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Microsoft Considered Giving Away Original Xbox

Posted by timothy on from the could've-been-a-cue-cat dept.

donniebaseball23 writes While the term 'Xbox' is firmly implanted in every gamer's mind today, when Microsoft first set out to launch a console in 2001, people weren't sure what to expect and Microsoft clearly wasn't sure what approach to take to the market. As Xbox co-creator Seamus Blackley explained, "In the early days of Xbox, especially before we had figured out how to get greenlit for the project as a pure game console, everybody and their brother who saw the new project starting tried to come in and say it should be free, say it should be forced to run Windows after some period of time." Blackley added that other ideas were pushed around at Microsoft too, like Microsoft should just gobble up Nintendo. "Just name it, name a bad idea and it was something we had to deal with," he said.

85 comments

  1. AND they stole Halo from the PC world.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I'm still peeved about that Bungie gobble up

    1. Re:AND they stole Halo from the PC world.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Eh. Compared to what was available on the PC at the time, it was a so-so FPS with an okay story (cool lore though, shame the books aren't better), it didn't really come into its own until two sequels later.

    2. Re:AND they stole Halo from the PC world.... by Penguinisto · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Agreed. if it weren't for Halo and the subsequent lock-in to that console, I suspect the XBox wouldn't have really gotten anywhere.

      Consider that the XBox was still a massive money-sink for years on end, and I daresay that it has still not yet reached its overall ROI, let alone a profit. If it were built/sold by any company other than Microsoft (or similar behemoth-sized), the company would have gone broke years ago from it. They may eventually reach ROI and turn a profit, but I think that's still a couple of years off at best, and after that, I have no idea what kind of profit margin it would have.

      My best guess is that Microsoft wanted to (and is still desperately trying to) make the XBox into a home media center, to the exclusion of everything else (DVRs, dedicated DVD/Blu-Ray players, etc). They may still latch on a cablecard/sat receiver, and maybe some tie-in to "The Internet of Things" (or whatever buzzphrase is being used nowadays), so that it becomes the brain of the "smart home"(ditto), so as to lock-in a potential market. But then, people being what they are, they stubbornly go out and buy tablets, 3rd-party home alarm/HVAC controllers, decide to use Dish instead of DirecTV or Comcast, run out and buy a Sling/AppleTV/Roku box, etc. I think it's that diversity (and the entrenchment of the players in it) which has kept them from making that final drive. This in the end may well turn the whole XBox thing into a permanent anchor on Microsoft's profit margins unless costs are cut somewhere... which makes me wonder why the shareholders haven't demanded that the console be made profitable or else.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    3. Re:AND they stole Halo from the PC world.... by afidel · · Score: 1

      The Games division is net -300-400M over the last 12 years, up significantly since Q4 2012 where they were net -3B and the XBox One's losses are significantly smaller than the previous two generations at the same point in the cycle despite the recent price cuts. I'm not sure how much knowledge sharing there's been between the gaming division and the Azure division, but if the MS marketing is anywhere near the truth then it's likely that at least some of that groups significant profitability was gained through experience in the gaming division (kind of like how GE can lose money on the generating part of a power plant but make money on the financing or vice versa depending on how they want to structure the deal).

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    4. Re:AND they stole Halo from the PC world.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They where working on DISH and DIRECTV DRV's / PC tuners but I don't think they left the lab.

      We did get the cable card mess (for the few that it worked for)

    5. Re:AND they stole Halo from the PC world.... by batkiwi · · Score: 1

      You mean from the Apple/Mac world...

    6. Re:AND they stole Halo from the PC world.... by nedlohs · · Score: 1

      Halo was going to be a Windows and Mac release: http://www.ign.com/articles/19...

      Of course it would have been a different game anyway...

    7. Re:AND they stole Halo from the PC world.... by sectokia · · Score: 1

      The point is they are making 0.3b after having sunk what appears to be $11b. ouch.

  2. They might as well have. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    After all was said and done, the Xbox lost Microsoft 4 billion dollars. They bought their way in.

    1. Re:They might as well have. by Penguinisto · · Score: 3, Interesting

      More than that... in 2012, I had once estimated that they blew $7bn on the enterprise, and though they're raking in something like $200m/yr (IIRC) in profits now
      (mostly from dev house licensing), they have yet to fill that titanic money hole they dug with the thing.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    2. Re:They might as well have. by aliquis · · Score: 1

      More than that... in 2012, I had once estimated that they blew $7bn on the enterprise, and though they're raking in something like $200m/yr (IIRC) in profits now
      (mostly from dev house licensing), they have yet to fill that titanic money hole they dug with the thing.

