Also, what happens if you want to sell a fart game to the PS4? Sony will most likely reject it, so games have to go through an approval process(which is against this story's gist). If they don't, the PS4 store will end up like the app store and play store, full of free-to-play junk with forced in-app purchases. Sony is just milking the MS PR screwup to get the maximum sales before they actually reveal what's going to happen with a lot of things.
See link below. Also, Microsoft pledged to have a independent creator program and is rumored to announce a new Xbox developer program at the BUILD developer conference on June 26th.
wrote this post on our blog a few months ago to express how absolutely weird and unfortunate I thought it was that the trending perception of Microsoft and indies had gotten so bad that silly creative decisions of mine were being taken as Microsoft's ever-burgeoning evilness toward indies, or something. My message was this: we're indie, we make the games we want to make, Microsoft publishes them, and the past five years of this have been great, and it's too bad that that's not super newsworthy, because this whole time it just feels like I must watch, powerless, as Lumbergh keeps taking my red stapler.
Then Xbox One happened, and a longtime fan of ours posted this on my facebook wall:
Questionable grammar aside, I was super glad he posted this, because through no fault of his own he's unwittingly illustrated what happens when these narratives blow up. You know that thing about no self-publishing on Xbox One? The meaning of that quote was that the partner/publisher relationship is currently the same (i.e. what we, an indie studio, been doing for the last five years) but they're exploring ways to improve it. Basically "everything's the same, stay tuned for improvements" mutated into "no indies on Xbox One, ever" in a few hours.
Finally, a disclaimer: I do not think there is a vast conspiracy to unjustly villify Microsoft. That would be weird, possibly an indicator of neurosis, even. I just wish I could add my "everything is fine" experience to the mix more often.
And with that, here's the original post:
In Charlie Murder, the whole band gets Windows Phones on the fictional t2f (short for ta2fön) network. There’s a bunch of stuff you can use your phone for, like email (some of it rote, some of it interesting), camera phone, and squid-themed microblogging site squ.iddl.us. I thought it was a fun way to give your characters a bit of an info hub, and I’ve been a big fan of Windows Phone ever since my Samsung Focus and its marvelous bulging battery bomb (that’s another story). Also, we have a game on Windows Phone, and we definitely make a buck or two whenever someone buys it, so that’s cool. Yet still, I felt the need to tweet this:
In the comments in Joystiq’s rad Charlie Murder preview write up, there were a few begrudging Microsoft for what was (erroneously) interpreted as some sort of paid off order from up high to include the phone in the game. This is obviously entirely untrue; if anyone’s guilty of some sort of slimy promotion, I guess that would be me, as I’d like to get more people interested in a pretty solid other alternative to iPhone (and, again, we’ve got Z0MB1ES on dat ph0ne!!!1)
But I think this illuminates an underlying issue, namely that of Microsoft’s misunderstood role as indie games publisher, and how that ties to the trending media narrative on Microsoft being “bad for indies.” Where do we stand on all this? Read on:
So, Microsoft is publishing Charlie Murder. What does that mean? Here are a few facts to set the record straight: We have full creative control. This is our game. 100% of the (non-localized) content in Charlie Murder was made by Michelle and me, or, in a few cases, by a few gaming celebrities who we got some rad cameos from (yes, celebrities). Ska Studios is just Michelle and me. We work in our basement. We have two cats (you knew that). Microsoft gives us localized text from our English text, finds bugs, tells us how to fix bugs when we’re stumped, tells us how close to passing cert we are, and takes us out to din
But let's explore your 5% cut. Do you think you can maintain a store that handles billions of apps and media every quarter that services hundreds of millions of customers for 5%. Also your store has to deal with the content side like dealing with developers and all the uploads/updates. There is also the payment system which handles worldwide currencies and taxes. All that for 5%. Good luck to you. I would think that you would be in the red at 5%. There is a reason it's 30%. It's enough for all of them to cover their costs with some profit.
Let the market decide that instead of Apple. That's what innovation is all about, reducing costs, making it easy for developers and users. But no, Apple(and MS following in its footsteps) don't want to risk that, so they artificially restrict it using DRM.
