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In a way the article yells out trouble for Microsoft and friends. If their customers hardware from the last five years is "good enough" they wont go looking fo
by icefox 14y ago
In a way the article yells out trouble for Microsoft and friends. If their customers hardware from the last five years is "good enough" they wont go looking for an upgrade. (They will go looking for a _new_ toy with the ipad though). If next generation consoles really did drive desktop sales it would have been in Microsoft's interests to get out the next generation xbox sooner right?
- rodly 14y agoI don't think it's easy to see Microsoft profiting by leveraging its Xbox division to boost PC sales (Windows license sales). I can't find a source for this, but I doubt Microsoft made much money if at all on the Xbox 360. The money is in Xbox live subscriptions and taking a percentage from sales on the marketplace. This is similar to how Amazon sells its Kindle line at a negative profit but makes a killing in Prime memberships and eBook %'s.
- podperson 14y agoThe irony here is that Microsoft cannibalized the PC gaming market to create the XBox market (and kill its one true enemy at the time: Sony). The result is -- arguably -- stagnation of the desktop PC market which was always -- I contend -- driven largely by gaming. The problem is that the desktop market made Microsoft money whereas consoles... not so much. It seems to me that problem here isn't cannibalization -- if Microsoft hadn't done it, someone else (Sony?) would have -- but the "let's leverage our monopoly-driven money tree" mindset. XBox was dumped on the market at a loss, subsidized by Office/Windows and leveraged by Microsoft's dominance of desktop gaming, APIs, and developer mindshare. Microsoft doesn't even try to play fair in new markets and eventually it had to bite them, and it did.
- theorique 14y agothe desktop PC market which was always -- I contend -- driven largely by gaming. For the leading edge of the desktop PC market, definitely (advanced graphics cards, fastest possible processor, fastest possible RAM). On the other hand, the broad center of the bell curve of the desktop PC market has been driven by office applications. These have never needed the high performance that the gamers demanded - users simply wanted something "good enough for Word, Excel PowerPoint, and email".