I stuck this in the OP. If any of y'all have any suggestions on tweaking it, I'm open.
NEW:Take care when citing Forbes blogs. Yes, Forbes the magazine is a highly respected business publication. But Forbes blogs are completely different -- they'll allow any gibbering diseased simian that can pound on a keyboard to contribute, and it's quickly become legendary for garbage. So if you see an article saying stuff like "Sony will kill the PlayStation division next month!" don't assume it's likely true because it has the respected Forbes name attached to it.
You may have noticed that there are lots of rumours flying about regarding next-gen consoles. No one knows definitely when Microsoft and Sony will unveil their successors to the current Xbox and PlayStation, but Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai has said that it will let Microsoft make the first move.
In the Business section of The Times today, Hirai said, "Why go first, when your competitors can look at your specifications and come up with something better?"
With Nintendo already out the next-gen blocks with the Wii U, can Sony hold its bottle until the Microsoft announces? Surely his comments are slightly disingenuous, since there would be relatively little scope for changing the specs of the PlayStation this late in its development cycle. It's more likely that the additional time would be use to adjust the messaging surrounding the announcement.
for once, i'd like them to just come out to E3 themselves, lay out the specs, show it running some actual games, and not hire stupid ass actors to run around on stage pretending to be enthused about video games. maybe announce when it's expected to ship and/or the pricing? but who am i kidding, both conferences will go for hours to get about 2 paragraphs of information.
Speaking of 47-minute presentations, did we ever get any info about how Wonderbook sold? The data may have been folded into NPD's accessories chart, which no one has access to since they charge extra for it.
Switch: 3947-4890-9293
0
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
It released sometime in the holiday window. It's an additional peripheral on top of Playstation Move, so my instant assumption is that it sold 4 copies, 2 of which were accidentally purchased.
Considering both the Wonderbook Move bundle and the stand-alone book/game are both being sold for a 25% discount on Amazon two months after it came out, I'm guessing it's not doing so hot.
We have it - we haven't tried it yet though. The Wii U sort of overshadowed it... Maybe I'll give it a shot this weekend. They haven't really announced any solid info on followup books which concerns me but since I got it on Black Friday for $19.99 I'm not really that invested.
Desktops are becoming really commoditized, though. Their value as a market is vanishing very fast. You can have your 3000 employees working on barebones machines, or even thin clients, these days. Hardware power outgrew the need for power by a big margin.
I love desktops, I love making my own pc, but I can't see much of a life for that market other than cheap shitty machines or high end connoisseur stuff. Kinda like the music industry, you have your shitty ipod knock off masses, another big chunk of users of ipods, ipads and smartphones of all kinds, and then you have the crazy vinyl hi-fi DAC 1500 dollar cans dudes.
But even after ignoring the big hysteria from the article author, the core of the facts is not really good for MS overall. Which saddens me indeed.
Microsoft doesn't sell processors. If your 3000 employees are working on barebones machines, that's still 3000 licenses of Windows and Office. Depending on how you set up your enterprise licensing, even 3000 employees on thin clients may be 3000 licenses of Windows and Office. The article is correct that MS makes their money on Windows and Office, but their breadwinners are enterprise sales. Look at Visual Studio: it makes the company a fair bit of money but you can get it for free as an individual. The money all comes from enterprise customers buying hundreds or thousands of licenses.
Every individual in the world could be using their iphone or android tablet exclusively for home computing but until, and unless, enterprises start going Apple or Android, MS isn't going away. And considering the amount of inertia that enterprises have that's not super likely in the next decade.
But to bring it around to the actual point of the thread: I thought the Xbox started making money a year or two ago?
The point is that those shitboxes now take a really long time to become obsolete and require a replacement. And big corporations and goverment agencies sometimes hang on to older versions of Windows for an even long time.
So, long lived commoditized hardware + slow upgrade of OS = Bad business for MS. Also, the shitboxes are being slowly replaced by Shitlaptops and even tablets.
Why is this "bad for MS" though? It doesn't matter if they upgrade or not, they are still paying. Now, I mean, if they were upgrading it would be better for MS, but they've survived 2 shit OS's in the past like decade and a half already, so I'm not seeing what's fundamentally different here. It might be worse cause of tablet sales, but not that much worse. They still dominate the desktop and laptop markets.
Where they are loosing is the tablet and smartphone market and they never owned that market in the first place. They aren't loosing the lead or anything here.
The entire doom thing then seems predicated on people looking at tablet/smartphone sales being up and PC sales going down and thinking this is somehow a trend that will continue till traditional computers are marginalized or something. And that's ridiculous. Tablets are seeing big adoption, but desktop/laptops are not going anywhere. Especially not in the business world, where MS makes most of it's money afaik.
shryke on
+2
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
I for real serious here did not even realize it had come out.
That is just incredible.
I mean to be fair I'm probably not consuming the exact sort of media where they would have advertised actually releasing this thing, but you'd think I would have heard something about it.
I saw quite a few TV ads in early December for Wonderbook, focused purely on the Harry Potter thing and name dropping Rowling. Other than that I haven't heard a peep since E3.
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
Speaking of 47-minute presentations, did we ever get any info about how Wonderbook sold? The data may have been folded into NPD's accessories chart, which no one has access to since they charge extra for it.
Only figures I can find are from VGChartz, which says that it sold about 350,000.
Nintendo Console Codes
Switch (JeffConser): SW-3353-5433-5137 Wii U: Skeldare - 3DS: 1848-1663-9345
PM Me if you add me!
Speaking of 47-minute presentations, did we ever get any info about how Wonderbook sold? The data may have been folded into NPD's accessories chart, which no one has access to since they charge extra for it.
Only figures I can find are from VGChartz, which says that it sold about 350,000.
VGChartz? ..... UNCLEAN!! UNCLEAN!! BURN IT IN PURIFYING FIRE!!
Speaking of 47-minute presentations, did we ever get any info about how Wonderbook sold? The data may have been folded into NPD's accessories chart, which no one has access to since they charge extra for it.
Only figures I can find are from VGChartz, which says that it sold about 350,000.
VGChartz? ..... UNCLEAN!! UNCLEAN!! BURN IT IN PURIFYING FIRE!!
Real answer is that Sony never reveals sales figures anyway. It obviously hasn't set the world on fire.
Nintendo Console Codes
Switch (JeffConser): SW-3353-5433-5137 Wii U: Skeldare - 3DS: 1848-1663-9345
PM Me if you add me!
Speaking of 47-minute presentations, did we ever get any info about how Wonderbook sold? The data may have been folded into NPD's accessories chart, which no one has access to since they charge extra for it.