If you want software freedoms, develop and buy Android. When did I cheer them on? I explained exactly what the Apple's policy is. If you don't like it, don't buy their stuff. Don't develop for it. You are not entitled to everything you want in life.
Wait, so one can't criticize Apple or complain about them?
Why do you spend so much time criticizing Microsoft, even going to the trouble of submitting stories with spinned and biased summaries etc. when it is the easiest ever to avoid MS products right now? Just stop complaining and use OS X, Google Docs/iWork, Google Drive/Dropbox, iPhone, Gmail, iPad, PS4, Apple TV etc.
You are not entitled to everything you want in life, if you don't like MS, just use alternatives and don't post anything criticizing them.
Their store? Sure take cuts, but what about providing options for people that want to use other stores or install apps directly? If you don't like don't develop? That's like saying if you didn't like MS' monopoly on computers, become a hermit. On Android, you can host the APK on your own site or submit it to alternative stores like Amazon's. So there is competition for the 30% cut. You can start an Android store and charge only a 5% cut if you wanted to, to compete with Google Store, and if you provide a better service, devs and users will start using your store. Also, MS has far fewer restrictions on in app purchases. You can implement your own payment methods inside the app itself, unlike Apple that wants to charge a toll on all in app purchases. It's not about Apple hate, it's about the slow erosion of software freedoms, and how Apple could make it acceptable in the public sphere(thus leading to restrictions in the other "app stores) because of people like you cheering them on just because it is Apple.
It sad to see people on a site that used to stand for software freedom cheering on Apple and it's implementation of Palladium DRM for an OS, and developer abuse by taking forced cuts of app sales, just because MS is on the other end of the story. Or maybe you're just an Apple fanboy that hates software freedom and what it stands for.
With Apple, every consumer is chained only to the app store.
iOS users overwhelmingly like having a one-stop-shop with all the apps in. That's one of the things they chose that platform for.
It wasn't sprung on them as a change from previous practice. Indeed before the Apple Store, the mobile app market was tiny. Apple's one-stop-shop popularised phone apps.
That's like saying that because lot of people are buying cactii, they must like getting poked in the ass with cactus thorns.
Microsoft has finally released an official iOS app for Office 365 subscribers, allowing people to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint on their iPhones and iPads.
There's no iPad app so that MS doesn't have to Apple 30% for every purchase for full featured Office. Also so that they can run ads like these:
The Server and Tools division really exists because of desktop monopoly, though. Nobody is going to buy VS if they aren't targeting Windows, and if Windows vanishes there's nothing to target.
A large chunk of Visual Studio users use ASP.NET to develop for the web, with IIS as the web server. So, you're wrong.
Slashdotter think 1 year is short term, 5 years is medium term and 10 years is long term.
Haven't you read +5 Insightful Slashdot comments from 10 years ago about Microsoft?
And these hedge fund honchos will happily risk 1 trillion dollars for 1 micro second to pursue a possible profit of 25 dollars. And they will happily do it 1000 times a second. No wonder we are hosed.
Not to mention the Server & Tools Division that sells Windows Server, IIS, SQL Server,Lync Exchange, Visual Studio etc. keeps getting record revenue every quarter.
Meet Satya Nadella, president of Microsoft’s server and tools division, a division that builds and runs the company’s computing platforms, developer tools, and cloud services. Nadella leads a team of over 10,000 employees, and his group alone makes $19 billion in annual revenue – which is more than the combined revenues of Facebook, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Zynga, Netflix, and a few others in the Valley.
That doesn't even include Office and Azure recently became a one billion dollar business by itself. Microsoft is pretty well diversified, unlike Apple with it's reliance on iPhone and iPad and Google with 95% of revenue from ads. As usual, Asymco comes with shortsighted analysis that mistakes the trees for the forest.
That's why the people with their own money on the line are buying up MSFT (stock went from $27 to $35 due to the last earnings report) instead of the air-headed armchair analysis that we see on here of 'lol my grandma ditched her PC and got an iPad so that means M$ is dying'.