      Value of brand recognition?

      Being relevant in consumer products?

    3. Re:They might as well have. by Penguinisto · · Score: 1

      Value of brand recognition?

      So, wait - who exactly in the First World does not know what Microsoft is and does by now?

      Being relevant in consumer products?

      This one I can sort of agree with, though most of their efforts in this space have flopped spectacularly: MSNTV, Kin, PocketPC, Zune... I think the XBox was the only Microsoft product to date that hadn't crashed and burned insofar as consumer electronics are concerned.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    4. Re:They might as well have. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > got it for free or at a steep discount...

      And even then they still might not have one! My roommate worked on and off with QA for a Microsoft vendor for over seven years mostly for XBox, and even she doesn't have an XBox. I've never seen an XBox outside of an office or a store.

    5. Re:They might as well have. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      got it for free

      And even then, they probably still don't have one! I worked with a bunch of artists that previously worked as a team on a Microsoft project. They all got free XBoxes, but not a one of them opened the box. They all sold them. So even if they got it for free, they probably didn't bother to keep the thing since it's just not fun. I know I have never heard someone say they actually bought an XBox nor have I ever seen someone play one outside of a store.

    6. Re:They might as well have. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why would someone that isn't a gamer have ever have heard of XBox? I have never heard someone in person talk about one, and I don't think I know anyone that has ever had one. They're not like a Wii that everyone has. Of course Microsoft needs to start trying to get the brand some exposure.

    7. Re:They might as well have. by shione · · Score: 1

      microsofts brand name is shot and they know it. Compare the different console boxes. The ps4 and wii u have the company name displayed quite promiantly on them while the xbox one does. Nor did the xbox 360 or the original xbox.

      Even on the zune device boxes microsoft was ashamed to put display their company name prominently on it.

      And on phones they used the Nokia name to push their windows phones.

      Fact is, outside of pc software and hardware, microsoft knows their brand name deters customers.

    8. Re:They might as well have. by aliquis · · Score: 1

      So, wait - who exactly in the First World does not know what Microsoft is and does by now?

      It's know but they remain relevant by staying relevant.

      Of course.

      This one I can sort of agree with, though most of their efforts in this space have flopped spectacularly: MSNTV, Kin, PocketPC, Zune... I think the XBox was the only Microsoft product to date that hadn't crashed and burned insofar as consumer electronics are concerned.

      Ok, so the rest of their attempts failed.

      The Xbox didn't.

      And that's bad because .. ? Not that you say it's bad. But it was on which worked. Good for Microsoft.

  3. Dumping by rodrigoandrade · · Score: 2, Funny

    Microsoft using their leverage in other areas to elbow their way into a new market? You don't say...

    I'm sure the U.S. Commerce Secretary and the FTC would've had a field day over this.

    1. Re:Dumping by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Funny

      And, as usual, without having the slightest idea of what to do with the technology other than try to get market share.

      So I'm forced to conclude most of the successes Microsoft has had in the last decade or more have largely been accidental instead of strategic, and that Microsoft just stumbles around in the dark until something works.

      And then they spend years trying to understand why it worked in the first place and how to replicate it.

      It's official, Microsoft is the Inspector Clouseau of the tech world.

      That's pretty sad.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    2. Re:Dumping by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You mean like cell phone plans where you get the phone for "free" but the services cost an arm and a leg?

      Microsoft would have LOVED to have spun things that way and they may still.

      BUT they ended up finally getting a killer app just in time (aka HALO). I remember when XBox launched there was piss all to play on it.

    3. Re:Dumping by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's basically Business 101. Amusing that you seem to think companies shouldn't expand or try and innovate, or take advantage of existing supply and manufacturing lines to increase profits.

    4. Re:Dumping by Ravaldy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There's nothing wrong with trying things and stumbling across a working product, solution or theory. That's what humans have been doing for as long as we have existed. Every company I've worked for have tried to introduce new services or products not knowing ahead of time if they would be successful. Some were, some weren't.

      On a side note, MS has always taken tons of feedback from their partners, big and small. What they have done more recently is actually listen to the end users, something they lacked to do in the past.

