Barkley's Justice
Member
Billy Gates don't give a fuck!
Why do people think this? What do they find wrong with Microsoft? Honest question, I'm curious about it
That's only true for the $400 box.
99% sure the $500 Xbox One is being outsold by the Apple TV alone.
Xbox One outsells Apple TV, (Xbox 360 + Xbox One definitely outsells AppleTV) especially when you consider holiday season.
Apple TV only sells about 1-2 million units per quarter.
Xbox One outsells Apple TV, (Xbox 360 + Xbox One definitely outsells AppleTV) especially when you consider holiday season.
Apple TV only sells about 1-2 million units per quarter.
Given the power of the Apple brand that's not impressive at all.
Each quarter:
Mac = 4-5M
iPad = 16-25M
iPhone = 40-50M
These devices make the majority of their profit from high margin hardware. AppleTV is relatively low margin hardware comparable to iPod.
I think Apple TV will eventually become a serious threat to Xbox and Playstation, but right now it is still far behind. It brings in less revenue, it sells fewer units, and the apps and services it has to offer are far more limited.
Sure.At this point, wouldn't the iPad be a console competitor?
It's more the fact that he explicitly defended Bing and didn't put up much of a defense for Xbox. There is definitely no hard news here, but from a Kremlinology standpoint it gives us a little view into how the Board is thinking.
Since when did Samsung get such a slavish following? They're awful. You want a console based around touchwhiz, with a million half-baked s-garbage things added onto it?
If you think Xbone lacks a focus on gaming, just wait until Samsung produce their version.
The Samsung approach is to throw as much faecal matter at the wall in the hopes that something sticks. Or just copy the leader of whatever industry they're trying to dominate. Motorola Razor is popular, rip it off in the Samsung Blade (real product), Blackberry is popular, rip it off with the Samsung Blackjack (real product). Rip off Dyson's hoover designs and get sued. Whatever, they have no shame. They're also run basically by Korean mobsters (type "Samsung corruption" into google and have a look).
So please guys, stop pretending Samsung is something good in the consumer products world, they are not.
Isn't that essentially him supporting the CEO? Probably doesn't want to undermine him.
Can you imagine if Bill Gates said anything else?
"Bill Gates confronts new CEO on core business decisions"
no, it would not.
amazon doesn't know shit about videogames. microsoft at least knows something.
The situation is a reporter asked him if Microsoft should consider spinning off Bing and Xbox.
Gates immediately defended the value of Bing
But he waffled about Xbox: well, maybe, it if makes sense, i support Nadella whatever his decision
Pretty clear how he feels, in my opinion.
Spoiler alert: itsfuckingnothing.gif
It's a bit of a trap question, since the responses would result in either "OMG MICROSOFT GONNA SPIN OFF THE XBOX" or "OMG GATES HAS ZERO CONFIDENCE IN NADELLA". Either way, Gates has responded the former, and really the only thing that should be taken from it is that Gates supports Nadella.
Although, it's fairly indicative of how bad the Xbone launch was that "Microsoft spinning off the Xbox brand" is even a thing, and I'm surprised Gates didn't say "I would support whatever Nadella decides to do", which would probably not fall into the trap.
[Edit] Ah, Fox Business. That would explain that.
Sure.
But they are talking about living room set top boxes.
It's pretty clear why Bing is better liked. It has several things going for it that the XBox doesn't:
1) Huge margin/money making potential if they reach a good penetration
2) Bing is growing very quickly, in both users and revenues
3) Bing is growing in market share
4) Bing is more easily integratable in other areas of Microsoft. IE can use Bing as its default search engine. Windows Phone can use Bing. Surface can use Bing. Even XBox can use it if they choose to keep it. And I'm sure there are many other areas that can use it that I'm not thinking of.
XBox has none of these.
Spinning it off into a separate entity to let it wither and die without adversely affecting the Microsoft share price.
That's the real agenda here.
Gates knows that the division is under performing and will be a drag on Microsoft's financials going forward.
It looks like things are much bleaker for the Xbox division than people previously thought...
It's pretty clear why Bing is better liked. It has several things going for it that the XBox doesn't:
1) Huge margin/money making potential if they reach a good penetration
2) Bing is growing very quickly, in both users and revenues
3) Bing is growing in market share
4) Bing is more easily integratable in other areas of Microsoft. IE can use Bing as its default search engine. Windows Phone can use Bing. Surface can use Bing. Even XBox can use it if they choose to keep it. And I'm sure there are many other areas that can use it that I'm not thinking of.
XBox has none of these.
If the question had been, "do you support spinning off Windows, or Office?", do you think he would have said, "I support the CEO", or that he probably would have said, "Nadella isn't that big an idiot.".
So the answer doesn't suggest Xbox will be spun off as much as where it stands in the MS priority list (lowish).
Dont forget information gathering
Yeah, I get that. It's just there has been this focus for the last 20 years on the living room. "The war for the living room" is the whole reason Sony and Microsoft got into the console business in the first place. But things have changed. So maybe everybody was digging in the wrong place this whole time and phones and tablets are a much better way of getting into people's living rooms.
Bing is also the entirety of the brains behind Cortana, which for now is just on Windows Phone, but probably won't just stay on Windows Phone.It's pretty clear why Bing is better liked. It has several things going for it that the XBox doesn't:
1) Huge margin/money making potential if they reach a good penetration
2) Bing is growing very quickly, in both users and revenues
3) Bing is growing in market share
4) Bing is more easily integratable in other areas of Microsoft. IE can use Bing as its default search engine. Windows Phone can use Bing. Surface can use Bing. Even XBox can use it if they choose to keep it. And I'm sure there are many other areas that can use it that I'm not thinking of.