The project is based on Linux... RedHat is a supplier. If it was based on.NET, the summary and the posters would claim that's the reason for failure and it would have been a success if it was based on Linux(see the London Stock Exchange story for hundreds of such comments modded up). So does that mean this project is failing because of Linux?
I don't think so, but all the bigoted hate and confirmation bias on Slashdot is amazing for sure.
Sony Corp. (6758) rose as much as 9.2 percent in the U.S after Japan’s Nikkei newspaper reported the company is “leaning toward” spinning off its entertainment division.
This submission, and the comments so far, have missed some key differences between negativity and competition. It is possible to compete without being negative towards your competitor. Good competition (from the consumer's point of view) involves both (all) sides striving to create the best product they can. Bad competition is when, rather than improving themselves, competitors seek to cut each other down.
t doesn't matter how good your company is or what your corporate charter's stated mission is, you're still portrayed as a Big Evil Company that's out to greedily gather money and decimate your adversaries
Because they're are usually a Big Evil Company and the mission is just PR bullshit.
You can vote out the government, atleast theoretically, or move outside its jurisdiction. No such luck with people wearing Google Glass all around you in public, in the office, even the bathroom stalls at Google I/O.
How about advancing the state of the art for smartphone camera imaging tech through its loss making Motorola Unit instead of trying to compete by making Windows Phone worse by sending C&D take down letters?
Why doesn't Google use it's loss making Motorola to advance the state of smartphone camera tech like Nokia is doing instead of trying to prevent people from getting Windows Phone by sending C&Ds and takedowns?
It's disingenuous for MS to criticize Google for doing something that MS is also currently doing, just not as well.
We keep coming back to the same thing, MS is not doing the same thing as Google. They are not looking at the email body. The reasons are irrelevant to the user who is being tracked or not tracked by using Gmail or Outlook.com.
The RT link which you give as a reference for selling data says this:
In recent campaigns, and its believed that even in the current race for the White House, politicians have paid good money to target specific crowds by purchasing ads through Microsoft and Yahoo that will reach a certain group of users that meet specific criteria, such as location and political affiliation. By creating a rough profile of Internet users based on all available information, campaigns can purchase niche advertisements that are only sent to certain users based on what is known about them.
So they showed ads to people based on criteria the advertizer provided and if the ad viewer was interested they clicked on the ad and went to the advertizers site. This is not the same as "SELLING DATA".
Do you want to see just a sample of Google's Adwords sale pages for advertizers?
I have seen my parents struggle with this. For highly monetizable queries, the ads are placed without any border right on of the organic search results and people end up unintentionally clicking them = more money for Google, more money leeched off people by businesses.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, what happens if you want to sell a fart game to the PS4?
Sony will most likely reject it, so games have to go through an approval process(which is against this story's gist).
If they don't, the PS4 store will end up like the app store and play store, full of free-to-play junk with forced in-app purchases.
Sony is just milking the MS PR screwup to get the maximum sales before they actually reveal what's going to happen with a lot of things.
See link below. Also, Microsoft pledged to have a independent creator program and is rumored to announce a new Xbox developer program at the BUILD developer conference on June 26th.
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JamesSilva/20130523/192832/Were_Indie_we_like_Microsoft_Too_Controversial.php
wrote this post on our blog a few months ago to express how absolutely weird and unfortunate I thought it was that the trending perception of Microsoft and indies had gotten so bad that silly creative decisions of mine were being taken as Microsoft's ever-burgeoning evilness toward indies, or something. My message was this: we're indie, we make the games we want to make, Microsoft publishes them, and the past five years of this have been great, and it's too bad that that's not super newsworthy, because this whole time it just feels like I must watch, powerless, as Lumbergh keeps taking my red stapler.
Then Xbox One happened, and a longtime fan of ours posted this on my facebook wall:
Questionable grammar aside, I was super glad he posted this, because through no fault of his own he's unwittingly illustrated what happens when these narratives blow up. You know that thing about no self-publishing on Xbox One? The meaning of that quote was that the partner/publisher relationship is currently the same (i.e. what we, an indie studio, been doing for the last five years) but they're exploring ways to improve it. Basically "everything's the same, stay tuned for improvements" mutated into "no indies on Xbox One, ever" in a few hours.