    5. Re:Dumping by gstoddart · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      You know, when a multi-billion dollar company who spends more on R&D than pretty much everyone else hasn't the slightest idea of what they want to build a product for, and no clear picture for it ... that's pathetic

      If one of the largest corporations is stumbling around like drunken monkeys and finding success through sheer accident, the the CEO is a grossly overpaid idiot who could be replaces with a bunch of drunken monkeys.

      And yet I'm sure Ballmer or whoever it was got paid massive amounts of money to have no better track record than a drunken monkey.

      Sorry, I'm not asking for prescience, I'm asking for some measure of competence.

      This aint it.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    6. Re:Dumping by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Microsoft is in the process of doing just what cell phone providers did. Windows 10 will be free the first year. You can get Office 365 free for a year in so many ways. It won't be long before the switch is flipped, and you will be locked in to paying to continue using. There will probably be some changes made to file formats locking in you to using Microsoft to open files.

    7. Re:Dumping by rogoshen1 · · Score: 2

      Tell us your thoughts on Google while you're at it.

    8. Re:Dumping by MarioJE · · Score: 1

      Microsoft is in the process of doing just what cell phone providers did. Windows 10 will be free the first year. You can get Office 365 free for a year in so many ways. It won't be long before the switch is flipped, and you will be locked in to paying to continue using. There will probably be some changes made to file formats locking in you to using Microsoft to open files.

      Not really. The offer expires after a year, not the upgrade. If you do not upgrade within that year, you'll have to pay. A subscription model was never mentioned.

    9. Re:Dumping by ganjadude · · Score: 2

      unfortunately when asked specifically about it, it was also not denied. so we dont know what will happen yet. but subs are NOT ruled out

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    10. Re:Dumping by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

      Lol

    11. Re: Dumping by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Halo was a launch title, what are you talking about?

    12. Re:Dumping by mordenkhai · · Score: 2

      Yes they did. It is 100% clear. If I upgrade in the first 12 months, my cost is free and my software remains free. If you decide the day after 12 months to upgrade, it may no longer be free, they haven't announced pricing, but my copy which was already upgraded remains free. I'm not saying there is no wiggle room there about getting new updates, but it seems clear that your license doesn't go away.

      Terry Myerson (EVP OS):
      "This is more than a one-time upgrade: once a Windows device is upgraded to Windows 10, we will continue to keep it current for the supported lifetime of the device - at no additional charge. With Windows 10, the experience will evolve and get even better over time. We'll deliver new features when they're ready, not waiting for the next major release."

    13. Re:Dumping by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

      So I guess Pfizer, Intel and Cisco must also be throwing out R&D money out the window since they spend higher percentages of their revenue than MS on R&D.

      Please take the time to figure out what MS has actually achieved R&D wise before knocking it down with non factual information.

    14. Re:Dumping by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And, as usual, without having the slightest idea of what to do with the technology other than try to get market share.

      So I'm forced to conclude most of the successes Microsoft has had in the last decade or more have largely been accidental instead of strategic, and that Microsoft just stumbles around in the dark until something works.

      And then they spend years trying to understand why it worked in the first place and how to replicate it.

      It's official, Microsoft is the Inspector Clouseau of the tech world.

      That's pretty sad.

      you are a moron. they are currently the only vendor ranked in the Gartner magic quadrant for IAAS and PAAS

  4. And how far would of them gone to shutdown by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And how far would of them gone to shutdown people who hacked to run other os's?

    Jail / prison?
    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/student-prison-xbox-mod-chip/

    1. Re:And how far would of them gone to shutdown by TWX · · Score: 2

      So you're saying that they learned from Digital:Convergence and the Cue Cat Scanner debacle?

      Once the thing is no longer in one's possession there's a loss of a certain amount of control. Microsoft avoided this becoming epidemic by not handing out Xboxes for free, as most people weren't going to pay several hundred dollars to immediately wipe and install a different OS on it, but absolutely would have if they'd been free. People would have convinced anyone and everyone they knew to get a free one to give to them.

      This would have made the Cue Cat fight look like nothing.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  5. Government would've jumped on them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Same reason IBM decided not to give OS/2 away for free. They were afraid the government would just hassle them again.

