13 ms·

What is Microsoft smoking?

188 points by irrlichthn 13y ago

kryten 13y ago
I've been wondering the same thing. I actually bought an Xbox 360 last month for the kids at Christmas this year (while it was cheap). I'm slightly regretting throwing more money at them at the moment. I sit in front of Windows 7 all day, have a Windows Phone and mostly use Visual Studio but I genuinely get the feeling that they are tailing off when it comes to common sense. Despite the vast wads of cash they are still earning, they have lost direction and have reverted to predatory tactics again. I won't be staying around this time.
gordaco 13y ago
Whoa, I dind't know about the 21 countries thing. What are they smoking, indeed.
- yitchelle 13y ago
  Region locking is one of the most evil things in our industry. Nothing more to say..
  - csense 13y ago
    It's a great idea from the point of view of the seller. If you have people who have money and frequently travel internationally, you can force them to buy two (or more!) copies of every one of your products they use. You can also do price discrimination. Those rich guys in the US and Japan can afford $100, so you'll charge them that much. The up-and-comers in China might be able to do $50, so that's the price for them. Africa? Since $20 is like a month's wages for a whole village or something, that's probably all you can get out of them, and with those prices you're only making three fiddy after you cover the per-unit support costs for that always-online thingy. But you really need that so you can do geolocation, and can keep all the annoying entrepreneurs on HN from buying a million African copies when they're on safari, then eating your lunch by reselling them to the US and China for $30. This is assuming customers want the product badly enough that they're willing to put up with this garbage. Which they generally do -- most people don't travel internationally and aren't affected; furthermore, software is not a commodity and there may not be completely interchangeable alternatives so their only choices are to put up with it or make do without.
zainny 13y ago
Interestingly enough there is a point at which I thought Microsoft was really going to hit some home runs not all that long ago. Since then though the trifecta of Windows Phone 8, Windows 8, and Xbox One has turned me away from their entire product line. Combined with my own movements over the years towards open source desktop software and web applications (Google Docs, etc.) and Microsoft barely rates a mention in my world on a day to day basis. In short there is nothing Microsoft is doing now that is of interest to me.
- hboon 13y ago
  I'm not a fan of most of their products, but I've heard good things about Azure, even for Linux hosting. Disclosure: I was at Microsoft for a couple of months due to an acquisition.
  - zainny 13y ago
    I did actually try Azure about a year ago - I built a few WP7 apps (just to see what the platform was all about) and used Azure as the back-end for one. While I didn't have a bad experience, I also didn't find anything particularly compelling about it compared to the competition (though I admittedly used it in a very simple capacity).
  - kryten 13y ago
    I find the actual process of deploying stuff to Azure very costly and terribly slow. If something doesn't work as intended on Azure, your turnaround time is quite high. This is far too common a problem as well as the development services they offer for local dev aren't 100% the same as the target environment.
    - pm 13y ago
      Not to mention things like no automatic logging, no automatic HTTPS, 20-60 minute deploy times, unstable dev tools. I've dealt with the quirks of MVC4 which I grew accustomed to, but the other problems are making deploying a solution (something I'm trying to do now) very painful.
sz4kerto 13y ago
Let's wait until both consoles arrive. It really seems that Sony is going to implement the same game lending restrictions what Microsoft - except they haven't told us explicitly. Recent news say that Sony will give the same opportunity for publishers to block lending.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  Sony's message on this has been a lot more clear than people are suggesting. The PS4 will work just like the PS3 for disc games. This means that EA might go and re-implement their "online pass" system and Sony won't get in their way and try to force them NOT to do this, but there will be nothing built into the console for this and the implementation and blame for it are all squarely on EA. Sony can (and has) only stated for sure that their first party games won't have something like "online pass", if external publishers do it, that's on them, just like it was when EA implemented "online pass" for the 360 and PS3.
- rjd 13y ago
  You might have missed this release from Sony putting the boot in on the topic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA
  - veidr 13y ago
    For people who don't tend to click video links (like me, but I happened to already see this), it is a sarcastic and clever dig at MS. The introduction is the start of an "instructional video" for how to lend games to your friends, complete with "Step One" and dramatic PS4 music, and then the guy just hands a game to his friend who says, "Thanks." I think it is a clever ad, and a good position to take. I'm not much of a gamer so I am not their core demographic, but I tend to buy something from each generation of consoles and "less-obnoxious DRM and no region-locking" would be a no-brainer for me in terms of choosing.
- Azulsky 13y ago
