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Ballmer Sounds Off

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the he'd-kick-my-ass-at-poker-and-monkey-dancing dept.

PreacherTom writes "Steve Ballmer shares his thoughts on the Web 2.0 phenomenon, Zune, XBox, Vista, Bill's upcoming 2008 retirement, the future of Microsoft, and other subjects. For example, regarding the GooTube deal: "Right now, there's no business model for YouTube that would justify $1.6 billion. And what about the rights holders? At the end of the day, a lot of the content that's up there is owned by somebody else. The truth is what Google is doing now is transferring the wealth out of the hands of rights holders into Google." He's blunt, if nothing else."

2 of 335 comments (clear)

  1. Ballmer Ignoring Reality Of Xbox 360 Mess by RichardMarks · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The Xbox 360 is selling worse than the first Xbox.
    The 360 is completely dead in Japan.
    The 360 hasn't even broke a million sold in Europe.
    And in what is supposed to be the strongest market for the Xbox, the US,

    http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_conte nt&task=view&id=3978&Itemid=2

    The 360 has sold less units in its first year compared to the first Xbox.

    And all of this during a time where their only competition was the six year old PS2 that has been beating the 360 almost every single month this year.

    There was talk of Microsoft using profits from the 360 to fund the Zune going up against Apple, but the massive 360 losses keep getting pushed out into the future. Right now best case scenario is 2008. Although the massive money they must be spending on fixing the huge numbers of defective 360s for free will certainly push that date ever more.

    Microsoft talked of having 10 million 360s in consumer hands by the end of 2006, but right now they have only sold 3.4 million worldwide. ~2.4 in NA, 0.14 in Japan, and 1 million in Europe.

    And the Wii and PS3 are one month from hitting the shelves. It is hard to imagine that 360 sales will pick up when faced with the two biggest names in console gaming arriving in the market with their new consoles.

  2. Re:let's face it... by advocate_one · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    mods on crack again... can't recognise a valid comment when it smacks them in the face. Just look at the serious debate it sparked off...

    --
    Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.