Finally, a disclaimer: I do not think there is a vast conspiracy to unjustly villify Microsoft. That would be weird, possibly an indicator of neurosis, even. I just wish I could add my "everything is fine" experience to the mix more often.
And with that, here's the original post:
In Charlie Murder, the whole band gets Windows Phones on the fictional t2f (short for ta2fön) network. There’s a bunch of stuff you can use your phone for, like email (some of it rote, some of it interesting), camera phone, and squid-themed microblogging site squ.iddl.us. I thought it was a fun way to give your characters a bit of an info hub, and I’ve been a big fan of Windows Phone ever since my Samsung Focus and its marvelous bulging battery bomb (that’s another story). Also, we have a game on Windows Phone, and we definitely make a buck or two whenever someone buys it, so that’s cool. Yet still, I felt the need to tweet this:
In the comments in Joystiq’s rad Charlie Murder preview write up, there were a few begrudging Microsoft for what was (erroneously) interpreted as some sort of paid off order from up high to include the phone in the game. This is obviously entirely untrue; if anyone’s guilty of some sort of slimy promotion, I guess that would be me, as I’d like to get more people interested in a pretty solid other alternative to iPhone (and, again, we’ve got Z0MB1ES on dat ph0ne!!!1)
But I think this illuminates an underlying issue, namely that of Microsoft’s misunderstood role as indie games publisher, and how that ties to the trending media narrative on Microsoft being “bad for indies.” Where do we stand on all this? Read on:
So, Microsoft is publishing Charlie Murder. What does that mean? Here are a few facts to set the record straight:
We have full creative control. This is our game. 100% of the (non-localized) content in Charlie Murder was made by Michelle and me, or, in a few cases, by a few gaming celebrities who we got some rad cameos from (yes, celebrities).
Ska Studios is just Michelle and me. We work in our basement. We have two cats (you knew that).
Microsoft gives us localized text from our English text, finds bugs, tells us how to fix bugs when we’re stumped, tells us how close to passing cert we are, and takes us out to din
But let's explore your 5% cut. Do you think you can maintain a store that handles billions of apps and media every quarter that services hundreds of millions of customers for 5%. Also your store has to deal with the content side like dealing with developers and all the uploads/updates. There is also the payment system which handles worldwide currencies and taxes. All that for 5%. Good luck to you. I would think that you would be in the red at 5%. There is a reason it's 30%. It's enough for all of them to cover their costs with some profit.
Let the market decide that instead of Apple. That's what innovation is all about, reducing costs, making it easy for developers and users. But no, Apple(and MS following in its footsteps) don't want to risk that, so they artificially restrict it using DRM.
If you want software freedoms, develop and buy Android. When did I cheer them on? I explained exactly what the Apple's policy is. If you don't like it, don't buy their stuff. Don't develop for it. You are not entitled to everything you want in life.
Wait, so one can't criticize Apple or complain about them?
Why do you spend so much time criticizing Microsoft, even going to the trouble of submitting stories with spinned and biased summaries etc. when it is the easiest ever to avoid MS products right now? Just stop complaining and use OS X, Google Docs/iWork, Google Drive/Dropbox, iPhone, Gmail, iPad, PS4, Apple TV etc.
You are not entitled to everything you want in life, if you don't like MS, just use alternatives and don't post anything criticizing them.
Their store? Sure take cuts, but what about providing options for people that want to use other stores or install apps directly?
If you don't like don't develop? That's like saying if you didn't like MS' monopoly on computers, become a hermit. On Android, you can host the APK on your own site or submit it to alternative stores like Amazon's. So there is competition for the 30% cut. You can start an Android store and charge only a 5% cut if you wanted to, to compete with Google Store, and if you provide a better service, devs and users will start using your store. Also, MS has far fewer restrictions on in app purchases. You can implement your own payment methods inside the app itself, unlike Apple that wants to charge a toll on all in app purchases. It's not about Apple hate, it's about the slow erosion of software freedoms, and how Apple could make it acceptable in the public sphere(thus leading to restrictions in the other "app stores) because of people like you cheering them on just because it is Apple.
