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Allard 'Gets Real' With IGN
schnikies79 writes "In an interview with IGN, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President Chief Architect J. Allard said he wants to work with competitors on the XBox 360. From the interview: 'I'm pro consumer on this one to the end,' says Allard. 'Anybody in my company who thought this was a bad idea to plug in Sony or Apple devices into this thing, I ended that conversation pretty quickly. This is the right thing to do for consumers. Once they invest $500 in their digital media library, you can't ask them to go buy a 360 music player and a 360 digital camera, and a 360...NO! They got their stuff. They're going to want to plug it in. We're going to be open here, guys. And if anything, I wish we could be more cooperative with the other companies that are doing those things. And if Sony or Apple were to call me up and say, "Hey, we want to some special things with the 360," I'm on it. I think it would not be in anybody's interest to say, we're not going to work with 360. It's good for them, it's good for us, and it's good for consumers.'"
This is the right thing to do for consumers.
I wonder who leaves Microsoft shareholder gatherings covered in rotten tomatoes!
Do you like German cars?
I hope for the sake of the consumers, that he get's his way.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
How about the numerous tests, both independent and Microsoft-sponsored that show iPods and PSP's interfacing with the 360?
I bet it'll turn out to be satire in the end.
For Apple or Sony to approach him is a very large 'IF'.
Sony wants to sell its PS[n], while it may be good for the camera end of Sony or the Music end of Sony, they're probably not so far apart these days as to assist a competitor of the video game console end of Sony.
Microsoft's Corporate Vice President Chief Architect J. Allard said he wants to work with competitors on the XBox 360.
"Come in to my parlour", said the spider to the fly.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Strange, if microsoft feels that way why don't they release controllers or cameras for the playstation2? Oh that's because they wouldn't want to risk the industry standardizing on anything but their product. Could that be the same reason apple and sony aren't jumping at the opportunity jump on the 360 bandwagon... maybe.
Shadus
Haven't certified a game yet? And launch is less than a month away? Sounds like there's going to be some supply problems in the very near future.
My Video Blog!
Read my previous thoughts on this matter here: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=16623 3&cid=13866885
He may be telling the truth but I have a hard time believing him.
Actually, I may believe him but it's hard to imagine 1 Microsoft guy doing something that every one of their MBAs and Gates himself do not want.
Microsoft has been fighting open standards/interfaces for 2-3 decades.
I think I speak for all of us when I see WE'LL BELIEVE IT WHEN WE SEE IT!
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
One of Microsoft's Corporate Vice Presidents saying the following,
It's good for them, it's good for us, and it's good for consumers.
Makes me think...
The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he does not exist.
*kicks consumer in the nuts*
"Hey buddy, I'm not kicking you in the nuts!"
*kicks consumer in the nuts*
...then why are the games and system region-coded?
If he really was concerned about the consumers, why not create products to plug into the Playstation/PSP or the IPod?
Forgive my cynicism, but I think the main reason is because Apple's IPod and Sony's Playstation have a much larger share than Microsoft's XBox. Of course, Microsoft would want to play "fair", since it'll benefit the XBox 360 more than it would benefit the products of the other companies.
Why shouldn't this happen? Microsoft is never going to be on the forefront of the device market. Why not make it compatible with Apple and Sony devices? Then they can stick it to Apple and say they're open with their technologies, why is iTunes and iPod such closed devices. They are not losing market share with this ploy, but they are going to get a lot of positive PR.
That is, if you don't start charging a license fee to plug into the 360... Then we'll see how many other companies produce products for it.
what does the slashdot crowd do when, shock and horror, after spending years repeating the same litany of simple lessons about intellectual property, interoperability, secure code, etc., that someone in the industry actually wakes up and starts listening and says "yeah, you're right" and changes their practices accordingly?
i think some of you have based your entire understanding of reality on the fact that these guys will just never get it
well, and i'm not saying this 360 move is it or not, what if someday they actually get it?
a 500,000 ton tanker has difficulty changing course, but, lo and behold, that doesn't mean it can't actually change course, SLOWLY, but inevitably
these guys just might come around to the slashdot crowd's way of thinking after all
then what will the slashdot crowd do? what will be their purpose for living then? LOL
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"They're being a little sloppy with the CPU, they're being a little sloppy with the discs, they're being a little sloppy with their formats and compression to make launch."
Wow man, thanks for pushing me to the other side of the fence on the "Buy a 360" or not question.
Seriously though, I played one at Walmart the other day, and the Kong game had terrible aliasing problems. Edges on most everything looked very, very blocky, and I was surprised they put the game out there looking like that.
Like I said, we geeks at Slashdot have been fighting Microsoft's desire to dominate the industry with monopolistic tendencies for the past 2-3 decades.
How many of us have coded Open Source applications that try to read in Microsoft files. It's not easy. Look at how long it took us to get OpenOffice.org able to read and write back *.doc files decently.
As if you need another example, look at XML. Microsoft wants their own XML. Get real.
They'd own all of us if they could. Their goal is to show profit and that's it, they don't give 2 sh*ts about you my friend. They want to get you into their products and make you buy more and more from them.