Only figures I can find are from VGChartz, which says that it sold about 350,000.
VGChartz? ..... UNCLEAN!! UNCLEAN!! BURN IT IN PURIFYING FIRE!!
Real answer is that Sony never reveals sales figures anyway. It obviously hasn't set the world on fire.
They'd love to tell us that they've shipped a lot of them, though :rotate:
Here at Ars Technica, we're no strangers to overzealous EULAs. But a clause in the EULA for the beta version of Electronic Arts' new Sim City might take the cake for punishing users for seemingly innocuous actions... or lack of actions.
As Twitter user Dan Teasdale tweeted recently (and SideQuesting promoted), the end-user license agreement you have to sign to get access to the new Sim City beta mentions that "it is your responsibility to report all known bugs, abuse of ‘bugs’, ‘undocumented features’ or other defects and problems related to the Game and Beta Software to EA as soon as they are found ('Bugs')." That's not so bad, but it gets a little bit more concerning when the EULA lays out the penalties for failing to report a bug you come across.
"If you know about a Bug or have heard about a Bug and fail to report the Bug to EA, we reserve the right to treat you no differently from someone who abuses the Bug. You acknowledge that EA reserve the right to lock anyone caught abusing a Bug out of all EA products."
That circuitous language obscures a simple fact: just coming across a bug in the Sim City beta and not telling anyone about it is enough to ban you from all EA games.
This kind of language isn't exactly new; players noted a similar clause in the agreement for the Battlefield 3 beta. It's not the first time EA's EULAs have attracted controversy, either; in 2011, the Origin user agreement let the software collect data from anywhere on your hard drive and upload it to EA. EA quickly revised that language days after widespread player outrage over the clause.
We have yet to hear any reports of players being banned for simply stumbling upon an unreported bug. In fact, it's hard to imagine how EA would actually detect that a player failed to report a game-breaking bug that was encountered. More than likely, the company would only make use of this company-wide ban if someone started spreading word of a beta bug publicly, rather than simply telling EA about it.
Just because some overprotective lawyer stuck this language in the EULA doesn't mean EA plans to use its power punitively. Still, the revelation helps highlight just how many powers software makers like EA reserve for themselves when you click that "I accept" button. Let's be thankful that no one has yet put a sentence in a EULA saying the software maker has the right to remove your kidneys in the dead of night.
I so don't need any more reason to skip Simcity after that.
Remember how they spent 15 minutes on it at E3 but refused to show off any of their 20+ Vita games that were on the floor at the conference?
I recall it being longer than that
Maybe it just felt longer because of how awkward and terrible the presentation was because the person presenting it apparently didn't even know how to start it up
Here at Ars Technica, we're no strangers to overzealous EULAs. But a clause in the EULA for the beta version of Electronic Arts' new Sim City might take the cake for punishing users for seemingly innocuous actions... or lack of actions.
As Twitter user Dan Teasdale tweeted recently (and SideQuesting promoted), the end-user license agreement you have to sign to get access to the new Sim City beta mentions that "it is your responsibility to report all known bugs, abuse of ‘bugs’, ‘undocumented features’ or other defects and problems related to the Game and Beta Software to EA as soon as they are found ('Bugs')." That's not so bad, but it gets a little bit more concerning when the EULA lays out the penalties for failing to report a bug you come across.
"If you know about a Bug or have heard about a Bug and fail to report the Bug to EA, we reserve the right to treat you no differently from someone who abuses the Bug. You acknowledge that EA reserve the right to lock anyone caught abusing a Bug out of all EA products."
That circuitous language obscures a simple fact: just coming across a bug in the Sim City beta and not telling anyone about it is enough to ban you from all EA games.
This kind of language isn't exactly new; players noted a similar clause in the agreement for the Battlefield 3 beta. It's not the first time EA's EULAs have attracted controversy, either; in 2011, the Origin user agreement let the software collect data from anywhere on your hard drive and upload it to EA. EA quickly revised that language days after widespread player outrage over the clause.
We have yet to hear any reports of players being banned for simply stumbling upon an unreported bug. In fact, it's hard to imagine how EA would actually detect that a player failed to report a game-breaking bug that was encountered. More than likely, the company would only make use of this company-wide ban if someone started spreading word of a beta bug publicly, rather than simply telling EA about it.
Just because some overprotective lawyer stuck this language in the EULA doesn't mean EA plans to use its power punitively. Still, the revelation helps highlight just how many powers software makers like EA reserve for themselves when you click that "I accept" button. Let's be thankful that no one has yet put a sentence in a EULA saying the software maker has the right to remove your kidneys in the dead of night.
I so don't need any more reason to skip Simcity after that.
2 words: plausible deniability.
Nintendo Console Codes
Switch (JeffConser): SW-3353-5433-5137 Wii U: Skeldare - 3DS: 1848-1663-9345
PM Me if you add me!
HAIL HYDRA
+1
CuvisTheConquerorThey always say "yee haw" but they never ask "haw yee?" Registered Userregular
Desktops are becoming really commoditized, though. Their value as a market is vanishing very fast. You can have your 3000 employees working on barebones machines, or even thin clients, these days. Hardware power outgrew the need for power by a big margin.
I love desktops, I love making my own pc, but I can't see much of a life for that market other than cheap shitty machines or high end connoisseur stuff. Kinda like the music industry, you have your shitty ipod knock off masses, another big chunk of users of ipods, ipads and smartphones of all kinds, and then you have the crazy vinyl hi-fi DAC 1500 dollar cans dudes.
But even after ignoring the big hysteria from the article author, the core of the facts is not really good for MS overall. Which saddens me indeed.
Microsoft doesn't sell processors. If your 3000 employees are working on barebones machines, that's still 3000 licenses of Windows and Office. Depending on how you set up your enterprise licensing, even 3000 employees on thin clients may be 3000 licenses of Windows and Office. The article is correct that MS makes their money on Windows and Office, but their breadwinners are enterprise sales. Look at Visual Studio: it makes the company a fair bit of money but you can get it for free as an individual. The money all comes from enterprise customers buying hundreds or thousands of licenses.
Every individual in the world could be using their iphone or android tablet exclusively for home computing but until, and unless, enterprises start going Apple or Android, MS isn't going away. And considering the amount of inertia that enterprises have that's not super likely in the next decade.
But to bring it around to the actual point of the thread: I thought the Xbox started making money a year or two ago?
The point is that those shitboxes now take a really long time to become obsolete and require a replacement. And big corporations and goverment agencies sometimes hang on to older versions of Windows for an even long time.
So, long lived commoditized hardware + slow upgrade of OS = Bad business for MS. Also, the shitboxes are being slowly replaced by Shitlaptops and even tablets.