It sad to see people on a site that used to stand for software freedom cheering on Apple and it's implementation of Palladium DRM for an OS, and developer abuse by taking forced cuts of app sales, just because MS is on the other end of the story. Or maybe you're just an Apple fanboy that hates software freedom and what it stands for.
With Apple, every consumer is chained only to the app store.
iOS users overwhelmingly like having a one-stop-shop with all the apps in. That's one of the things they chose that platform for.
It wasn't sprung on them as a change from previous practice. Indeed before the Apple Store, the mobile app market was tiny. Apple's one-stop-shop popularised phone apps.
That's like saying that because lot of people are buying cactii, they must like getting poked in the ass with cactus thorns.
Besides how to create monopolies...
You think that's easy?
Any business's primary goal is to take all the addressable market and would DIE to do that.
Anyone can start a lemonade stand, but being the only one to sell lemonade in the town, now that's hell of a lot harder.
Go back to reddit or 4chan where 12 year olds hang out and such lame image macro memes prevail and leave Slashdot for the adults.
So basically, the market penetration on this will be zero, because Office 365
Meanwhile, in reality: One million subscriptions in 3.5 months.
Microsoft has finally released an official iOS app for Office 365 subscribers, allowing people to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint on their iPhones and iPads.
There's no iPad app so that MS doesn't have to Apple 30% for every purchase for full featured Office.
Also so that they can run ads like these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86JMcy5OqZA#ysav
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UGxKX6IU1U
The Server and Tools division really exists because of desktop monopoly, though. Nobody is going to buy VS if they aren't targeting Windows, and if Windows vanishes there's nothing to target.
A large chunk of Visual Studio users use ASP.NET to develop for the web, with IIS as the web server. So, you're wrong.
Slashdotter think 1 year is short term, 5 years is medium term and 10 years is long term.
Haven't you read +5 Insightful Slashdot comments from 10 years ago about Microsoft?
And these hedge fund honchos will happily risk 1 trillion dollars for 1 micro second to pursue a possible profit of 25 dollars. And they will happily do it 1000 times a second. No wonder we are hosed.
How are we hosed by that and why?
Not to mention the Server & Tools Division that sells Windows Server, IIS, SQL Server,Lync Exchange, Visual Studio etc. keeps getting record revenue every quarter.
From http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/20/with-19b-in-revenue-microsofts-server-and-tools-chief-says-hes-just-getting-started-interview/
Meet Satya Nadella, president of Microsoft’s server and tools division, a division that builds and runs the company’s computing platforms, developer tools, and cloud services. Nadella leads a team of over 10,000 employees, and his group alone makes $19 billion in annual revenue – which is more than the combined revenues of Facebook, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Zynga, Netflix, and a few others in the Valley.
That doesn't even include Office and Azure recently became a one billion dollar business by itself. Microsoft is pretty well diversified, unlike Apple with it's reliance on iPhone and iPad and Google with 95% of revenue from ads. As usual, Asymco comes with shortsighted analysis that mistakes the trees for the forest.
That's why the people with their own money on the line are buying up MSFT (stock went from $27 to $35 due to the last earnings report) instead of the air-headed armchair analysis that we see on here of 'lol my grandma ditched her PC and got an iPad so that means M$ is dying'.
Fix is here.
http://www.asp.net/
The project is based on Linux... RedHat is a supplier. If it was based on .NET, the summary and the posters would claim that's the reason for failure and it would have been a success if it was based on Linux(see the London Stock Exchange story for hundreds of such comments modded up). So does that mean this project is failing because of Linux?
I don't think so, but all the bigoted hate and confirmation bias on Slashdot is amazing for sure.
Sony's stock jumps 9% during Xbox One announcement.
From
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-21/sony-jumps-on-report-company-weighs-entertainment-spinoff.html
Sony Corp. (6758) rose as much as 9.2 percent in the U.S after Japan’s Nikkei newspaper reported the company is “leaning toward” spinning off its entertainment division.