    1. Re:Government would've jumped on them by HBI · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A $9.99 upgrade plan from any prior OS would have been enough to avoid that. Instead, they charged $49.99, if my memory serves. But IBM's failure with OS/2 had to do with application development, not price.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    2. Re:Government would've jumped on them by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think OS/2 biggest failure was poor marketing compared to Microsoft.
      I remember the OS/2 Warp commercials. Just a bunch of people sitting around a computer saying how cool it was then a bunch of trippy colors.
      They didn't even show the OS.

      While Microsoft for its Windows 95 campaign showed the OS and how easy it was to use, and some of the new features that would make you want it.

      Apple does the same thing with their products they are trying to push. You have adds where they show the product and how easy it is to use.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    3. Re:Government would've jumped on them by HBI · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Every successful OS over the microcomputer age has had a killer app, something that it did that other competing machines did not. Something to sell it. Apple IIs had VisiCalc. The IBM PC had Lotus 1-2-3. Macintoshes had Pagemaker and later Quark. Windows had the Office suite, ultimately. OS/2 had nothing. Sure, it was great at running other OS' apps - it was a great DOS emulator and did Windows 3.1 pretty excellently, but it had no killer app of its own. This was mainly because IBM didn't consider it important to get people to write apps for its OS.

      You can call that a lack of marketing and still be right. It's just not "marketing in general" but "marketing to developers".

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    4. Re:Government would've jumped on them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All I remember of the Windows95 campaign was Gates on stage plugging in a USB device and the system Blue Screening on it.

    5. Re:Government would've jumped on them by TWX · · Score: 2

      I remember OS/2 Warp ads in print magazines. The ads featured a Robinson Projection map of the world, with arrows to specific areas and a blurb about the OS/2 user in that area.

      I mused with my friends, "hey, it's a map of all of the OS/2 users in the world!"

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    6. Re:Government would've jumped on them by rogoshen1 · · Score: 1

      did 95 even support USB? i thought that was a 98 thing.

    7. Re:Government would've jumped on them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Communication Manager was a pretty killer app for anyone that needed to use APPC/LU6.2 from a workstation. That is from the enterprise perspective of course and not the consumer perspective. There really wasn't anything as good on the Windows NT side for quite a while.

    8. Re:Government would've jumped on them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OS/2 needed full win32.

    9. Re:Government would've jumped on them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Windows 95 B and C did. But USB barely worked. If I remember correctly B also added AGP support.

      God I feel old.

    10. Re:Government would've jumped on them by Daniel+Hoffmann · · Score: 1

      Jeez, they don't show many tech ads in my country but I remember seeing the old ipod ads and all they did was shown white silhouettes of people wearing a headphones and dancing with some kind of brick in their hands...

      Those ads kickstarted apple rise to the top.

    11. Re:Government would've jumped on them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Win95 OSR2 (labelled as "Windows 95 with USB Support" on the installation disc)

    12. Re:Government would've jumped on them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This was mainly because IBM didn't consider it important to get people to write apps for its OS.
      People look back fondly at OS/2. I used it and liked it. But I also took the time to install it. 2.0/2.1 and finally 3.0 where I gave up.

      It was a nasty piece of junk to install with a very narrow hardware cert list. Having 6-8 hour marathon installs for 1 computer was not unheard of. You sat there feeding it disks randomly out of the 25 or so they gave you and then prayed it didnt segfault 20 discs in. Windows came on 4 and you only had to switch around once. ONCE it was installed it worked very well. But getting there took a serious amount of dedication. I could get a mac or msdos box up and running in under 30 mins.

      First impressions matter.

      "marketing to developers"
      How I was able to afford a 500 dollar bit of software for 50 bucks... Then another 50 for a watcom compiler stack.

      The cost was out of sight though if you were not 'student'. Something like 20-50k for a TCP stack. Something you could get for 20-50 bucks for win3.1 or standard in win95/NT.

      They had plenty of apps and plenty of software OEMs to make special SKUs for them. They however priced it at a premium then when it didnt sell they finally got around to lowering the price. But by that point MS had already locked up the OEMs both hardware and software. At that point IBM was in too sorry of a management state to pull it out of the fire.

    13. Re:Government would've jumped on them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For the OCR2.x (95b and 95c), Yes
      Personally, I like Win 95C better than 98 First Edition, mainly because IE was an optional component installed after the first Boot of the initial Windows install.

    14. Re:Government would've jumped on them by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      I don't think the Office suite was a killer app. Initially many users hated Word especially for being inferior to what was already there, and Excel took off first on the Macintosh and Lotus 1-2-3 was still the king on the PC. It was a slower route to dominance that came from marketing the tools together rather than separately.