Why is this "bad for MS" though? It doesn't matter if they upgrade or not, they are still paying. Now, I mean, if they were upgrading it would be better for MS, but they've survived 2 shit OS's in the past like decade and a half already, so I'm not seeing what's fundamentally different here. It might be worse cause of tablet sales, but not that much worse. They still dominate the desktop and laptop markets.
Where they are loosing is the tablet and smartphone market and they never owned that market in the first place. They aren't loosing the lead or anything here.
The entire doom thing then seems predicated on people looking at tablet/smartphone sales being up and PC sales going down and thinking this is somehow a trend that will continue till traditional computers are marginalized or something. And that's ridiculous. Tablets are seeing big adoption, but desktop/laptops are not going anywhere. Especially not in the business world, where MS makes most of it's money afaik.
Companies buy windows bundled with a new machine or when they decide to upgrade the Windows version of their current machines.
Therefore, if they stop doing those two things, they're not paying for windows anymore. Therefore, MS is not making a dime. Also, companies buy windows licenses in bulk, which means MS makes a lot less money on business Windows per license than in the hoso market. which is shrinking fast too.
Also, releasing shit OS when the winds are favorable is not as bad as releasing a good but divisive OS when the storm is here.
MS dominates dying and slowing markets. I can't see how that is disputable. And I can't see how that's a good thing in any way. They're the lead buggy whip makers. good luck with that.
You may have noticed that there are lots of rumours flying about regarding next-gen consoles. No one knows definitely when Microsoft and Sony will unveil their successors to the current Xbox and PlayStation, but Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai has said that it will let Microsoft make the first move.
In the Business section of The Times today, Hirai said, "Why go first, when your competitors can look at your specifications and come up with something better?"
With Nintendo already out the next-gen blocks with the Wii U, can Sony hold its bottle until the Microsoft announces? Surely his comments are slightly disingenuous, since there would be relatively little scope for changing the specs of the PlayStation this late in its development cycle. It's more likely that the additional time would be use to adjust the messaging surrounding the announcement.
Here at Ars Technica, we're no strangers to overzealous EULAs. But a clause in the EULA for the beta version of Electronic Arts' new Sim City might take the cake for punishing users for seemingly innocuous actions... or lack of actions.
As Twitter user Dan Teasdale tweeted recently (and SideQuesting promoted), the end-user license agreement you have to sign to get access to the new Sim City beta mentions that "it is your responsibility to report all known bugs, abuse of ‘bugs’, ‘undocumented features’ or other defects and problems related to the Game and Beta Software to EA as soon as they are found ('Bugs')." That's not so bad, but it gets a little bit more concerning when the EULA lays out the penalties for failing to report a bug you come across.
"If you know about a Bug or have heard about a Bug and fail to report the Bug to EA, we reserve the right to treat you no differently from someone who abuses the Bug. You acknowledge that EA reserve the right to lock anyone caught abusing a Bug out of all EA products."
That circuitous language obscures a simple fact: just coming across a bug in the Sim City beta and not telling anyone about it is enough to ban you from all EA games.
This kind of language isn't exactly new; players noted a similar clause in the agreement for the Battlefield 3 beta. It's not the first time EA's EULAs have attracted controversy, either; in 2011, the Origin user agreement let the software collect data from anywhere on your hard drive and upload it to EA. EA quickly revised that language days after widespread player outrage over the clause.
We have yet to hear any reports of players being banned for simply stumbling upon an unreported bug. In fact, it's hard to imagine how EA would actually detect that a player failed to report a game-breaking bug that was encountered. More than likely, the company would only make use of this company-wide ban if someone started spreading word of a beta bug publicly, rather than simply telling EA about it.
Just because some overprotective lawyer stuck this language in the EULA doesn't mean EA plans to use its power punitively. Still, the revelation helps highlight just how many powers software makers like EA reserve for themselves when you click that "I accept" button. Let's be thankful that no one has yet put a sentence in a EULA saying the software maker has the right to remove your kidneys in the dead of night.
I so don't need any more reason to skip Simcity after that.
The question is how do you enforce it. Because at face value this isn't so bad.
Here at Ars Technica, we're no strangers to overzealous EULAs. But a clause in the EULA for the beta version of Electronic Arts' new Sim City might take the cake for punishing users for seemingly innocuous actions... or lack of actions.
As Twitter user Dan Teasdale tweeted recently (and SideQuesting promoted), the end-user license agreement you have to sign to get access to the new Sim City beta mentions that "it is your responsibility to report all known bugs, abuse of ‘bugs’, ‘undocumented features’ or other defects and problems related to the Game and Beta Software to EA as soon as they are found ('Bugs')." That's not so bad, but it gets a little bit more concerning when the EULA lays out the penalties for failing to report a bug you come across.
"If you know about a Bug or have heard about a Bug and fail to report the Bug to EA, we reserve the right to treat you no differently from someone who abuses the Bug. You acknowledge that EA reserve the right to lock anyone caught abusing a Bug out of all EA products."
That circuitous language obscures a simple fact: just coming across a bug in the Sim City beta and not telling anyone about it is enough to ban you from all EA games.
This kind of language isn't exactly new; players noted a similar clause in the agreement for the Battlefield 3 beta. It's not the first time EA's EULAs have attracted controversy, either; in 2011, the Origin user agreement let the software collect data from anywhere on your hard drive and upload it to EA. EA quickly revised that language days after widespread player outrage over the clause.
We have yet to hear any reports of players being banned for simply stumbling upon an unreported bug. In fact, it's hard to imagine how EA would actually detect that a player failed to report a game-breaking bug that was encountered. More than likely, the company would only make use of this company-wide ban if someone started spreading word of a beta bug publicly, rather than simply telling EA about it.
Just because some overprotective lawyer stuck this language in the EULA doesn't mean EA plans to use its power punitively. Still, the revelation helps highlight just how many powers software makers like EA reserve for themselves when you click that "I accept" button. Let's be thankful that no one has yet put a sentence in a EULA saying the software maker has the right to remove your kidneys in the dead of night.
I so don't need any more reason to skip Simcity after that.
The question is how do you enforce it. Because at face value this isn't so bad.
In two years EA will want to turn off the servers for SimCity 2013. Instead of announcing the closure as a negative thing like "We're stopping support for this game" they will instead carpet ban absolutely everyone who is playing the game. The reason?
"There was a bug that made the crime stopping radius of a police station 10 blocks instead of the intended 9.5 blocks and every player had taken advantage of this bug and not reported it."
Desktops are becoming really commoditized, though. Their value as a market is vanishing very fast. You can have your 3000 employees working on barebones machines, or even thin clients, these days. Hardware power outgrew the need for power by a big margin.
