbox, mobile, games, etc...) became a sort of trainwreck.

Going "lean" on the business side, and later rebuilding the other side is possible, but trying to fix everything at once I think is much harder.

Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface

#49
post #4

Listen, I'm no fan of Microsoft, but those investors better keep their hands of the ergonomic keyboard product line, or I'll... I'll... probably have to stockpile them? Seriously though, the ergo 4000 is the best keyboard I've ever owned and I'd hate to see it gone by the hand of somebody who just doesn't care enough.

I already have a small stockpile, but I might have to make it a larger one.

Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface

#50
post #29

I wonder if they could sell Xbox to Lenovo for $huge. I don't think consoles are going to do very well this time -- mobile gaming killed the market for 'people who will tolerate lower spec hardware because it's convenient', and IIRC the PS3/360 were better relative to $2k PCs when launched than the PS4/Xbone are today relative to $2k PCs. The PS3/360 have been pretty mediocre for years, so the PS4/Xbone are going to…

I don't play games at all but saying that gamers moved to mobile games is beyond silly.

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