Stupid thing indeed, to send lawyers to make things worse for Windows Phone users who are mere pawns in Google's strategic games.
Buy a ms product and expect not to get shit on? Ah, come on! W phones should come with toilet paper.
What? Google's is the one doing the shitting.
Anyway, right now WP has the best Youtube app right now and the only one with no ads and a preload button for later viewing.
http://www.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-8-version-metrotube-now-available
This submission, and the comments so far, have missed some key differences between negativity and competition. It is possible to compete without being negative towards your competitor. Good competition (from the consumer's point of view) involves both (all) sides striving to create the best product they can. Bad competition is when, rather than improving themselves, competitors seek to cut each other down.
And Google is indulging in bad competition: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3760879&cid=43755115
t doesn't matter how good your company is or what your corporate charter's stated mission is, you're still portrayed as a Big Evil Company that's out to greedily gather money and decimate your adversaries
Because they're are usually a Big Evil Company and the mission is just PR bullshit.
Example?
Lets take Google.
Google's mission from: http://www.google.com/about/
"Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful."
And Google does things like this:
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-admits-it-was-blocking-wp8-maps-2013-1
http://wmpoweruser.com/surprise-or-not-google-demands-microsoft-cease-and-desist-with-official-youtube-app/
Is it the press' fault that they need to cover this up by putting it on page 12 and concentrate on Google's clean image in the front page?
You can vote out the government, atleast theoretically, or move outside its jurisdiction. No such luck with people wearing Google Glass all around you in public, in the office, even the bathroom stalls at Google I/O.
At Google Conference, Cameras Even in the Bathroom
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/at-google-conference-even-cameras-in-the-bathroom/
Larry Page: Every story I read about Google, it's us versus some other company or some stupid thing.
He means like in these stories?
http://www.wpcentral.com/google-microsoft-remove-youtube-windows-phone-store
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-admits-it-was-blocking-wp8-maps-2013-1
Stupid thing indeed, to send lawyers to make things worse for Windows Phone users who are mere pawns in Google's strategic games.
For example, the imaging tech in Nokia's flagship Windows Phone is far better than Android phones, look at the below videos for proof.
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/samsung-galaxy-s4-video-is-shakier-than-rivals-in-test-50011238/
How about advancing the state of the art for smartphone camera imaging tech through its loss making Motorola Unit instead of trying to compete by making Windows Phone worse by sending C&D take down letters?
Why doesn't Google use it's loss making Motorola to advance the state of smartphone camera tech like Nokia is doing instead of trying to prevent people from getting Windows Phone by sending C&Ds and takedowns?
It's disingenuous for MS to criticize Google for doing something that MS is also currently doing, just not as well.
We keep coming back to the same thing, MS is not doing the same thing as Google. They are not looking at the email body. The reasons are irrelevant to the user who is being tracked or not tracked by using Gmail or Outlook.com.
Bullcrap, stop this nonsense.
The RT link which you give as a reference for selling data says this:
In recent campaigns, and its believed that even in the current race for the White House, politicians have paid good money to target specific crowds by purchasing ads through Microsoft and Yahoo that will reach a certain group of users that meet specific criteria, such as location and political affiliation. By creating a rough profile of Internet users based on all available information, campaigns can purchase niche advertisements that are only sent to certain users based on what is known about them.
So they showed ads to people based on criteria the advertizer provided and if the ad viewer was interested they clicked on the ad and went to the advertizers site. This is not the same as "SELLING DATA".
Do you want to see just a sample of Google's Adwords sale pages for advertizers?
http://blog.protocol80.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Topic-Targeting-Adwords.jpg
https://www.dentalplans.com/content/images/adwords-targeting_3.gif
OMG I JUST CAUGHT GOOGLE SELLING DATA TO ADVERTIZERS, WHICH IS THE WORST OFFENSE.
Wtf man, have some integrity.
I have seen my parents struggle with this. For highly monetizable queries, the ads are placed without any border right on of the organic search results and people end up unintentionally clicking them = more money for Google, more money leeched off people by businesses.