I love desktops, I love making my own pc, but I can't see much of a life for that market other than cheap shitty machines or high end connoisseur stuff. Kinda like the music industry, you have your shitty ipod knock off masses, another big chunk of users of ipods, ipads and smartphones of all kinds, and then you have the crazy vinyl hi-fi DAC 1500 dollar cans dudes.
But even after ignoring the big hysteria from the article author, the core of the facts is not really good for MS overall. Which saddens me indeed.
Microsoft doesn't sell processors. If your 3000 employees are working on barebones machines, that's still 3000 licenses of Windows and Office. Depending on how you set up your enterprise licensing, even 3000 employees on thin clients may be 3000 licenses of Windows and Office. The article is correct that MS makes their money on Windows and Office, but their breadwinners are enterprise sales. Look at Visual Studio: it makes the company a fair bit of money but you can get it for free as an individual. The money all comes from enterprise customers buying hundreds or thousands of licenses.
Every individual in the world could be using their iphone or android tablet exclusively for home computing but until, and unless, enterprises start going Apple or Android, MS isn't going away. And considering the amount of inertia that enterprises have that's not super likely in the next decade.
But to bring it around to the actual point of the thread: I thought the Xbox started making money a year or two ago?
The point is that those shitboxes now take a really long time to become obsolete and require a replacement. And big corporations and goverment agencies sometimes hang on to older versions of Windows for an even long time.
So, long lived commoditized hardware + slow upgrade of OS = Bad business for MS. Also, the shitboxes are being slowly replaced by Shitlaptops and even tablets.
Why is this "bad for MS" though? It doesn't matter if they upgrade or not, they are still paying. Now, I mean, if they were upgrading it would be better for MS, but they've survived 2 shit OS's in the past like decade and a half already, so I'm not seeing what's fundamentally different here. It might be worse cause of tablet sales, but not that much worse. They still dominate the desktop and laptop markets.
Where they are loosing is the tablet and smartphone market and they never owned that market in the first place. They aren't loosing the lead or anything here.
The entire doom thing then seems predicated on people looking at tablet/smartphone sales being up and PC sales going down and thinking this is somehow a trend that will continue till traditional computers are marginalized or something. And that's ridiculous. Tablets are seeing big adoption, but desktop/laptops are not going anywhere. Especially not in the business world, where MS makes most of it's money afaik.
Companies buy windows bundled with a new machine or when they decide to upgrade the Windows version of their current machines.
Therefore, if they stop doing those two things, they're not paying for windows anymore. Therefore, MS is not making a dime. Also, companies buy windows licenses in bulk, which means MS makes a lot less money on business Windows per license than in the hoso market. which is shrinking fast too.
Also, releasing shit OS when the winds are favorable is not as bad as releasing a good but divisive OS when the storm is here.
MS dominates dying and slowing markets. I can't see how that is disputable. And I can't see how that's a good thing in any way. They're the lead buggy whip makers. good luck with that.
The bold part is wrong and what you're not getting here. MS makes less money (by a not-that-significant percentage) per-license on volume sales, but they sell a lot of volume that way. They absolutely make more money on business licenses than they do on home sales. Which is why the home user market could vanish entirely without MS going under. Corporations are note moving to tablets or smartphones instead of desktops and laptops. They're also not upgrading significantly more slowly than they have in the past. Enterprise upgrades are always glacial. There are still enough enterprise customers to provide MS a consistent revenue stream.
Also, the new Office365 thing is trying transition Office licenses to a subscription model, negating the need for regular upgrades. They also recently introduced Windows Azure to target enterprises' cloud computing needs on a subscription basis. I do not speak with a voice of any authority here, but I'd say that MS appears to know, strategically, that boxed retail sales are shrinking and so are moving to a subscription basis for their primary moneymakers.
MS dominates the home PC market, which is slowing. They completely own the Enterprise market for pretty much everything except cloud services and phones, which they're trying to get into. Enterprise is really difficult to break into but represents truly stupid amounts of potential money if you can do it.
And again: I thought the xbox was making money now?
Edit: Googling tells me that Xbox made $1.28 billion (profit) in 2011 and $364 million in 2012. Not a good trend-line, but I guess not surprising for the presumable last real year of the system's dominant lifecycle.
Speaking of 47-minute presentations, did we ever get any info about how Wonderbook sold? The data may have been folded into NPD's accessories chart, which no one has access to since they charge extra for it.
Only figures I can find are from VGChartz, which says that it sold about 350,000.
VGChartz? ..... UNCLEAN!! UNCLEAN!! BURN IT IN PURIFYING FIRE!!
Real answer is that Sony never reveals sales figures anyway. It obviously hasn't set the world on fire.
They'd love to tell us that they've shipped a lot of them, though :rotate:
Between that, Vita and the weakness of Sony PlayStation Fighty Random Characters You Know Whatever, Sony really whiffed this Christmas. Good thing PS3 console sales were decent.
Desktops are becoming really commoditized, though. Their value as a market is vanishing very fast. You can have your 3000 employees working on barebones machines, or even thin clients, these days. Hardware power outgrew the need for power by a big margin.
I love desktops, I love making my own pc, but I can't see much of a life for that market other than cheap shitty machines or high end connoisseur stuff. Kinda like the music industry, you have your shitty ipod knock off masses, another big chunk of users of ipods, ipads and smartphones of all kinds, and then you have the crazy vinyl hi-fi DAC 1500 dollar cans dudes.
But even after ignoring the big hysteria from the article author, the core of the facts is not really good for MS overall. Which saddens me indeed.
Microsoft doesn't sell processors. If your 3000 employees are working on barebones machines, that's still 3000 licenses of Windows and Office. Depending on how you set up your enterprise licensing, even 3000 employees on thin clients may be 3000 licenses of Windows and Office. The article is correct that MS makes their money on Windows and Office, but their breadwinners are enterprise sales. Look at Visual Studio: it makes the company a fair bit of money but you can get it for free as an individual. The money all comes from enterprise customers buying hundreds or thousands of licenses.
Every individual in the world could be using their iphone or android tablet exclusively for home computing but until, and unless, enterprises start going Apple or Android, MS isn't going away. And considering the amount of inertia that enterprises have that's not super likely in the next decade.
But to bring it around to the actual point of the thread: I thought the Xbox started making money a year or two ago?
The point is that those shitboxes now take a really long time to become obsolete and require a replacement. And big corporations and goverment agencies sometimes hang on to older versions of Windows for an even long time.
So, long lived commoditized hardware + slow upgrade of OS = Bad business for MS. Also, the shitboxes are being slowly replaced by Shitlaptops and even tablets.