      Windows itself really did not have a killer app, what really got it kickstarted and popular was that Microsoft made those OEM deals with the same vendors that they had DOS OEM deals with. The PC vendors got huge discounts on DOS and Windows as long as they bundled it with every PC they sold. Thus the average user got DOS and Windows preinstalled. The user who wanted OS/2 often installed it onto a machine that already had Windows. Except for the first couple of years of OS/2 though, but in that case most business people able to spend that high price on an OS for a toy computer were perfectly happy just to be on DOS by itself, or with a 3270 terminal, or a cheaper PC GUI.

    15. Re:Government would've jumped on them by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Yes, IBM was still sort of stuck thinking the PC was for serious corporate use. Maybe something to distract the executives while the actual workers were interacting with the mainframes (ie, real computers). So their mindset just didn't see the PC as a cheap system for home or small business or independent developers.

    16. Re:Government would've jumped on them by HBI · · Score: 1

      I'll grant you that the OEM deals helped, but before even 95 came out, people wanted Office. There were WordPerfect holdouts and people who liked Quattro Pro. But it was fast becoming a Microsoft world and none of the competitors stood a chance against Office. IBM created a suite but it was too little, too late.

      The OEM deals wouldn't have worked if people purchasing in the commercial space didn't want Windows. It made things easier than dealing with the licensing for different applications from different vendors, and buying Microsoft appeared cheaper at the time than being on an upgrade treadmill with multiple companies. "You mean I can get rid of Foxpro, Wordperfect and even Novell? Sign me up." This would have happened regardless of the OEM bundling. Reducing the friction of licensing is primarily what won that world for Microsoft.

      What the OEM deals primarily did was to make sure home users ended up with Windows, which gave them the gaming market for a while.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    17. Re:Government would've jumped on them by vux984 · · Score: 1

      OS/2 failed because:

      It was more expensive.
      It had higher hardware requirements.
      It wasn't as compatible with existing software especially with DOS games.
      It wasn't as compatible with 3rd party hardware.

      I don't think the advertising had much to do with it at all.

      "Apple does the same thing with their products they are trying to push."

      um... maybe sometimes... but many signature apple commercials and ads do not show the product:

      You might remember a few years of these?
      https://www.youtube.com/result...

      Or maybe these ipod commercials? from 2004 to 2008
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      Oh that's all ancient history. You meant something recent right?

      Like 2015. Look at how easy it is to use, and all the new features:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      I'd say reality doesn't really sync up with your argument here.

    18. Re:Government would've jumped on them by magarity · · Score: 1

      OS/2 failed because:

      It didn't come pre-installed on all the brand name computers, even IBM's own. You couldn't order a Thinkpad with OS/2 out of the box, only with Windows.

    19. Re:Government would've jumped on them by adolf · · Score: 1

      OS/2 Warp's killer feature was an excellent TCP/IP stack, enabling people to use the Internet without voluminous and hacked-together third-party software. It also included one of the better graphical web browsers of the era.

      If anything, it was ahead of its time.

      --
      Kid-proof tablet..
    20. Re:Government would've jumped on them by HBI · · Score: 1

      By the time of Warp, the battle was over. OS/2 2.0 was IBM's only opportunity - a window between 3.1 and the release of Win 95. They got decent market penetration and even switched a few corporate shops over to OS/2. 2.0 had no TCP/IP stack at the time. I believe it came along with Warp 3.0 Connect, which was released in May 1995, too late to make a difference in the adoption of 3.1 and 95.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    21. Re:Government would've jumped on them by HBI · · Score: 1

      This is kind of funny because I remember people using funky 3270 and 5250 boards with DOS drivers in their OS/2 2.0 workstations. I mean, i'm sure you're right, but i'm also sure that most shops didn't implement this correctly.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    22. Re:Government would've jumped on them by HBI · · Score: 1

      Exactly what wasn't going to happen. IBM wasn't going to waste time reimplementing that moving target and there was zero chance MS would license it.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    23. Re:Government would've jumped on them by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      OS/2 Warp's killer feature was an excellent TCP/IP stack, enabling people to use the Internet without voluminous and hacked-together third-party software.

