4 ms·

Microsoft is only early to VR because it universally screwed everything else up. Wrapping all this text around it and marketing bullshit is disingenuous. What

by gw99 4y ago

Microsoft is only early to VR because it universally screwed everything else up. Wrapping all this text around it and marketing bullshit is disingenuous. What is the truth is that they had all the opportunities and staff and squandered both on mismanagement and quality issues and continue to do so to this day. What we have left is pissed off customers, pissed off developers and a declining market position other than where they could lock businesses in. The only market keeping them alive is entrenchment and naive MSPs and retail pushing their crap. I look forward to their VR strategy going down the toilet with Meta, where it belongs. Fire the board. Kill off the marketing situation which is basically lies at this point, remove telemetry from your products, invest in QA again rather than getting “insiders” to do it, remove decades of bloat and build quality not quantity and perhaps people will have confidence again.

desiarnezjr 4y ago
It isn't dissimilar to other missteps they made in the past as well. Early tablets powered by Windows XP. Windows CE and embedded. Phones. Their wins are massive. Really enterprise and XBOX lately (no doubt more, but just off the top of my head), but I've considered Windows only marginally usable for years, and that's more based on legacy, but it still has a place bloated as it is. It's an essential OS and platform, but with no focus -- they're just shuffling the same deck chairs UX wise, though no doubt improving the scaffolding bits.
xen2xen1 4y ago
They didn't quite screw everything up. Cloud is making a killing. Office monthly subs is a goldmine, and Windows online subs will be too. That's why they constantly talk cloud, it's their new bread and butter. And, in a highly related way, Xbox is also killing it. They have half the hardware sales, but their Xbox live ultimate sub is awesome. Lots of games, pretty cheap, and pretty, pretty recurring revenue. Oh, recurring revenue that feeds their cloud a gigantic customer, too. They went so far as to force most games to be compatible with both the new and old generation of Xbox's, so they could keep getting Xbox sub money. This has been successful enough that Sony has both been forced to do likewise, and Sony has resorted to the courts to stop it.
seshagiric 4y ago
Once bitten twice shy. It actually looks the other way: after the mobile and browser debacles, I think they got multiple things right: Cloud, XBox, Github, LinkedIn...one thing though is you don't see much cohesion between these services which Google and others seem to be much better.
- gw99 4y ago
  I can't say they got cloud or github right. Both are major friction points for a lot of companies I know. Particularly O365, OneDrive and Intune are complete administrative nightmares riddled with bugs. Even Office on the desktop is a shit show now thanks to all the cloud integration. And GitHub is popular but seriously so so so not right in many ways. What they have succeeded in doing is merely centralising leverage and forcing entrenchment.
- Kukumber 4y ago
  I only takes reading about recent events to understand how Xbox is everything but successful https://twitter.com/Nick_Marseil/status/1582348100424720384 https://twitter.com/Nick_Marseil/status/1582348100424720384 They have more budget, more studios, more services, and yet both Nintendo and Sony do better with much less budget and much less studios https://www.vgchartz.com/ https://www.vgchartz.com/ They recently catch up WRT to console sales, but that was due to Sony's supply chain issues, since that one resolved, they are failing behind yet again, despite selling the Xbox at a loss! Sony doesn't About Azure, their growth is not organic, specially when you consider they have been fined multiple times WRT corruption https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-settlement-idUSKCN1UH1P3 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-settlement-idUS... https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/07/22/microsoft-pay-million-settle-probe-into-hungarian-kickback-scheme/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/07/22/microso... https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/25/microsoft_accused_of_corrupt_business/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/25/microsoft_accused_of_... http://techrights.org/2014/05/28/microsoft-brazil/ http://techrights.org/2014/05/28/microsoft-brazil/ About Github, it was already a thing and very popular before the acquisition, let's not forget that, otherwise it wouldn't have sold for that much, and outages are now lot more common than before ;)

by gw99 4y ago

desiarnezjr 4y ago

It isn't dissimilar to other missteps they made in the past as well. Early tablets powered by Windows XP. Windows CE and embedded. Phones. Their wins are massive. Really enterprise and XBOX lately (no doubt more, but just off the top of my head), but I've considered Windows only marginally usable for years, and that's more based on legacy, but it still has a place bloated as it is. It's an essential OS and platform, but with no focus -- they're just shuffling the same deck chairs UX wise, though no doubt improving the scaffolding bits.

xen2xen1 4y ago

They didn't quite screw everything up. Cloud is making a killing. Office monthly subs is a goldmine, and Windows online subs will be too. That's why they constantly talk cloud, it's their new bread and butter. And, in a highly related way, Xbox is also killing it. They have half the hardware sales, but their Xbox live ultimate sub is awesome. Lots of games, pretty cheap, and pretty, pretty recurring revenue. Oh, recurring revenue that feeds their cloud a gigantic customer, too. They went so far as to force most games to be compatible with both the new and old generation of Xbox's, so they could keep getting Xbox sub money. This has been successful enough that Sony has both been forced to do likewise, and Sony has resorted to the courts to stop it.

seshagiric 4y ago

Once bitten twice shy. It actually looks the other way: after the mobile and browser debacles, I think they got multiple things right: Cloud, XBox, Github, LinkedIn...one thing though is you don't see much cohesion between these services which Google and others seem to be much better.

gw99 4y ago
I can't say they got cloud or github right. Both are major friction points for a lot of companies I know. Particularly O365, OneDrive and Intune are complete administrative nightmares riddled with bugs. Even Office on the desktop is a shit show now thanks to all the cloud integration. And GitHub is popular but seriously so so so not right in many ways. What they have succeeded in doing is merely centralising leverage and forcing entrenchment.
Kukumber 4y ago
I only takes reading about recent events to understand how Xbox is everything but successful https://twitter.com/Nick_Marseil/status/1582348100424720384 https://twitter.com/Nick_Marseil/status/1582348100424720384 They have more budget, more studios, more services, and yet both Nintendo and Sony do better with much less budget and much less studios https://www.vgchartz.com/ https://www.vgchartz.com/ They recently catch up WRT to console sales, but that was due to Sony's supply chain issues, since that one resolved, they are failing behind yet again, despite selling the Xbox at a loss! Sony doesn't About Azure, their growth is not organic, specially when you consider they have been fined multiple times WRT corruption https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-settlement-idUSKCN1UH1P3 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-settlement-idUS... https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/07/22/microsoft-pay-million-settle-probe-into-hungarian-kickback-scheme/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/07/22/microso... https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/25/microsoft_accused_of_corrupt_business/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/25/microsoft_accused_of_... http://techrights.org/2014/05/28/microsoft-brazil/ http://techrights.org/2014/05/28/microsoft-brazil/ About Github, it was already a thing and very popular before the acquisition, let's not forget that, otherwise it wouldn't have sold for that much, and outages are now lot more common than before ;)