Why is this "bad for MS" though? It doesn't matter if they upgrade or not, they are still paying. Now, I mean, if they were upgrading it would be better for MS, but they've survived 2 shit OS's in the past like decade and a half already, so I'm not seeing what's fundamentally different here. It might be worse cause of tablet sales, but not that much worse. They still dominate the desktop and laptop markets.
Where they are loosing is the tablet and smartphone market and they never owned that market in the first place. They aren't loosing the lead or anything here.
The entire doom thing then seems predicated on people looking at tablet/smartphone sales being up and PC sales going down and thinking this is somehow a trend that will continue till traditional computers are marginalized or something. And that's ridiculous. Tablets are seeing big adoption, but desktop/laptops are not going anywhere. Especially not in the business world, where MS makes most of it's money afaik.
Companies buy windows bundled with a new machine or when they decide to upgrade the Windows version of their current machines.
Therefore, if they stop doing those two things, they're not paying for windows anymore. Therefore, MS is not making a dime. Also, companies buy windows licenses in bulk, which means MS makes a lot less money on business Windows per license than in the hoso market. which is shrinking fast too.
Also, releasing shit OS when the winds are favorable is not as bad as releasing a good but divisive OS when the storm is here.
MS dominates dying and slowing markets. I can't see how that is disputable. And I can't see how that's a good thing in any way. They're the lead buggy whip makers. good luck with that.
The bold part is wrong and what you're not getting here. MS makes less money (by a not-that-significant percentage) per-license on volume sales, but they sell a lot of volume that way. They absolutely make more money on business licenses than they do on home sales. Which is why the home user market could vanish entirely without MS going under. Corporations are note moving to tablets or smartphones instead of desktops and laptops. They're also not upgrading significantly more slowly than they have in the past. Enterprise upgrades are always glacial. There are still enough enterprise customers to provide MS a consistent revenue stream.
Also, the new Office365 thing is trying transition Office licenses to a subscription model, negating the need for regular upgrades. They also recently introduced Windows Azure to target enterprises' cloud computing needs on a subscription basis. I do not speak with a voice of any authority here, but I'd say that MS appears to know, strategically, that boxed retail sales are shrinking and so are moving to a subscription basis for their primary moneymakers.
MS dominates the home PC market, which is slowing. They completely own the Enterprise market for pretty much everything except cloud services and phones, which they're trying to get into. Enterprise is really difficult to break into but represents truly stupid amounts of potential money if you can do it.
And again: I thought the xbox was making money now?
I've always assumed the question of "Is (a console) making money now?" was deliberately difficult because the entire console program is tied closely to sales of software and licensing fees, alongside the actual hardware sales (themselves divided between peripherals and consoles--Microsoft seems to make the single most popular gamepad in home electronic entertainment, and I'd be really surprised if they didn't make a profit in that $40 per unit charge).
Or maybe it should be, "DOOOOOOOOMED!" Calling it now: the 2020s will the Apple '90s for Microsoft. Everyone sell your shares while they're still worth the insulation they're printed on.
Desktops are becoming really commoditized, though. Their value as a market is vanishing very fast. You can have your 3000 employees working on barebones machines, or even thin clients, these days. Hardware power outgrew the need for power by a big margin.
I love desktops, I love making my own pc, but I can't see much of a life for that market other than cheap shitty machines or high end connoisseur stuff. Kinda like the music industry, you have your shitty ipod knock off masses, another big chunk of users of ipods, ipads and smartphones of all kinds, and then you have the crazy vinyl hi-fi DAC 1500 dollar cans dudes.
But even after ignoring the big hysteria from the article author, the core of the facts is not really good for MS overall. Which saddens me indeed.
Microsoft doesn't sell processors. If your 3000 employees are working on barebones machines, that's still 3000 licenses of Windows and Office. Depending on how you set up your enterprise licensing, even 3000 employees on thin clients may be 3000 licenses of Windows and Office. The article is correct that MS makes their money on Windows and Office, but their breadwinners are enterprise sales. Look at Visual Studio: it makes the company a fair bit of money but you can get it for free as an individual. The money all comes from enterprise customers buying hundreds or thousands of licenses.
Every individual in the world could be using their iphone or android tablet exclusively for home computing but until, and unless, enterprises start going Apple or Android, MS isn't going away. And considering the amount of inertia that enterprises have that's not super likely in the next decade.
But to bring it around to the actual point of the thread: I thought the Xbox started making money a year or two ago?
The point is that those shitboxes now take a really long time to become obsolete and require a replacement. And big corporations and goverment agencies sometimes hang on to older versions of Windows for an even long time.
So, long lived commoditized hardware + slow upgrade of OS = Bad business for MS. Also, the shitboxes are being slowly replaced by Shitlaptops and even tablets.
Why is this "bad for MS" though? It doesn't matter if they upgrade or not, they are still paying. Now, I mean, if they were upgrading it would be better for MS, but they've survived 2 shit OS's in the past like decade and a half already, so I'm not seeing what's fundamentally different here. It might be worse cause of tablet sales, but not that much worse. They still dominate the desktop and laptop markets.
Where they are loosing is the tablet and smartphone market and they never owned that market in the first place. They aren't loosing the lead or anything here.
The entire doom thing then seems predicated on people looking at tablet/smartphone sales being up and PC sales going down and thinking this is somehow a trend that will continue till traditional computers are marginalized or something. And that's ridiculous. Tablets are seeing big adoption, but desktop/laptops are not going anywhere. Especially not in the business world, where MS makes most of it's money afaik.
Companies buy windows bundled with a new machine or when they decide to upgrade the Windows version of their current machines.
Therefore, if they stop doing those two things, they're not paying for windows anymore. Therefore, MS is not making a dime. Also, companies buy windows licenses in bulk, which means MS makes a lot less money on business Windows per license than in the hoso market. which is shrinking fast too.
Also, releasing shit OS when the winds are favorable is not as bad as releasing a good but divisive OS when the storm is here.
MS dominates dying and slowing markets. I can't see how that is disputable. And I can't see how that's a good thing in any way. They're the lead buggy whip makers. good luck with that.
The bold part is wrong and what you're not getting here. MS makes less money (by a not-that-significant percentage) per-license on volume sales, but they sell a lot of volume that way. They absolutely make more money on business licenses than they do on home sales. Which is why the home user market could vanish entirely without MS going under. Corporations are note moving to tablets or smartphones instead of desktops and laptops. They're also not upgrading significantly more slowly than they have in the past. Enterprise upgrades are always glacial. There are still enough enterprise customers to provide MS a consistent revenue stream.
