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Ballmer Justifies 360's Costs
Next Generation follows up on news last week of the enormous financial burden the 360's launch has placed on Microsoft. CEO Steve Ballmer sent around an email discussing the company's bright outlook with the new console. From the article: "While Xbox 360 hardware itself is the most prominent area of videogame-related investment, Ballmer indicated that further development of Xbox Live is also integral to the success of the platform and its respective division, saying, "We must execute our Live strategy with speed and precision." Relatedly, Live's downtime yesterday has resulted in an underwhelming feature addition: messaging.
Microsoft has always said that the console race is a marathon, not a sprint. However, this initial costly sprint remains important during a period when the company boasts the only next generation system on the market.
A marathon where you're bleeding money for most of the race. Sure hope another company doesn't zip past you on a bicycle or something.
Sendou Wave Kick!!
Well.. MS Vista doesn't really contain any benefits for gamers, in any way.
However, MS Vista does contain DirectX 10-- and as far as has been announced so far, DirectX 10 will only be available for MS Vista. Before long, DirectX 10 is going to be required to play any new video games. So if you want to keep playing video games and get all the features and whatnot, you are going to have to upgrade to Vista. So you just have to learn to think like Microsoft. The way you probably think, "focused on gamers" means "designed to appeal to gamers and make gamers want to buy it". The way Microsoft thinks, "focused on gamers" means "we will be forcing gamers to buy it".
In other words, Vista is "focused at gamers" the same way a sniper rifle might be "focused at" someone unexpectedly running across the White House lawn.
At least MS recognizes they can't live on keyboards and mice alone and the future of computing for the masses will not be driven by PCs, but by game consoles, TVs, iPods, cars, and many other non-PC based that integrate into everyday life.
It's all about the user experience, not the keyboard.
But it still remains to be seen how well MS competes in a world dominated by primarily device-driven devices - particularly since this seems almost the exact opposite of their business model and strengths.
Except thats totally wrong. They got blown out of the water by Sony, and lost to Nintendo in 2 out of 3 markets (only winning in the US). In total, they ended up about on par with nintendo, while losing 3 billion over the lifetime of the product. Thats not a success, if I owned MS stock I'd be wanting the people in charge fired.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?