  Sony has been pretty explicit about it http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kWSIFh8ICaA http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kWSIF... They are also encouraging developers to remove online passes http://bit.ly/12EpOq8 http://bit.ly/12EpOq8
blibble 13y ago
Xbox One: designed by executives, for executives
- raverbashing 13y ago
  So it will run Java? And Office?
  - kfk 13y ago
    Seems weird for you, but executives are now moving to iphones and ipads too.
  - robin_reala 13y ago
    It has Java support as it plays bluray discs.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
greyman 13y ago
He is exaggerating about the "big Windows 8 and Windows RT user interface failure". As a Windows user since version 3.1, I can say that Windows 8 is IMHO the best Windows version overall; they just made an arguably wrong decision to remove Start button from the Desktop mode. That will now be fixed in 8.1. I also happen to like the monochrome icons in the newest Visual Studio (where there are a lot of other improvements as well, comparing to 2010). Microsoft should be criticized, but for something else - that they brought Win8 about 2 years too late.
- vetinari 13y ago
  The mistake was not removing Start button. The mistake was removing Start menu. And that is not being fixed. Button that throws you into Start screen is not a fix for the missing Start menu.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- valdiorn 13y ago
  No, start button is just the very beginning. Whoever thought a full-screen calculator app was going to be a good idea was an idiot.
  - kryten 13y ago
    This. Times a million. I actually knocked up an image of my calculator (HP 50g) against my TFT screen both scaled accordingly as an illustration of this shit crock: http://s16.postimg.org/qu05lh5r9/wtf.png http://s16.postimg.org/qu05lh5r9/wtf.png
    - to3m 13y ago
      Fortunately I've managed to somehow miss out on the Metro calculator app. It looks to suffer from the problems described here, only worse yet than existing calculator apps, on account of the size of all the Metro widgets compared to the size of the 21+" (non-touchable!) monitor sported by your average desktop PC: http://prog21.dadgum.com/107.html http://prog21.dadgum.com/107.html
gvk 13y ago
Whatever it is they are smoking, where and how can I get some?
vacri 13y ago
Mandatory internet connection while programming Windows Store apps? This one beggars belief. What happened to 'developers developers developers'? At least with the online requirement for gamers, there's a certain interal logic to it (however crazy and wrong) but there seems to be no sense in making it harder for developers to create content for you.
- nigelsampson 13y ago
  This one is certainly not true as a developer who spends his day job building Windows Store apps. You will need an internet connection to acquire a developer license once every thirty days but that takes about two minutes and that's about it.
  - RyJones 13y ago
    This misfeature causes me more heartburn than the others. I have to manually touch all of my build slaves once a month to keep them compiling. Furthermore, you can't run unit tests without an interactive session, so the build slaves would have to auto-login on boot; we chose instead to not run the unit tests automatically on checkins.
    - nigelsampson 13y ago
      Agreed it's still frustrating, but it's no where near the clusterfuck the OP implies.
mattchamb 13y ago
Im probably going to lose what little karma I have for saying this, but the XBox One's licensing model is more attractive to me than the PS4's model. I'm getting all of my information from here: http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/license http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/license These are the points I find interesting: - Access your entire games library from any Xbox One ... while you are logged in at your friend’s house, you can play your games. From this, i can see that I will not have to carry around discs at all when I go to a friend's house. I can play any game that I own from any console. - Share access to your games with everyone inside your home .. Anyone can play your games on your console--regardless of whether you are logged in or their relationship to you. On my console, anyone can play my games, whether I take the disc to a friend's house or not. This is hugely beneficial for me and my brothers who, until this point, have been sharing a single console. - Give your family access to your entire games library anytime ... Up to ten members of your family can log in and play from your shared games library on any Xbox One. The key word there for me is that people can play my games, once I've shared then, from any console. So I can be in another city to my friends, buy a game, and immediately say to them "This game is awesome, check it out in my shared library." and immediately they can download it and start playing. This will be even more impressive if they can play online with me. Consider the case that I buy a game that has co-op play. This means that I can coop with my friends (almost) anywhere in the world even if they havent bought the game! I think this will be a huge feature. Ofcourse, there is the limitation on reselling games. But honestly, I have had an xbox 360 and ps3 for years, and I have never sold a game, and only bought one or two pre-owned games. This limitation also hasnt stopped me from pouring many hundreds of dollars into Steam-distributed content. So, from my perspective, I admit that I am giving up a few advantages of the traditional game disc distribution method, but what I get in return is an amazingly powerful licencing model, and I cant wait to see how it works in the real world. edit: i have no idea how to format comments