Also, the new Office365 thing is trying transition Office licenses to a subscription model, negating the need for regular upgrades. They also recently introduced Windows Azure to target enterprises' cloud computing needs on a subscription basis. I do not speak with a voice of any authority here, but I'd say that MS appears to know, strategically, that boxed retail sales are shrinking and so are moving to a subscription basis for their primary moneymakers.
MS dominates the home PC market, which is slowing. They completely own the Enterprise market for pretty much everything except cloud services and phones, which they're trying to get into. Enterprise is really difficult to break into but represents truly stupid amounts of potential money if you can do it.
And again: I thought the xbox was making money now?
I've always assumed the question of "Is (a console) making money now?" was deliberately difficult because the entire console program is tied closely to sales of software and licensing fees, alongside the actual hardware sales (themselves divided between peripherals and consoles--Microsoft seems to make the single most popular gamepad in home electronic entertainment, and I'd be really surprised if they didn't make a profit in that $40 per unit charge).
Or maybe it should be, "DOOOOOOOOMED!" Calling it now: the 2020s will the Apple '90s for Microsoft. Everyone sell your shares while they're still worth the insulation they're printed on.
I always forget about MS' hardware stuff. I imagine they make a pretty good payday on PC peripherals, considering the popularity of their keyboards, mice, and gamepads. Though I guess everyone is burning their PCs for warmth in the post-PC computer apocalypse or whatever so...
Desktops are becoming really commoditized, though. Their value as a market is vanishing very fast. You can have your 3000 employees working on barebones machines, or even thin clients, these days. Hardware power outgrew the need for power by a big margin.
I love desktops, I love making my own pc, but I can't see much of a life for that market other than cheap shitty machines or high end connoisseur stuff. Kinda like the music industry, you have your shitty ipod knock off masses, another big chunk of users of ipods, ipads and smartphones of all kinds, and then you have the crazy vinyl hi-fi DAC 1500 dollar cans dudes.
But even after ignoring the big hysteria from the article author, the core of the facts is not really good for MS overall. Which saddens me indeed.
Microsoft doesn't sell processors. If your 3000 employees are working on barebones machines, that's still 3000 licenses of Windows and Office. Depending on how you set up your enterprise licensing, even 3000 employees on thin clients may be 3000 licenses of Windows and Office. The article is correct that MS makes their money on Windows and Office, but their breadwinners are enterprise sales. Look at Visual Studio: it makes the company a fair bit of money but you can get it for free as an individual. The money all comes from enterprise customers buying hundreds or thousands of licenses.
Every individual in the world could be using their iphone or android tablet exclusively for home computing but until, and unless, enterprises start going Apple or Android, MS isn't going away. And considering the amount of inertia that enterprises have that's not super likely in the next decade.
But to bring it around to the actual point of the thread: I thought the Xbox started making money a year or two ago?
The point is that those shitboxes now take a really long time to become obsolete and require a replacement. And big corporations and goverment agencies sometimes hang on to older versions of Windows for an even long time.
So, long lived commoditized hardware + slow upgrade of OS = Bad business for MS. Also, the shitboxes are being slowly replaced by Shitlaptops and even tablets.
Why is this "bad for MS" though? It doesn't matter if they upgrade or not, they are still paying. Now, I mean, if they were upgrading it would be better for MS, but they've survived 2 shit OS's in the past like decade and a half already, so I'm not seeing what's fundamentally different here. It might be worse cause of tablet sales, but not that much worse. They still dominate the desktop and laptop markets.
Where they are loosing is the tablet and smartphone market and they never owned that market in the first place. They aren't loosing the lead or anything here.
The entire doom thing then seems predicated on people looking at tablet/smartphone sales being up and PC sales going down and thinking this is somehow a trend that will continue till traditional computers are marginalized or something. And that's ridiculous. Tablets are seeing big adoption, but desktop/laptops are not going anywhere. Especially not in the business world, where MS makes most of it's money afaik.
Companies buy windows bundled with a new machine or when they decide to upgrade the Windows version of their current machines.
Therefore, if they stop doing those two things, they're not paying for windows anymore. Therefore, MS is not making a dime. Also, companies buy windows licenses in bulk, which means MS makes a lot less money on business Windows per license than in the hoso market. which is shrinking fast too.
Also, releasing shit OS when the winds are favorable is not as bad as releasing a good but divisive OS when the storm is here.
MS dominates dying and slowing markets. I can't see how that is disputable. And I can't see how that's a good thing in any way. They're the lead buggy whip makers. good luck with that.
The bold part is wrong and what you're not getting here. MS makes less money (by a not-that-significant percentage) per-license on volume sales, but they sell a lot of volume that way. They absolutely make more money on business licenses than they do on home sales. Which is why the home user market could vanish entirely without MS going under. Corporations are note moving to tablets or smartphones instead of desktops and laptops. They're also not upgrading significantly more slowly than they have in the past. Enterprise upgrades are always glacial. There are still enough enterprise customers to provide MS a consistent revenue stream.
Also, the new Office365 thing is trying transition Office licenses to a subscription model, negating the need for regular upgrades. They also recently introduced Windows Azure to target enterprises' cloud computing needs on a subscription basis. I do not speak with a voice of any authority here, but I'd say that MS appears to know, strategically, that boxed retail sales are shrinking and so are moving to a subscription basis for their primary moneymakers.
MS dominates the home PC market, which is slowing. They completely own the Enterprise market for pretty much everything except cloud services and phones, which they're trying to get into. Enterprise is really difficult to break into but represents truly stupid amounts of potential money if you can do it.
And again: I thought the xbox was making money now?
To add to this:
MS dominates some slowing markets, but none are dying. Neither the Laptop nor the desktop are going anywhere. And this bad assumption is what's silly about blog posts like that forbes one.
Smartphones are ... who cares. MS is certainly missing an opportunity for growth there, but MS never had good phone presence anyway, so it's not that bad expect in the loss of money spent investing in windows phone stuff. More importantly though, smartphones don't compete with the hardware platforms that MS makes it's money on. You buy a smartphone instead of a dumbphone and nothing else. (I usually assume people lump smartphones in with tablets in these analyses because they are trying really hard to make it look bad for MS)
Tablets are the ones that matter here and we are certainly seeing a growth in the market, but that's not doom and gloom for MS (although it's hurting them). We should expect to see kind of behaviour as tablets hit the mainstream. They've only become really quality, ass market devices over the past few years. The iPad only came out in 2010 for fuck's sake. So we are seeing a replacement of some part of the computer market with tablets. But that growth cannot continue indefinitely since tablets are not a PC/Laptop replacement for many uses and users. (I'd call them a secondary computing device frankly. They are something people have in addition to another computer.)