XBox has none of these.
Bill Gates said:If MSFT CEO Nadella wants to buy ice-cream for all MS emplyees I'm absolutely for it."
If Xbox were to be spun off, we'd finally see the financials of what Live is worth and how much revenue Xbox brings in.
If Xbox is a real money loser, it would be unlikely that investors would put money into a new IPO of the The Xbox Company. I doubt they can jettison a money loser into the public. If Xbox is in poor shape financially, I think a sale would come before a spin-off.
Isn't that essentially him supporting the CEO? Probably doesn't want to undermine him.
Gates said Microsoft is working to bring PC and Xbox gaming closer together, saying: The power of the PC chip, the graphics chip which means you can do great games there, so Im sure Satya and the team will look at that and you know its up to them. Were going to have an overall gaming strategy. So its not as obvious as you might think.
Who was fired? Ballmer and Mattrick moved on and got different jobs (Maybe Mattrick was asked to leave, but who really knows?). There was not sacrificial lamb to apologize as far as I know.
As for MS being "forgiven," they did a lot of damage to their brand. It's going to take a lot more than a few game reveals and pr statements to fix that.
If the question had been, "do you support spinning off Windows, or Office?", do you think he would have said, "I support the CEO", or that he probably would have said, "Nadella isn't that big an idiot.".
So the answer doesn't suggest Xbox will be spun off as much as where it stands in the MS priority list (lowish).
Bingo.
I agree with this to an extent. The whole concept of an "all-in-one" device has never really worked for a variety of reasons, but it keeps resurfacing.
There's more too it too
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/micro...s-he-would-support-xbox-but-not-bing-spinoff/
There's been some rumor / speculation on the XBox brand moving more into the PC space, and the consoles serving as much shorter, iterative hardware (similar to Valve Boxes). The OS/Hypervisor/VM setup they went with is along those plans if they go that route.
There's more too it too
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/micro...s-he-would-support-xbox-but-not-bing-spinoff/
There's been some rumor / speculation on the XBox brand moving more into the PC space, and the consoles serving as much shorter, iterative hardware (similar to Valve Boxes). The OS/Hypervisor/VM setup they went with is along those plans if they go that route.
Who was fired? Ballmer and Mattrick moved on and got different jobs (Maybe Mattrick was asked to leave, but who really knows?). There was not sacrificial lamb to apologize as far as I know.
As for MS being "forgiven," they did a lot of damage to their brand. It's going to take a lot more than a few game reveals and pr statements to fix that.
For starters, there is a strong perception that Microsoft's larger bureaucracy is the primary reason the Xbone's design turned out the way it did. Some higher ups had a vision of pushing Kinect and turning Xbox into an all-in-one device to essentially trojan horse multiple subscription based revenue streams from American living rooms. Meanwhile, the target market just wants games. The end result is gamers end up with an under-powered console at an inflated price, relative to the competition...a problem which is going to plague the Xbone this entire generation unless there is a change of focus. Spinning off the Xbox division would potentially allow gamers to run things from here on out (rather than bean counters and bureaucrats).
Spinning off the division has risks (primarily that the division sinks or swims on its own merits...the balance sheet is fully open to scrutiny) but I believe it would inherently be a good thing for the health of Xbox and for gamers as well. After all, the primary reason the 360 was successful was because during most of its early run the Xbox division had much more autonomy than they appear to have now, from the design phase all the way through marketing and selling it. They essentially provided a near perfect product for what the market wanted at the time, which is why it was a great success in the US. Things began to change around 2010 with the focus shifting to Kinect. And then the company began doing internal restructuring, which culminated in the most recent official public restructuring in which Xbox was essentially brought under the Windows group. The end result is that the creative people in the Xbox division have far less autonomy to make gamer-centric, timely, market directed decisions than their forebears did when selling the 360. The only "benefit" gamers saw from this move was the ham-fisted attempt to jam the Win8 tile UI into the 360 and then Xbone, when many would argue the old "Blade" system was far better. Just one more example of how the larger vision at work is not compatible with what the market wants.
The sad thing is the Xbone has the obvious feel of a money machine designed by committee rather than a gaming console designed by gamers. So, it could be argued that no matter what MS does at this point it will carry this stigma the entire gen. But, I'd be all for shaking things up and seeing if the passionate gamers at MS can turn this thing around despite it having a hardware handicap and a major image problem. Separating the Xbox division from MS would at least partially solve the latter problem, as most of the Xbone's PR problem stems from its connection to the larger company.
Because that would be huge for the gaming industry?
There's more too it too
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/micro...s-he-would-support-xbox-but-not-bing-spinoff/
There's been some rumor / speculation on the XBox brand moving more into the PC space, and the consoles serving as much shorter, iterative hardware (similar to Valve Boxes). The OS/Hypervisor/VM setup they went with is along those plans if they go that route.
Amazon Xbox would be a great thing.
I'd jump in.
There's more too it too
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/micro...s-he-would-support-xbox-but-not-bing-spinoff/
There's been some rumor / speculation on the XBox brand moving more into the PC space, and the consoles serving as much shorter, iterative hardware (similar to Valve Boxes). The OS/Hypervisor/VM setup they went with is along those plans if they go that route.
Not necessarily.A spinoff of Xbox is an option for a company in dire straits, not for a company making $6B profit every quarter.
Basically. Not really noteworthy. Gates is still on the board, so it's just a vote of confidence.