The XBOX 360 better let me use a standard Firewire/USB to browse files I have on other devices. Just what do you expect from a $500 piece of plastic and $70 game system?
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
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2. Extend
3. Extinguish
Or has everyone forgotten?
How can we trust Microsoft to leave open standards and not pigeon-hole us into their entertainment platform after they've spent the past 20 years doing the exact opposite to the Windows platform?
This is not about open standards. This is classic double-speak, in the Orwellian tradition. This is saying "we are opening up the Xbox 360" when what they are *really* saying is "we have the Xbox 360 and we would like all other companies to open their products up to it." He's painting MS as the good guy and backhandedly saying it's everybody else's fault if they don't want to make products that conform to MS's vision.
All MS has done with the 360 is make it mass-storage compliant. So it'll work with any other device that's also mass storage compliant. Then he says something to the effect of "but if other companies who are not mass storage compliant would like to make 360 products, we'd love to have them." In other words, "Oh, so the iPod doesn't support Janus? Well, that's Apple's fault, isn't it?"
I hope nobody is fooled by this. Of course, every company - Sony, Nintendo, MS, whoever - would love it if all their competitors suddenly started supporting their products. But business doesn't work that way. MS knows that, but they're obviously trying to sell consoles here. This is called "public relations".
Is it good that the Xbox 360 is mass storage compliant and supports Windows DRM? I guess the first part of that is ok, though nothing special, and the last part is not something I'm really interested in. But the spin that's being put on this is really intended to make MS's competitors look bad for not toeing MS's line; it's not about actually doing anything for the consumer, because MS must know that they're really not doing anything for the consumer.
I say someone from Sun should call him up trying to get a 360 OpenDocument viewer going.
I guess my real question is: will they allow people to run Linux or BSD on the 360 without having to hack the hardware?
Although we will have to wait and see Allard certainly is saying the right things. More importantly, Sony has a slightly more powerful machine, but MS has XBox live. Any gamer knows, live is pretty sick, and PS3 has no answer to it. As more details are revealed about both systems, xbox seems to be more conducive to both large and small developers, again, bad for sony.
PS3's big plus over the xbox is Blu-ray (if it takes off). However, if the telco and cable company's multi-billion dollar push for streaming high def video over the web takes off, then hd-dvd and lu-ray will become obsolete before they hit shelfs... only good for storage.
I don't know who will win this round, but right now my money is on the xbox. Sony is loosing allot more money then MS is on each console, and the console is really that more powerful, at least according to the dozens of developers I've talked to/ worked with. I personally haven't developed for either yet, but anticipate I will sometime next year. The developers I talked too aren't in love with the cell at all. Apparently you really can't use all the cores the way you would expect.
I'm going to buy both consoles, but I'm really not the average user... it will be interesting to see how sony handles xbox's initial success this year.
They're going to want to plug it in. [...] And if Sony or Apple were to call me up and say, "Hey, we want to some special things with the 360,"
and I'm sure they are going to tell them where they can plug it in.
Back in the day, Allard was one of the first guys to champion Microsoft's adoption of TCP/IP. Later, he got pulled into "Project 42", a disastrous attempt to come up with some Windows monstrosity that was supposed to counter thin-client platforms (like Java) but never got off the ground despite its team of fifteen hundred. After that he took a leave of absence, and only agreed to come back if he got to lead the development efforts for the Xbox and do it free of bureaucracy. They call Allard and some of the other guys like him "Baby Bills".
Tristan Yates
How about the numerous tests, both independent and Microsoft-sponsored that show iPods and PSP's interfacing with the 360?
As long as the iPod has its mp3's stored in the iPod's mass storage area (in other words, so you can't actually play them through the iPod) and they actually are mp3's, and not DRM'd AAC files from the iTunes Music Store.
For both of these reasons, the 360's "iPod support" is completely useless. You can't buy a song from Apple, sync your iPod with your PC, then connect it to the 360 and play those songs. You can't even do it with your own ripped files from CD, unless you manually drag them over to a folder on your iPod, which your iPod then doesn't even know exists (but the Xbox 360 does).
The PSP support is probably different, because as I understand it, with the PSP you just dump a bunch of mp3 files into a folder and it plays them. Still, there's nothing revolutionary about being able to get these files off there. It's just transferring a bunch of files from one device to another.
Did... did we just enter Bizarro World? I'm confused... Does Bizarro Microsoft give its programs out for free and have everyone drooling over them while trying to fight the evil Bizarro Linux empire from patenting air?
Should I be expecting a hot super model to show up naked at my door step?
Hell, in Bizarro World, why not!
Way to sell your new system. I don't know about anyone else, but I read that as 'We're really rushing this thing to market to beat Sony, and the early games might be as botched as that EA football game on the PSP, but hey! In a year from now, we'll probably have figured out how to do some really neat stuff!' And then adding on the next page, 'In the meantime, you can buy all these cool customised fascias! That's gotta be worth something, right?'
You must think in Russian.
Really, they may be on to something here, and it could increase sales greatly. You could use iTunes to load up your iPod, and not own a "proper" PC or Apple computer. I don't think that they are trying to compete with Nintendo at all - Nintendo has taken the Revolution far enough afield, you could almost say it is in a different genre of games console from the MS and Sony products. That just leaves the PS3. Including a feature like this could help encourage consumers to adopt the XBox 360 before the PS3 release occurs. It might be a valid selling point for homes without a PC, allowing them to use those digital devices to their full extent without a PC.
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2) Microsoft likely don't care, so long as your boats dock at their port.
3) The last thing Microsoft needs is for Apple to succeed with their digital hub thing. Giving up the peripheral market they never had to competitors in order to maintain their control of the 'hub' is probably A-OK.
4) Peripherals are more competitive and diverse than whatever you plug them into anyway. I doubt Microsoft really want that kind of stress.
5) Mind/marketshare matters more at this point than total control, and if people know the 360 works with everything, they'll be more likely to buy one. Once they get people hooked on their goodies, it's much easier to fuck them over. People are more likely to buy the next XBox than some other thing if they already have one.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
What's he doing specifically to ensure the XBox is different than every previous "embrace and extend" Microsoft campaign? What's not different is that he's telling the media the MS wants to be "open, consumer-driven, interoperable", that they've "learned the lesson", that "this time will be different". Talk is cheap - vendor lockin is expensive.
--
make install -not war
which is worse: drm or a microsoft product?
That's a bit of a false dichotomy -- do you seriously think that M$ won't sneak DRM in there?
My sig is too lon
In one fell swoop they've put reverse engineers out of action. Now if you want to make an Apple or Sony device interoperate with an X-Box 360 you won't have to hack your device or install a mod-chip. How selfish! They put a whole industry out of business. How typical of Microsoft to shaft people this way.
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So why would a corporation try to spin themselves as "pro-consumer"? One of two reasons:
It really is that simple. Any corporation that isn't seeking to maximize profits for its shareholders is liable for all kinds of nasty lawsuits. The only question is how many dirty tricks are shareholders willing to put up with, how nasty of a reputation can be put forth before non-captive consumers turn their backs, and just how vicious can they become before the government steps in and smacks their noses with a rolled up legal code?
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
The reason for this is really very simple: MS was late to the market and as a result they weren't able to dominate the market. By opening up the XBox to play other formats they are opening up the market for their device. Microsoft hasn't changed its stripes. They only want to work with their competitors when its financially beneficial for them to do so.
Nice to see that this "pro consumer" attitude unfortunately doesn't extend to the video parts of the Xbox 360, which require a Windows Media Centre PC and only supports WMV.
If they'd just allowed the usual video formats, they'd have a sure fire winner. For now, I'm sticking to my Xbox with XBMC as my HTPC.
But iPods and PSPs can only be used as media storage/retrieval devices, right? Last I heard you can't use an external storage device like the iPod or the PSP as a memory card or a replacement for the XBox HD.
So it seems to me like the XBox 360 is only open in a very limited sense.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The iPod just uses a hidden folder called iPod_Control that stores all the MP3s. There's no special "mass storage area" because it's all one big HFS+/FAT32 drive, so anything that cares to look for the folder can scan through it and see all the MP3s. What's more, the hidden iPod database file format is fairly well known at this point, so there's no reason that Microsoft couldn't open the DB file and display all your playlists exactly as the iPod does. Furthermore, it will actually play AAC files - you're correct in saying "not DRMed AAC files from the iTMS), but I'm actually rather impressed they added unencrypted AAC support.
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
Ballmer might have some rotten tomatoes for this guy...!
I think you misspelled "high-velocity chairs".
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
Just for the sake of repeating what I've been saying all along, this is nothing new. No, I don't mean MS was ever sincerely for open standards, but then they never were sincerely all against them. Corporations do not have ideologies and crusades, they just want to make money, and are _supposed_ to be inconsistent (and arguably even sociopaths) in that pursuit. If what's good for business today or just in a different market segment is different from what was good for business yesterday, a corporation won't stick to an ideology and Right Way like a nerd would. They will do an about face and argue the exact opposite as if it always said that.
And I don't mean only MS. Everyone. We even had sad cases like Sun which flipped between arguing opposites (e.g., between "we love Linux and open standards dearly" and "Proprietary Solaris is teh rule! Linux is teh suck! Die! Die! Die!") within the same day.
And to that end:
- when you're in the lead, you want closed proprietary (and preferrably patented) stuff to keep your customers locked in. You want a penned market segment that you can shear as you see fit. See patented connectors, the unix fragmentation, etc.
- when you're the one fighting uphill, you want open standards and anything that'll let you have a go at everyone else's penned customers
And MS in the console market is finding itself fighting uphill against Sony. (Which, as the conspiracy theory goes, was always MS's target. Nintendo was more like collateral damage.) Guess what they'll want? Right. Open standards and interfaces.
It's not that MS wouldn't like you to be locked in the XBox camp. It's that the priority now is: they don't want you locked in Sony's camp. That's all.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.