This is especially true in the Enterprise market where tablets replace ... basically nothing.
The core MS market of desktop and laptop computers are not dying. Not even close.
Maybe not dying, but it's definitely concerning that Windows 8 isn't doing well at all and that PC purchases somehow declined despite that and being in the fourth quarter, especially with tablets continuing to rise.
And @shryke, believe it or not I keep seeing more and more businesses using iPads for daily work. I was surprised by that too, but it's happening.
Maybe not dying, but it's definitely concerning that Windows 8 isn't doing well at all and that PC purchases somehow declined despite that and being in the fourth quarter, especially with tablets continuing to rise.
Windows 8 is not doing well it looks like. I believe all of 1 person is shocked.
I wonder if PC sales are seeing the same kind of effect Gaming PC sales have seen, where older machines these days just don't have to be replaced as often. I'd have to think about that.
OTOH, Laptops seem to be far LESS durable these days then they used to be, although they are far, far cheaper. The sales guys and such I've chatted with say alot of people replace their laptops every 2 or a bit years.
And @shryke, believe it or not I keep seeing more and more businesses using iPads for daily work. I was surprised by that too, but it's happening.
Eh. I'll believe it's anything more then marginal when I see it.
I've seen business people who own ipads using their ipads for work but I don't think I've seen examples of companies buying their employees ipads instead of desktops/laptops.
As far as Wonderbook sales go, I think it's already had a big price drop . Though I don't know if it was because of the holidays or not.
Either way, up here EB has the bundle for $69.99, but Futureshop has it on sale for a whopping $39.99.
I have complete zero interest in the Move, and I think I own all of one game that supports it. But for that price, I'm sad to admit I'm tempted to get it.
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The_SpaniardIt's never lupinesIrvine, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
Remember how they spent 15 minutes on it at E3 but refused to show off any of their 20+ Vita games that were on the floor at the conference?
I recall it being longer than that
Maybe it just felt longer because of how awkward and terrible the presentation was because the person presenting it apparently didn't even know how to start it up
Yeah, I remember going to the Sony booth and seeing an amazing Vita lineup and thinking to myself, "WHY didn't they talk about ANY of this?!"
Here at Ars Technica, we're no strangers to overzealous EULAs. But a clause in the EULA for the beta version of Electronic Arts' new Sim City might take the cake for punishing users for seemingly innocuous actions... or lack of actions.
As Twitter user Dan Teasdale tweeted recently (and SideQuesting promoted), the end-user license agreement you have to sign to get access to the new Sim City beta mentions that "it is your responsibility to report all known bugs, abuse of ‘bugs’, ‘undocumented features’ or other defects and problems related to the Game and Beta Software to EA as soon as they are found ('Bugs')." That's not so bad, but it gets a little bit more concerning when the EULA lays out the penalties for failing to report a bug you come across.
"If you know about a Bug or have heard about a Bug and fail to report the Bug to EA, we reserve the right to treat you no differently from someone who abuses the Bug. You acknowledge that EA reserve the right to lock anyone caught abusing a Bug out of all EA products."
That circuitous language obscures a simple fact: just coming across a bug in the Sim City beta and not telling anyone about it is enough to ban you from all EA games.
This kind of language isn't exactly new; players noted a similar clause in the agreement for the Battlefield 3 beta. It's not the first time EA's EULAs have attracted controversy, either; in 2011, the Origin user agreement let the software collect data from anywhere on your hard drive and upload it to EA. EA quickly revised that language days after widespread player outrage over the clause.
We have yet to hear any reports of players being banned for simply stumbling upon an unreported bug. In fact, it's hard to imagine how EA would actually detect that a player failed to report a game-breaking bug that was encountered. More than likely, the company would only make use of this company-wide ban if someone started spreading word of a beta bug publicly, rather than simply telling EA about it.
Just because some overprotective lawyer stuck this language in the EULA doesn't mean EA plans to use its power punitively. Still, the revelation helps highlight just how many powers software makers like EA reserve for themselves when you click that "I accept" button. Let's be thankful that no one has yet put a sentence in a EULA saying the software maker has the right to remove your kidneys in the dead of night.
I so don't need any more reason to skip Simcity after that.
The question is how do you enforce it. Because at face value this isn't so bad.
In two years EA will want to turn off the servers for SimCity 2013. Instead of announcing the closure as a negative thing like "We're stopping support for this game" they will instead carpet ban absolutely everyone who is playing the game. The reason?
"There was a bug that made the crime stopping radius of a police station 10 blocks instead of the intended 9.5 blocks and every player had taken advantage of this bug and not reported it."
Uh, this is for the beta. It's reasonable for EA to expect beta testers to have a responsibility to report bugs (although this seems like a somewhat draconian implementation) - the same does not apply to customers.
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NEW:Take care when citing Forbes blogs. Yes, Forbes the magazine is a highly respected business publication. But Forbes blogs are completely different -- they'll allow any gibbering diseased simian that can pound on a keyboard to contribute, and it's quickly become legendary for garbage. So if you see an article saying stuff like "Sony will kill the PlayStation division next month!" don't assume it's likely true because it has the respected Forbes name attached to it.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/01/21/ps4-sony-will-let-microsoft-make-first-move?abthid=50fd5eed8edfc2245c00002f
So is Sony really serious about waiting to announce their system until after E3?
Or maybe this just means that someone at Sony did the math and figured out Microsoft's countdown ends on Wednesday, so Sony will announce on Thursday.
Also, I want to kick this IGN writer squah in the nuts for not providing a link to The Times.
Did not expect that. I'm totally psyched about this!
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I know, right? We've heard zilch on the thing.
Considering both the Wonderbook Move bundle and the stand-alone book/game are both being sold for a 25% discount on Amazon two months after it came out, I'm guessing it's not doing so hot.
Why is this "bad for MS" though? It doesn't matter if they upgrade or not, they are still paying. Now, I mean, if they were upgrading it would be better for MS, but they've survived 2 shit OS's in the past like decade and a half already, so I'm not seeing what's fundamentally different here. It might be worse cause of tablet sales, but not that much worse. They still dominate the desktop and laptop markets.
Where they are loosing is the tablet and smartphone market and they never owned that market in the first place. They aren't loosing the lead or anything here.
The entire doom thing then seems predicated on people looking at tablet/smartphone sales being up and PC sales going down and thinking this is somehow a trend that will continue till traditional computers are marginalized or something. And that's ridiculous. Tablets are seeing big adoption, but desktop/laptops are not going anywhere. Especially not in the business world, where MS makes most of it's money afaik.
That is just incredible.