- kryten 13y ago
  I think that idea probably works well... ...until you have to drag an entire BluRay disc over the Internet before Halo 14 will start.
  - 13y ago
AlexanderDhoore 13y ago
Microsoft Is Spread Too Thin. That's it. That is the reason most of their products are half-assed. They have database systems. Server, desktop, and tablet/phone operating systems. Web, desktop, mobile development environments, all in multiple languages. They have their IaaS and PaaS offerings. They have end user services like Skydrive and Outlook. Then there is everything Office. And games, both PC and Xbox. Also, Bing. And Skype. Edit: And hardware: Xbox, peripherals and the surface. ... This is probably an incredibly incomplete list. Try making this list for Apple, and you'll get my point.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  Microsoft's business model is basically "we are all things to all men". It's all about vertical integration. They aren't attractive because their products are necessarily that compelling on their own, it's that if your entire computing is Microsoft (as it was for many people late 90s-early 2000s) a lot of problems go away. The killer app for Windows server is that it is designed for managing Windows desktops for example. If you are running OS X desktops, why bother with it?
  - arethuza 13y ago
    "If you are running OS X desktops, why bother with it?" Because you want to run applications that only run on Windows Server?
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      But a large chunk of the really compelling Windows Server applications are about management of Windows desktop.
      - rednukleus 13y ago
        > If you are running OS X desktops, why bother with it? If you are one of the small minority of people running OS X in a business environment then of course Microsoft's vertical integration is less useful. But well over 90% of business desktops/laptops are Windows based, so Microsoft has an attractive model for many businesses.
tenfingers 13y ago
> Developer registration renewal every 30 days? Mandatory internet connection while programming Windows Store apps? really?) Hah. This has to be the most ridiculous thing ever. I always despised the windows platform for development (except maybe for DirectX), but damn, this is going to affect the number of native apps, making their platform obsolete much quicker.
arethuza 13y ago
The £429 price in the UK looks like a mistake to me - I know the launch price of the 360 was ~£280 and a Kinect is ~£100 but I still think that in these times of austerity it is a bit steep. Mind you, I will buy one once Halo 5 (for me) or FIFA 14 (teenage son) comes out...
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  I think you may have answered your own complaint there. IIRC the PS3 was even more expensive when it came out. One advantage of a console is that it is an "investment" in that you know buying one will give you at least 5 years worth of supported gaming. Compare that to buying an iPad, the first gen iPad was released in 2010 and it basically obsolete now.
  - arethuza 13y ago
    I wasn't thinking of my own situation. Whether it is £300 or £429 doesn't make much difference to me - but there will a lot of households where it does. [Even my teenage son, who thinks that money magically grows in the Bank of Mum & Dad thought that £429 was a lot - if he noticed then MS probably have a pricing problem].
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      That's true enough, I guess those households will wait for a price drop or find one on the back of a lorry. I remember when I was a lad, the "posh" kids would get the new gaming systems when they came out. Everyone went over to their houses to marvel at them, so when the price drop came next xmas they went on everyone's list.
jiggy2011 13y ago
Everyone on reddit seems to be up in arms about used game sales, as in the ability to trade in a box + disk. But really, this will likely be the last generation of consoles to support a physical disk. I imagine that by the end of this "round" of consoles 60%+ of game sales for these consoles will be digital downloads. What do use game sales look like in a digital marketplace? If you allow gamers to freely transfer licenses then what is to stop me selling my game to someone in singapore at 1AM when I have finished playing and then coming back the next day and buying the same game back at a reduced rate from someone in australia who has just gone to bed and picking up where I left off? The only sensible way to allow this would be via DRM which makes /r/gaming shit the bed.
- rainforest 13y ago
  The problem with Microsoft's approach the way I see it is that they're offering no value-add for the inconvenience. Gamers are used to discs being transferrable but MS is making a bold choice to devalue them and treat them as tokens to be redeemed (despite the fact this already happens with online purchases of 360 games). Since they're going with the requirement for 24hr checkins it would seem that going digital-only would have been an option. I daresay if they'd have done that there'd be less of a fuss. w.r.t. the use of transfers to share copies, why is that a problem specifically? The same ``problem'' exists with on-disc media (for the current consoles at least).