      There was nothing wrong with Trumpet Winsock for modem users. For 10b2 users, the official microsoft stack was adequate. TGV Multinet was a high-performance stack for Windows 3.x which was more than adequate. Sure, you had to have third party software, but there was nothing particularly hackish about it. At the time, you had to deal with equally hacky software to get SLIP (let alone PPP) connectivity on most platforms. Only Unix-based and Unixlikes seem to have come with TCP back then.

      Warp cost more than Windows plus a TCP stack...

      The killer feature of OS/2 was multitasking that worked. Problem was, nearly nobody had enough RAM to really take advantage of it.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    24. Re:Government would've jumped on them by adolf · · Score: 1

      Here's my own progression:

      I used *I forget what* under MS-DOS to establish a PPP (SLIP? whatever) connection, ~1992, to a *nix host. It worked as well as MS-DOS could (and still does) allow.

      Later, I used Telemate under MS-DOS to talk to the local Delphi dialup, to talk to Steve Jackson Games' Illuminati Online FreeBSD boxen.

      Eventually, a local ISP showed up. I used Winsock on Windows, was disappointed: Things barely worked, which is saying a lot compared to all of the "barely worked" above.

      I installed OS/2 on a 486SX with 4MB of RAM. The GUI loaded enough to see it, but then I discovered that OS/2 could run without a GUI: All command-line. It was fast. The TCP/IP stack robust enough to knock random other Internet users offline with a simple ping -f, all while my own connection was still useable: The pings would get longer and longer, and more and more infrequent, and then stop...even if I was on a different port of the exact same terminal server that they had been connected to, and even if asymmetric modem speeds said it shouldn't be that way.

      Eventually, I got a Pentium 100 ("arguably overclocked" to a P120), and had 16MB of RAM on that board (16x1MB 30-pin SIMMS on carefully-stacked adapters). Worked a treat: I could finally use OS/2's GUI, and it was usable despite using 4x the RAM and about twice the CPU.

      I used Linux after that, starting with Slackware 2.

      I put on Windows 95 OSR2 after a then-employer handed me a copy of it and told me it was my job to do email support for his Windows-based software: I still did most of my work with a telnet/ssh session to SJ Games' io.com FreeBSD hosts.

      As you can see, OS/2 was a blip on my own radar in those early days. But the Winsock days were really, really bad: Worse than the MS-DOS days.

      And OS/2 was as solid as Linux, or the FreeBSD (then a mature thing) hosts that I paid by the month to use.

      And OS/2's solid TCP/IP was included. With Windows, it was an extra, fickle (and not cheap, IIRC) third-party add-on.

      95 OSR2 did OK, but meh. Nobody cared unless they were trying to get their new Packard Bell online, and then AOL by then the easiest answer. (They didn't get the money to buy Time Warner by accident.)

      --
      Kid-proof tablet..
  6. 10/10 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'd buy that for a dollar.

  7. Windows on Xbox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The idea there essentially would have been to use Xbox as a trojan horse for Windows. It's probably smart that they didn't attempt that, however. As Lanning observed to us, the entertainment industry didn't share any love for the operating system.

    "You got the brand that everyone resents having to buy, how's that going to work in the entertainment industry? See, we don't need your OS in the entertainment industry. We don't need shit from you in the entertainment industry. In fact, if anything you do runs like fucking Windows, we don't want anything to do with it, right? That was a very common perception," Lanning said.

    That was a good perception. With Xbone, they're trying to push "WINDOWS 10 CRAPPS!" to the point where everything on the system runs in 16 colors.

  8. Bloat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > "Just name it, name a bad idea and it was something we had to deal with," he said.

    And thats probably why they eventually figured out they needed to lay off 18,000.

  9. Goddamnit! Those were real? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought those emails were the usual chain letter spam/scams and deleted them all. I could have had a Beowulf cluster made out of free Xboxes!

  10. "Little Brother" had this by chispito · · Score: 1

    The main character in Cory Doctorow's "Little Brother" used a free, ad-supported XBox reflashed with "Paranoid Linux."

    --
    The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
    1. Re:"Little Brother" had this by CastrTroy · · Score: 2

      Yeah, I thought of that too. In the book, Microsoft gave them away for free, thinking they were unhackable, and hoping to make their money back selling games. People found out how to hack them (surprise, surprise) and were able to run whatever they wanted to on them. This is why this concept of giving away the hardware for free is almost always a bad idea. If they really could build unhackable hardware, then I could see a business case for this, but making the hardware free makes the payoff for hacking it way too high.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    2. Re:"Little Brother" had this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If the hardware is free, the risk of bricking it while attempting to hack it goes away too...