I mean to be fair I'm probably not consuming the exact sort of media where they would have advertised actually releasing this thing, but you'd think I would have heard something about it.
Only figures I can find are from VGChartz, which says that it sold about 350,000.
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VGChartz? ..... UNCLEAN!! UNCLEAN!! BURN IT IN PURIFYING FIRE!!
Real answer is that Sony never reveals sales figures anyway. It obviously hasn't set the world on fire.
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They'd love to tell us that they've shipped a lot of them, though :rotate:
I so don't need any more reason to skip Simcity after that.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
I recall it being longer than that
Maybe it just felt longer because of how awkward and terrible the presentation was because the person presenting it apparently didn't even know how to start it up
2 words: plausible deniability.
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I don't remember the source material having a lot of robot testicles.
Also, I remember a lot more robots fighting and a lot less Megan Fox and Shia LeBoeuf ”acting”.
Companies buy windows bundled with a new machine or when they decide to upgrade the Windows version of their current machines.
Therefore, if they stop doing those two things, they're not paying for windows anymore. Therefore, MS is not making a dime. Also, companies buy windows licenses in bulk, which means MS makes a lot less money on business Windows per license than in the hoso market. which is shrinking fast too.
Also, releasing shit OS when the winds are favorable is not as bad as releasing a good but divisive OS when the storm is here.
MS dominates dying and slowing markets. I can't see how that is disputable. And I can't see how that's a good thing in any way. They're the lead buggy whip makers. good luck with that.
Kaz Hirai is my favorite spin doctor. And what arrogance too.
The question is how do you enforce it. Because at face value this isn't so bad.
In two years EA will want to turn off the servers for SimCity 2013. Instead of announcing the closure as a negative thing like "We're stopping support for this game" they will instead carpet ban absolutely everyone who is playing the game. The reason?
"There was a bug that made the crime stopping radius of a police station 10 blocks instead of the intended 9.5 blocks and every player had taken advantage of this bug and not reported it."
The bold part is wrong and what you're not getting here. MS makes less money (by a not-that-significant percentage) per-license on volume sales, but they sell a lot of volume that way. They absolutely make more money on business licenses than they do on home sales. Which is why the home user market could vanish entirely without MS going under. Corporations are note moving to tablets or smartphones instead of desktops and laptops. They're also not upgrading significantly more slowly than they have in the past. Enterprise upgrades are always glacial. There are still enough enterprise customers to provide MS a consistent revenue stream.
Also, the new Office365 thing is trying transition Office licenses to a subscription model, negating the need for regular upgrades. They also recently introduced Windows Azure to target enterprises' cloud computing needs on a subscription basis. I do not speak with a voice of any authority here, but I'd say that MS appears to know, strategically, that boxed retail sales are shrinking and so are moving to a subscription basis for their primary moneymakers.
MS dominates the home PC market, which is slowing. They completely own the Enterprise market for pretty much everything except cloud services and phones, which they're trying to get into. Enterprise is really difficult to break into but represents truly stupid amounts of potential money if you can do it.
And again: I thought the xbox was making money now?
Edit: Googling tells me that Xbox made $1.28 billion (profit) in 2011 and $364 million in 2012. Not a good trend-line, but I guess not surprising for the presumable last real year of the system's dominant lifecycle.
Between that, Vita and the weakness of Sony PlayStation Fighty Random Characters You Know Whatever, Sony really whiffed this Christmas. Good thing PS3 console sales were decent.
I've always assumed the question of "Is (a console) making money now?" was deliberately difficult because the entire console program is tied closely to sales of software and licensing fees, alongside the actual hardware sales (themselves divided between peripherals and consoles--Microsoft seems to make the single most popular gamepad in home electronic entertainment, and I'd be really surprised if they didn't make a profit in that $40 per unit charge).
Or maybe it should be, "DOOOOOOOOMED!" Calling it now: the 2020s will the Apple '90s for Microsoft. Everyone sell your shares while they're still worth the insulation they're printed on.
I always forget about MS' hardware stuff. I imagine they make a pretty good payday on PC peripherals, considering the popularity of their keyboards, mice, and gamepads. Though I guess everyone is burning their PCs for warmth in the post-PC computer apocalypse or whatever so...
To add to this:
MS dominates some slowing markets, but none are dying. Neither the Laptop nor the desktop are going anywhere. And this bad assumption is what's silly about blog posts like that forbes one.
Smartphones are ... who cares. MS is certainly missing an opportunity for growth there, but MS never had good phone presence anyway, so it's not that bad expect in the loss of money spent investing in windows phone stuff. More importantly though, smartphones don't compete with the hardware platforms that MS makes it's money on. You buy a smartphone instead of a dumbphone and nothing else. (I usually assume people lump smartphones in with tablets in these analyses because they are trying really hard to make it look bad for MS)
Tablets are the ones that matter here and we are certainly seeing a growth in the market, but that's not doom and gloom for MS (although it's hurting them). We should expect to see kind of behaviour as tablets hit the mainstream. They've only become really quality, ass market devices over the past few years. The iPad only came out in 2010 for fuck's sake. So we are seeing a replacement of some part of the computer market with tablets. But that growth cannot continue indefinitely since tablets are not a PC/Laptop replacement for many uses and users. (I'd call them a secondary computing device frankly. They are something people have in addition to another computer.)
This is especially true in the Enterprise market where tablets replace ... basically nothing.
The core MS market of desktop and laptop computers are not dying. Not even close.
And @shryke, believe it or not I keep seeing more and more businesses using iPads for daily work. I was surprised by that too, but it's happening.
Not to mention 10hours of battery life.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Windows 8 is not doing well it looks like. I believe all of 1 person is shocked.
I wonder if PC sales are seeing the same kind of effect Gaming PC sales have seen, where older machines these days just don't have to be replaced as often. I'd have to think about that.
OTOH, Laptops seem to be far LESS durable these days then they used to be, although they are far, far cheaper. The sales guys and such I've chatted with say alot of people replace their laptops every 2 or a bit years.
Eh. I'll believe it's anything more then marginal when I see it.
Either way, up here EB has the bundle for $69.99, but Futureshop has it on sale for a whopping $39.99.
I have complete zero interest in the Move, and I think I own all of one game that supports it. But for that price, I'm sad to admit I'm tempted to get it.
Yeah, I remember going to the Sony booth and seeing an amazing Vita lineup and thinking to myself, "WHY didn't they talk about ANY of this?!"
Why? Because there are new Playstation 3s that come in COLORS!
http://www.jp.playstation.com/info/release/nr_20130121_ps3_newcolors.html
They're limited edition too, so don't delay, double buy from Sony today!