This article is so close, but really misses the mark on what I believe the real MS strategy is...
What is interesting is how there seem to be different industries that really don't pay attention to each other: the game industry and everything else in the tech industry. If you put the two together, you have a very interesting picture. MS bought WebTV, has investments in several broadband companies, developing Xbox, developing.NET, already has an Internet service (MSN) and bought Bungie. If you add all this up, you have a very scary picture indeed.
Joe Consumer (that doesn't have a PC yet--and even if they do, they probably aren't in the tech industries) wants games, Internet access, a DVD player and potentially office software (whether they know it now or not). They buy an Xbox (games and dvd) that can hook to MS's proprietary broadband connection that uses.NET as the underlying technology, which will give them access to msn ( thereby giving the consumer "Internet" access and broadband).
It is no secret that they are working on the equivalent of Sun's StarPortal--MS Office over the web. This gives them the necessary application software.
Now, put your self in the place of someone like PepsiCo and you want to reach this market. You have to pay MS to put your content on MSN in a manner that is reachable, since this consumer market isn't really on the Internet... but.NET, instead.
One person I talked to about my theory mentioned that MS can't pull it off because they don't have the necessary skills to build a decent UI--that's where the game company comes in. Most game companies (including Bungie) know that UI's on games _must_ be simple. There is also the issue of lead time (MS is well known for missing the deadlines they set...)--well, why do you think they are working on this in parts at a time.? WebTV probably taught them a lot about how this consumer works as well as giving them a blueprint on how to do this type of service in the future.
In essence, you have MS getting into the homes that don't have PCs via the game and DVD market.... and since they own the whole pipe from client to server, they can control exactly what the consumer can grab. Plus, they have access to (more importantly) what the consumer actually wants to consume by keeping track of all of that generated data.
Problems with this theory? Well, privacy groups would probably step in.... although, it could be pointed out that this is sort of like opt-in spam. You, joe consumer, bought and paid for the license that allows MS to do this, so....
If the monopoly were to get broken up, I'm not sure if the "OS" running on Xbox would be allowed to be based on Windows or not. [I'm fairly certain that xbox runs a variant of Windows CE, but I don't remember.]
Just a thought. I have no real evidence, so maybe I'm just seeing things. =)
It may be "damn ugly" compared to something that is completely customizable like enlightenment, but it has two things that a lot of the current batch of WM's don't have going for it:
a) functional w/out clutter b) standardization
Joe Corporate Guy wants those two things for his employee that he hired of the street that isn't a Unix wizard.
Besides, if you compared it to the other WMs that were out when Motif was created (not counting HP's, since that is where a lot of it came from), mwm is *nice*.
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This article is so close, but really misses the mark on what I believe the real MS strategy is...
What is interesting is how there seem to be different industries that really don't pay attention to each other: the game industry and everything else in the tech industry. If you put the two together, you have a very interesting picture. MS bought WebTV, has investments in several broadband companies, developing Xbox, developing
Joe Consumer (that doesn't have a PC yet--and even if they do, they probably aren't in the tech industries) wants games, Internet access, a DVD player and potentially office software (whether they know it now or not). They buy an Xbox (games and dvd) that can hook to MS's proprietary broadband connection that uses
It is no secret that they are working on the equivalent of Sun's StarPortal--MS Office over the web. This gives them the necessary application software.
Now, put your self in the place of someone like PepsiCo and you want to reach this market. You have to pay MS to put your content on MSN in a manner that is reachable, since this consumer market isn't really on the Internet... but
One person I talked to about my theory mentioned that MS can't pull it off because they don't have the necessary skills to build a decent UI--that's where the game company comes in. Most game companies (including Bungie) know that UI's on games _must_ be simple. There is also the issue of lead time (MS is well known for missing the deadlines they set...)--well, why do you think they are working on this in parts at a time.? WebTV probably taught them a lot about how this consumer works as well as giving them a blueprint on how to do this type of service in the future.
In essence, you have MS getting into the homes that don't have PCs via the game and DVD market.... and since they own the whole pipe from client to server, they can control exactly what the consumer can grab. Plus, they have access to (more importantly) what the consumer actually wants to consume by keeping track of all of that generated data.
Problems with this theory? Well, privacy groups would probably step in.... although, it could be pointed out that this is sort of like opt-in spam. You, joe consumer, bought and paid for the license that allows MS to do this, so....
If the monopoly were to get broken up, I'm not sure if the "OS" running on Xbox would be allowed to be based on Windows or not. [I'm fairly certain that xbox runs a variant of Windows CE, but I don't remember.]
Just a thought. I have no real evidence, so maybe I'm just seeing things. =)
It may be "damn ugly" compared to something that is completely customizable like enlightenment, but it has two things that a lot of the current batch of WM's don't have going for it:
a) functional w/out clutter
b) standardization
Joe Corporate Guy wants those two things for his employee that he hired of the street that isn't a Unix wizard.
Besides, if you compared it to the other WMs that were out when Motif was created (not counting HP's, since that is where a lot of it came from), mwm is *nice*.