    3. Re:"Little Brother" had this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Heck, even if you can't hack the thing, for 100% free, the XBOX includes a reasonably useful power supply, plenty of discrete electronics you can pull off the board, you can pull the DVD drive apart to fix the equivalent unlocked models, free power cable that works with other stuff, fan, etc. etc.

      Even if you rip the thing apart for just one of those items and throw away the rest, assuming there's no cost in your area to put it in the trash, you're ahead.

      Being able to use it as assembled is just the cherry on top of the sundae.

  11. Part of the Plan by s.petry · · Score: 1, Interesting

    EEE, they simply don't care. Apologies if you have been fooled into thinking there is some new and more altruistic MS Philosophy and I hurt your reality..

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    1. Re:Part of the Plan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      TC here, are you talking to me? You realize my original post was decidedly negative towards MS, right?

    2. Re:Part of the Plan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I expect a reply!!

    3. Re:Part of the Plan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No idea wtf this guy's doing, but he's not me.

    4. Re:Part of the Plan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry, that was me.

  12. Doesn't sound like they considered anything. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds like dumb ideas pitched to the XBox devteam, not serious consideration.

    Oh right it's Microsoft. Sorry, I meant Micro$haft. Their stormtroopers are as bumbling as they are evil. Carry on?

  13. Microsoft did try and buy Nintendo in 1998 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    There was an offer on the table for US$20B, but the owner in Japan turned it down over the objections of family members.

    1. Re:Microsoft did try and buy Nintendo in 1998 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There was an offer on the table for US$20B, but the owner in Japan turned it down over the objections of family members.

      Just as well that they didn't. MS would have run it into the ground just like most of the rest of their acquisitions from that era.

    2. Re:Microsoft did try and buy Nintendo in 1998 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "try to buy Nintendo."

      It's not like they tried and succeeded.

    3. Re:Microsoft did try and buy Nintendo in 1998 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nintendo pretty much did that themselves pretty well.

  14. A ripoff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Game consoles are just a way to rip off gamers. The consoles are more expensive than a computer, and the graphics are far inferior to the display on my my 6 year old IBM Thinkpad, and the keyboard combined with a Logirech Marble mouse beats any console controller. Also the games for consoles are all vastly overpriced remakes of older games.

  15. Nope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Microsoft has lost tons of money on many projects, Bing, Xbox, Asure, Zune, etc. They have not had a significant hit for a while.

    They are rolling in money though over Linux patent shakedowns. That is the company's real bread and butter now. Why would they want to sell an operating system on a phone for $5 and offer support, when they could get $10 per operating system with no support obligations whatsoever.

    Heck, even another slashdot article from today talks about a .Net shakedown. Mono anybody?

    http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/03/31/1426224/license-details-hint-ms-undecided-on-suing-users-of-its-open-source-net-runtime

  16. Good thing they didn't buy Nintendo by gameboyhippo · · Score: 1

    Or else Nintendo really would have been doomed. Just look at Rare. RIP

  17. MS does me,too. Google loses small, wins big by raymorris · · Score: 1

    Microsoft does "me too". Apple did well with the ipod, Microsoft called up China and ordered a cheap copy. Nintendo and the other companies had good game consoles, Microsoft stuck their name on one, apparently without having much of a clue about the market they were entering. They then lose a billion dollars or so on each, stubbornly refusing to admit failure.

    Google checks out the market, then releases something that's best-in-class, or often fairly unique, being the first major offering of it's type. They spend a ten or twenty million trying it out. If it only breaks even, they move on to the next idea. They don't keep at a losing strategy, losing a billion dollars on something. Instead, they move on to the next idea until they find which one will make them a billion dollars.

    At the end of the day, that's the difference- Microsoft's big initiatives that they really push for years lose a billion dollars, Google's big projects that they really push make a billion dollars.

    * Google tried "me too" once, with Google+. Fortunately for them, they can well afford one big error because they are winning big in a dozen other areas.

  18. anything for a FP post? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    company A thought they might have performed action B.

    what's next? this type of news, imo, should be in a diary of some form not FP.

  19. And if it was free... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I still wouldn't have had one.

    I hate microsoft.

  20. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion