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Bill Gates on the 360
Engadget had a sit-down with Bill Gates at CES, and they talk for a good while about the Xbox 360's launch and subsequent issues. From the article: "We played quite a variety. Actually, the Xbox Arcade was a big thing, a lot of the adults wanted to sit down and play for five or ten minutes. It was Hexic or Zuma that were easy for them to learn the rules, get used to the controller. We had some younger kids who were just beating the heck out of me at Project Gotham Racing, Kameo, basketball, Perfect Dark Zero. We have, I think, a dozen titles in total."
Don't bother reading the article (not that most do). There's hardly any Xbox talk, and most of the rest of the stuff is freaking boring. This doesn't really belong in the Games section, IMO.
"This thing does science so hard, you say, 'I've never seen that much science.'" -Sam
"Apple has always leveraged technologies that the PC industry has driven to critical mass, the bus structures, the graphics cards, the peripherals, the connection networks, things like that, so they're kind of in the PC ecosystem and kind of not." ....
There's no way he could have said that with a straight face. It should be more like, "the PC industry has always leveraged technologies that Apple pioneered." Stuff like local area networking, laser printers, 3.5 diskettes, digital cameras, USB, Firewire,
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
(It's the department, in case you missed it.)
;-)
Come on, now, I know it's popular to bash Microsoft on Slashdot, but I don't think that even Bill Gates is dumb enough to play THAT turkey of a game! Besides, everyone knows that he plays a Shaman in World of Warcraft.
No, no, no... that's blatent mis-information
It's been widely reported on several well known gaming sites that he plays as a Human Paladin, spec'd in Retribution. A less well know fact is that RMS has indeed rolled a Orc Shaman, Restoration spec'd.
And you will find mostly commodity PC components now. Let's see:
PCI bus = check
ATA or SATA hard drive = check
ATA CD/DVD/ROM/R drive = check
Standard PC style graphics card or chip = check
USB = check (while Apple was one company in the standards body, so were Microsoft and Intel among many others)
DVI connector for monitor = check
Standard Ethernet using TCP/IP = check
And coming soon... Intel x86 CPU
Interestingly, it seems that Apple is phasing out Firewire (which it did create) in favor of USB (see iPod Shuffle, Nano and Video).
Long gone are Localtalk, ADB, NuBus etc.
One of the big trends in Apple since Steve Jobs came aboard was transitioning the Macintosh to use lower cost commodity components. This approach in addition to reducing the number of different Macintosh models and configurations, allowed for cost cutting and increased margins on Mac sales.
I'm not saying Apple hasn't innovated in the hardware space over the years, obviously it has. Today's Apple however leverages commodity hardware and innovates in overall system design, operating system and software.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
I haven't read the article but here is an pretty accurate prediction
Bill: I think the new Xbox is neet.
There I just saved you all the trouble of reading.
BG: "What the fuck!?! I thought I had canceled that piece of shit!"
Not true, in this holiday season more units of the 6 year old PS2 were sold than of the brand new XBox360.
Gates: I don't think there's any doubt we'll have a substantially higher share in this generation than we had last generation.
XBox360 sold less during the launch-month than XBox1 (in USA about 300000 instead of 500000, in Japan about 50000 instead of 123000 in the first 3 days, and just 70000 in 2005 http://www.the-magicbox.com/topten.htm) so I have lots of doubt that XBox360 will have "substantially higher share".
And I think Bill has doubts, too.
Don't forget that Sony sold 100 million units in 5 years and 9 months. Even if Microsoft keeps their new target of 4 million in the first 8 months and we assume that they continue selling at that rate forever, it would take 17 years to reach 100 million units.
To reach "substantially higher share" with the XBox360, they would need to sell more than with XBox1, right?
Well, XBox1 was sold 22 million times worldwide. Even if they can keep up 4 million / 8 months, they would need 4 years to get over that number. (Doesn't sound "substantially higher" to me) Of course they will not be able to keep up the current rate of sales and will probably never reach even the XBox1 installed base with XBox360.
That's a lie! Everyone knows that RMS only plays GPL games!
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
"And I think Bill has doubts, too. "
1) The 360 has sold fewer units to this point due to the limited supply rather than low demand. This doesn't take away from the "buzz" around the product, rather the opposite.
2) PS2 has sold over 100 million units, and the 360 will never reach that point for 2 reasons. 1) The 360 is strictly marketed to the United States. Hell Japan barely even knew a new console was coming out, same in Europe. M$ is avoiding the "Land War in Asia" against the PS3. 2) The 360 will make money from Xbox Live rather than extra units.
Too many people consider this a standard console. Sell a piece of hardware underpriced and make up the difference on a cut of every game sold.
The 360 is doing the same, but rather relying on Xbox Live membership fees and marketplace downloads. This is a business model that will strive. Every single 360 game is beautifully integrated.
I mean, we're the hottest product there was at Christmas this year.
Mr. Gates, the hottest product this holiday season was the iPod with 14 million units sold. Oh, sorry about that. That's one of the those heartburn words, sort of like "Google" or "Linux".
Sure, Windows PCs dominate the market. But so do cheap toupees.
It's not quite that cut and dried.
It is important to take note that right now the 360 is an emergent technology with a high price breakpoint, dependence on expensive peripheral hardware for optimum performance, and a very limited selection of games. This places it squarely in the enthusiast market, and units are selling accordingly.
Sometime between now and the release of the PS3 each of those factors is going to be greatly reduced. HDTV will become far more common, prices will be lowered significantly, and the available game library will be not only larger, but far more diverse. Whether the XBOX 360 will be able to have widespread success in the broad market when this occurs is unknown, but it's definitely too early to decry the launch as a failure.