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    Physical media is much higher friction to transfer since you have to shift a physical box around which is slow , expensive and time consuming. I have a ton of original xbox games I could have traded in but never bothered because I was too lazy to put them on ebay or take them into the shop. There is also the risk that the disk is scratched which puts people off buying used. OTOH a digital license can be transferred across the globe in a matter of seconds and the product does not degrade with use or get damaged in transit. This means that there is no point buying a new game, just buy the game when you want to play it and sell it when you don't. The total number of new licenses bought only has to support the number of people who want to play it concurrently, not the total number of people who want to play at all. The only way around this would be to impose artificial restrictions on used game sales. For example, you can only sell to people in your own country, a license can only be transferred a fixed number of times etc.
orf 13y ago
I thought the mindless Microsoft/Xbox bashing was Reddit's job. The XBox One will sell and it will sell well - it has loads of blockbuster titles and is pretty powerful, and I personally love the idea of integrating my Sky box with my XBox.
- Alphasite_ 13y ago
  I don't think thats how it works, at least not at the moment. I'm pretty sure its designed specifically or cable, so only supports a limited subset of networks. Unless of course there is a branded adaptor for each network. Since we know the TV tuner is another separate purchase it may end up as another PlayTV, cool, slick, but not very useful and limited to freeview.
wintersFright 13y ago
Working in a .NET corporate dev shop, I'm shocked how many .NET devs now run MacOS at home as their primary OS. It starts out as a mac for some iPhone dev and then they just use MacOS by default and Windows in a VM when they need to.
- xradionut 13y ago
  Some of us run Linux as the host.
pgsandstrom 13y ago
The average consumer will care much more about the platform exclusive games than any DRM systems. You can't sell used games on Steam either, and they receieve very little flak for it nowadays.
joelthelion 13y ago
If you don't want to depend on the arbitrary decisions of Microsoft anymore, the Linux ecosystem welcomes you and your developments :) You won't find Visual Studio, but I think everybody agrees Linux is a fine dev environment. And if someone makes a controversial change, a fork almost always happens, which is simply impossible in the Microsoft world.
- fhd2 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure the author of Irrlicht 3D is aware of Linux being a viable alternative. I guess the thing is, Visual Studio is actually quite a good C++ IDE. The best one out there, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not a big fan of IDEs, but if you're into that stuff...
- pjmlp 13y ago
  With its own set of warts.
baby 13y ago
IMO people are badly predicting the future of the Xbox One. They already have a huge market of players who will buy it no matter how hard the DRM are. And they had a big "pirating" problem before. This only means they can now focus on making the Xbox One safe from hacking and also something more than a console. They did it. Some people are unhappy but they will sell and they will make a lot of profit from it. As for Windows 8. It's not a failure, they launched their tablet product, windows phones, they're in two markets they weren't before.
- lucb1e 13y ago
  > they launched their tablet product For the PC as well, if you recall.
fhd2 13y ago
Seems like Microsoft has repeatedly hit their developers (developers, developers) recently. - They're beginning to lock down their platform - They effectively killed the once hailed .NET for desktop development - They're killing other popular technology, like XNA It appears as if they're in the process of migrating away from their island of proprietary technology, adopting stuff that has become popular in the rest of the world. I wouldn't be surprised if they killed off DirectX in favour of OpenGL at this point. And that'd be good, of course. But I'm wondering if alienating all those MS-only developers is a good idea.
adventured 13y ago
Microsoft has a long history of putting out terrible products, improving them with the subsequent version or two, finally putting out a good product, and then promptly turning around and screwing everything up. I think they have an amplified version of the 'need to be the underdog to do good work' syndrome. Once they finally climb that hill, they become their own worst enemy every time.
bromagosa 13y ago
I'm going to rant big time, and I expect downvotes, but this is my true opinion, has always been and will always be, so I see no reason to not write it down here. I don't think Microsoft ever cared at all about customers or products. Microsoft has been making money out of patents and white-gloved mobbing for ever, not out of customer happiness. Probably around 90% percent of what they earn in OS licenses comes from preinstalled laptops and desktops, where the user doesn't even have the choice to reject paying for them because they gently mobbed all manufacturers into shipping with their crapware installed, so they don't even need to care about making a great product, just one that's good enough and works most of the times. I've paid for at least 5 Windows licenses that I never, not even for a split second, have used. First thing I do when I get a laptop is install Debian on it. I have NEVER even seen the Windows logo come up in any of my PCs, yet I've still had to pay their mob tax. No matter how much you fight with the clerk or how many emails you send to the manufacturer. They can't do anything. It all comes from above. The hardware and the software are a unit. It's a bundle, you can't separate it. Xbox one sucks, alright. So did all Windowses from 1.0 till 3.1, Windows 95, Windows Me (especially), Windows Vista, and uncountable other terrible decisions that, somehow, didn't manage to sink the company. I don't think yet another awful product will even manage to make a notch to their massive fortune.
- tekromancr 13y ago
  Yea, but 98se was bulletproof.
- adventured 13y ago
  Ok, interesting claim. So, how much money has Microsoft been making from patents exactly? Since you've made a very dramatic statement, I'd like to see a specific figure. And then I'd like to see that compared to Office, Windows, Server & Tools, etc. Why would anybody buy hardware with Windows on it, only to install Debian? Build your own systems, that's the really obvious and really simple answer. You're blaming Microsoft for your bad choices. You don't have to pay any fake tax that you're making up - simply stop buying the products that you are. You have no right to any particularly configured product to begin with; you're not entitled to any such thing. Create your own laptops if you're so bent about it. Sounds like you're taxing yourself. You can rant like a champ, but you can't custom build a Debian laptop? Whose fault is that exactly? I fail to see how that's Microsoft's fault, or how they owe you or Debian anything.
pjmlp 13y ago
Even though I would rather like to see them invest more in C++11 than C++/CX, Microsoft is not alone in this as all compiler vendors have their own set of extensions.
elorant 13y ago
Back when Windows 8 was announced I used to wonder why didn’t they choose the path of Apple, thus making one operating system for the desktop and a different one for mobile devices (smartphones and tablets). I think that they invested too much on the Surface tablet, hoping to produce a tablet that will have comparable capabilities with a desktop PC. In such a device the traditional Windows OS is not enough because we need gestures and a mobile OS is also not enough cause you need the file-system support and all of the facilities you’ve come to think as fundamental in a desktop OS. That’s where Win8 fits. If Surface had succeed I think Windows 8 would have justified its existence. But now it looks like a product without a context. Why did they chose a path of an enhanced tablet? Probably because they didn’t want to compete with Apple in the $500 price tag. Or because they thought that there is market in the high end of tablets. The thing is that their tablet strategy has failed and along goes a line of products designed for it, namely Metro, Win RT and Windows 8. Add their inability to penetrate the smartphone market and you begin to realize why Microsoft is considered irrelevant these days. The only aspect where I read interesting news from MS is their development platform. Perhaps they should stop jerking around and return to their core, aka make software for the enterprise.
- Shorel 13y ago
  I think that they still did something too Apple-y. Not a totally different operating system, but a totally different runtime called RT for new apps. What I do think is the right approach? I recommend you to see the Ubuntu Phone videos.
dschiptsov 13y ago
They smoke pay checks and bonuses for an army of bone-headed managers, doing paper-pushing and finger-pointing to keep one's position, while the bulk of money comes from licensing to those idiots, who are too stupid to unhook themselves from MS in 2013 and would pay for any "new" even bigger (in terms of man-hours and LOCs) bloatware MS would "manage" to create..)
JimmaDaRustla 13y ago
#fireballmer??? Microsoft is so out of touch with what people want and how to respect their current users. They're like old people trying to mix in with hip adolescents. They remind me more of a bank than an IT industry leader. Seriously, how can a collective group of people decide that enabling publishers/developers to manipulate the users of the their platform a GOOD IDEA? I have no use for MSFT anymore except Windows/Office. Hope the day comes that MSFT wakes up, or someone actually competes against those products.
cpfohl 13y ago
What's wrong with the name 'XBox One'? Makes as much sense as 'xbox' or 'xbox 360.' Considerably more sense than Atari or Wii... And a focus on TV makes a good deal of business sense as more and more people are dropping cable in favor of streaming shows and movies. Something is going to replace that, for the most part people don't drop a service without replacing it. As far as where the games are...the XBox had 17 games on Nov. 14th (public release date). When it was retired it had 967 games. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games). It has always been Microsoft's strategy to encourage outside development of games. The announced pricing is indeed high compared to previous releases. I don't worry that it won't come down though. The XBox and 360 did. Furthermore, since the release isn't until November I wouldn't worry about it until we have reality. There's a million reasons to announce a price early knowing you might change it. DRM and region locking are your strongest points yet, and yet I'm inclined not to worry about DRM until the product is out and irate would-be-sellers have been emailing microsoft for a few weeks. As for region locking being a reason not to buy it at all that doesn't hold up: if you're in the US, Europe, or any of the 21 countries they've enabled you've got no reason not to buy it because of region locking. Do you seriously take your XBOX with you abroad!? It's a bold move calling the Windows 8 experiment (yes; that's what it is) a failure given the number of copy cat interfaces we've seen. (iOS7 anyone?). Their implementation had kinks to work out, and yet we're already seeing other people improving on it. If someone as big as Microsoft can't afford to experiment with UIs we're in trouble. Forward motion! App development depends on platform adoption, and it doesn't look like W8 tablets have much adoption yet. No sense wasting development hours on something no one will pay for or through. I really don't understand your problem with this: "... the Apps sold in the Windows Store are fullscreen apps ..." Tablets are designed for fullscreen. If they weren't fullscreen would you complain the opposite? Right now all I'm hearing is that you don't like windows changing...not a coherent argument. In your last paragraph you finally get to what I think is the main point: Windows is your 'home' operating system. And it's changing. And you don't like those changes. You liked Windows development on XP through W7. (Although I'm willing to bet you ignored Vista: changes are hard to get right, and from what I can observe Microsoft usually just goes for it and then adapts in the next version). Experiments aren't always successful, but let's give Microsoft some credit for doing them. Thank you for sharing your frustrations, but let's be a bit more positive here: we're making leaps and bounds forward, and experiments are the quanta of those leaps and bounds.
eliben 13y ago
"For me as developer, Windows is my "home" operating system" This is your big problem. Liberate yourself - you won't look back.
zerohm 13y ago
The worst thing that could happen to Microsoft in the next 10 years is that they become the next IBM. MS is in danger of becoming irrelevant in the consumer electronics space, but they are deeply entrenched in enterprise IT, where they can make lots of money for years to come. I don't think the Xbox One is that bad. No one has figured out the formula of owning the living room yet (or taking it away from cable providers) and MS is giving it a shot. I applaud them for that. Microsoft's strategy is to own the living room. Sony's strategy is to take the enthusiast gamers back from MS. Nintendo's strategy is to...well frankly I don't know what the hell Nintendo is trying to do.
sodiumphosphate 13y ago
I think .NET is pretty amazing (to have emerged out of Redmond, at least).
falcolas 13y ago
I don't think that Sony "won" E3, or that Microsoft lost. Instead, Sony called Microsoft's bluff. Stay with me here. All of the restrictions that Microsoft has put forth are enforced by software - they can all be pretty easily reverted. I'm willing to bet that Microsoft was really hoping that Sony would see this as the future of console gaming, and would follow their lead at E3. This way consumers would have been given two relatively equal choices, and both Microsoft and Sony would have higher revenue streams and control over their products. Sony, though, decided to appeal to consumers instead of their own pocketbooks, and now I feel that in order to be successful, Microsoft will have to follow suit, and slowly back out all of these restrictions "after further consideration". It was a good gamble, (let's face it, there was a time not so long ago that betting on Sony opting for more control over their devices was a sure thing) and Microsoft lost this time. But in a year, when the new consoles are out, and if Microsoft dials back the restrictions, nobody will care what was announced this year. They'll be playing Halo4, MGS (RDR style), and COD: Ghosts, and couldn't care less about where Microsoft's stance started.
- potatolicious 13y ago
  > "they can all be pretty easily reverted" Can they though? Sure, it's pretty trivial to remove the code that enforces these restrictions, but I don't think it's Microsoft enforcing it. Think about it - used games (mostly) go through authorized retailers, can only be sold once, where said retailers collect a cut, and Microsoft collects none. This isn't about Microsoft's bottom line, this is about the bottom line of GameStop, EA, Activision, etc. There's no way MS would enforce this kind of DRM scheme on their own - they don't stand to benefit at all. If this was promised to retailers/publishers, they cannot just unilaterally walk away from it. Knowing no secret information, it strikes me that they may have legally painted themselves into a corner.
  - falcolas 13y ago
    Any pressure against Microsoft from the above retailers/publishers would be equally against Sony and Nintendo, since Microsoft doesn't own the market in any sense of the word. Since Sony didn't implement it, it's fair to say the pressure isn't that strong.
uptown 13y ago
What would you rather have? Ownership over the living-room / home entertainment center, or ownership of the waning console game market that's being swallowed up by mobile games? I think Microsoft is making a calculated choice that they'd rather widen their audience to market themselves to users looking to control their TV/movie experience more-so than they're hoping to sell their console just to gamers. It's why their console (and Playstation's for that matter) look like they'll blend in with more-traditional home-entertainment components.
jimmar 13y ago
If I get anything, it'd probably be an XBOX One. I have little kids who suck at using a controller to do anything. But they had a blast at a friend's house jumping around doing the little Kinect games (e.g. popping bubbles). The new Kinect is supposed to be even better. That's pretty much the selling point for me. The PS4 has a similar device, but you have to buy it separately, which puts the price on part with the XBOX One.
gesman 13y ago
Ballmer = Being Always Late + Letting My Ego Roar

188 points by irrlichthn 13y ago

I've been wondering the same thing. I actually bought an Xbox 360 last month for the kids at Christmas this year (while it was cheap). I'm slightly regretting throwing more money at them at the moment. I sit in front of Windows 7 all day, have a Windows Phone and mostly use Visual Studio but I genuinely get the feeling that they are tailing off when it comes to common sense. Despite the vast wads of cash they are still earning, they have lost direction and have reverted to predatory tactics again. I won't be staying around this time.

gordaco 13y ago

Whoa, I dind't know about the 21 countries thing. What are they smoking, indeed.

yitchelle 13y ago
Region locking is one of the most evil things in our industry. Nothing more to say..
- csense 13y ago
  It's a great idea from the point of view of the seller. If you have people who have money and frequently travel internationally, you can force them to buy two (or more!) copies of every one of your products they use. You can also do price discrimination. Those rich guys in the US and Japan can afford $100, so you'll charge them that much. The up-and-comers in China might be able to do $50, so that's the price for them. Africa? Since $20 is like a month's wages for a whole village or something, that's probably all you can get out of them, and with those prices you're only making three fiddy after you cover the per-unit support costs for that always-online thingy. But you really need that so you can do geolocation, and can keep all the annoying entrepreneurs on HN from buying a million African copies when they're on safari, then eating your lunch by reselling them to the US and China for $30. This is assuming customers want the product badly enough that they're willing to put up with this garbage. Which they generally do -- most people don't travel internationally and aren't affected; furthermore, software is not a commodity and there may not be completely interchangeable alternatives so their only choices are to put up with it or make do without.

zainny 13y ago

Interestingly enough there is a point at which I thought Microsoft was really going to hit some home runs not all that long ago. Since then though the trifecta of Windows Phone 8, Windows 8, and Xbox One has turned me away from their entire product line. Combined with my own movements over the years towards open source desktop software and web applications (Google Docs, etc.) and Microsoft barely rates a mention in my world on a day to day basis. In short there is nothing Microsoft is doing now that is of interest to me.

hboon 13y ago
I'm not a fan of most of their products, but I've heard good things about Azure, even for Linux hosting. Disclosure: I was at Microsoft for a couple of months due to an acquisition.
- zainny 13y ago
  I did actually try Azure about a year ago - I built a few WP7 apps (just to see what the platform was all about) and used Azure as the back-end for one. While I didn't have a bad experience, I also didn't find anything particularly compelling about it compared to the competition (though I admittedly used it in a very simple capacity).
- kryten 13y ago
  I find the actual process of deploying stuff to Azure very costly and terribly slow. If something doesn't work as intended on Azure, your turnaround time is quite high. This is far too common a problem as well as the development services they offer for local dev aren't 100% the same as the target environment.
  - pm 13y ago
    Not to mention things like no automatic logging, no automatic HTTPS, 20-60 minute deploy times, unstable dev tools. I've dealt with the quirks of MVC4 which I grew accustomed to, but the other problems are making deploying a solution (something I'm trying to do now) very painful.

sz4kerto 13y ago

Let's wait until both consoles arrive. It really seems that Sony is going to implement the same game lending restrictions what Microsoft - except they haven't told us explicitly. Recent news say that Sony will give the same opportunity for publishers to block lending.

georgemcbay 13y ago
Sony's message on this has been a lot more clear than people are suggesting. The PS4 will work just like the PS3 for disc games. This means that EA might go and re-implement their "online pass" system and Sony won't get in their way and try to force them NOT to do this, but there will be nothing built into the console for this and the implementation and blame for it are all squarely on EA. Sony can (and has) only stated for sure that their first party games won't have something like "online pass", if external publishers do it, that's on them, just like it was when EA implemented "online pass" for the 360 and PS3.
rjd 13y ago
You might have missed this release from Sony putting the boot in on the topic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA
- veidr 13y ago
  For people who don't tend to click video links (like me, but I happened to already see this), it is a sarcastic and clever dig at MS. The introduction is the start of an "instructional video" for how to lend games to your friends, complete with "Step One" and dramatic PS4 music, and then the guy just hands a game to his friend who says, "Thanks." I think it is a clever ad, and a good position to take. I'm not much of a gamer so I am not their core demographic, but I tend to buy something from each generation of consoles and "less-obnoxious DRM and no region-locking" would be a no-brainer for me in terms of choosing.
Azulsky 13y ago
Sony has been pretty explicit about it http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kWSIFh8ICaA http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kWSIF... They are also encouraging developers to remove online passes http://bit.ly/12EpOq8 http://bit.ly/12EpOq8

blibble 13y ago

Xbox One: designed by executives, for executives

raverbashing 13y ago
So it will run Java? And Office?
- kfk 13y ago
  Seems weird for you, but executives are now moving to iphones and ipads too.
- robin_reala 13y ago
  It has Java support as it plays bluray discs.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

greyman 13y ago

He is exaggerating about the "big Windows 8 and Windows RT user interface failure". As a Windows user since version 3.1, I can say that Windows 8 is IMHO the best Windows version overall; they just made an arguably wrong decision to remove Start button from the Desktop mode. That will now be fixed in 8.1. I also happen to like the monochrome icons in the newest Visual Studio (where there are a lot of other improvements as well, comparing to 2010). Microsoft should be criticized, but for something else - that they brought Win8 about 2 years too late.

vetinari 13y ago
The mistake was not removing Start button. The mistake was removing Start menu. And that is not being fixed. Button that throws you into Start screen is not a fix for the missing Start menu.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
valdiorn 13y ago
No, start button is just the very beginning. Whoever thought a full-screen calculator app was going to be a good idea was an idiot.
- kryten 13y ago
  This. Times a million. I actually knocked up an image of my calculator (HP 50g) against my TFT screen both scaled accordingly as an illustration of this shit crock: http://s16.postimg.org/qu05lh5r9/wtf.png http://s16.postimg.org/qu05lh5r9/wtf.png
  - to3m 13y ago
    Fortunately I've managed to somehow miss out on the Metro calculator app. It looks to suffer from the problems described here, only worse yet than existing calculator apps, on account of the size of all the Metro widgets compared to the size of the 21+" (non-touchable!) monitor sported by your average desktop PC: http://prog21.dadgum.com/107.html http://prog21.dadgum.com/107.html

gvk 13y ago

Whatever it is they are smoking, where and how can I get some?

vacri 13y ago

Mandatory internet connection while programming Windows Store apps? This one beggars belief. What happened to 'developers developers developers'? At least with the online requirement for gamers, there's a certain interal logic to it (however crazy and wrong) but there seems to be no sense in making it harder for developers to create content for you.

nigelsampson 13y ago
This one is certainly not true as a developer who spends his day job building Windows Store apps. You will need an internet connection to acquire a developer license once every thirty days but that takes about two minutes and that's about it.
- RyJones 13y ago
  This misfeature causes me more heartburn than the others. I have to manually touch all of my build slaves once a month to keep them compiling. Furthermore, you can't run unit tests without an interactive session, so the build slaves would have to auto-login on boot; we chose instead to not run the unit tests automatically on checkins.
  - nigelsampson 13y ago
    Agreed it's still frustrating, but it's no where near the clusterfuck the OP implies.

mattchamb 13y ago

Im probably going to lose what little karma I have for saying this, but the XBox One's licensing model is more attractive to me than the PS4's model. I'm getting all of my information from here: http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/license http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/license These are the points I find interesting: - Access your entire games library from any Xbox One ... while you are logged in at your friend’s house, you can play your games. From this, i can see that I will not have to carry around discs at all when I go to a friend's house. I can play any game that I own from any console. - Share access to your games with everyone inside your home .. Anyone can play your games on your console--regardless of whether you are logged in or their relationship to you. On my console, anyone can play my games, whether I take the disc to a friend's house or not. This is hugely beneficial for me and my brothers who, until this point, have been sharing a single console. - Give your family access to your entire games library anytime ... Up to ten members of your family can log in and play from your shared games library on any Xbox One. The key word there for me is that people can play my games, once I've shared then, from any console. So I can be in another city to my friends, buy a game, and immediately say to them "This game is awesome, check it out in my shared library." and immediately they can download it and start playing. This will be even more impressive if they can play online with me. Consider the case that I buy a game that has co-op play. This means that I can coop with my friends (almost) anywhere in the world even if they havent bought the game! I think this will be a huge feature. Ofcourse, there is the limitation on reselling games. But honestly, I have had an xbox 360 and ps3 for years, and I have never sold a game, and only bought one or two pre-owned games. This limitation also hasnt stopped me from pouring many hundreds of dollars into Steam-distributed content. So, from my perspective, I admit that I am giving up a few advantages of the traditional game disc distribution method, but what I get in return is an amazingly powerful licencing model, and I cant wait to see how it works in the real world. edit: i have no idea how to format comments

kryten 13y ago
I think that idea probably works well... ...until you have to drag an entire BluRay disc over the Internet before Halo 14 will start.
- 13y ago

AlexanderDhoore 13y ago

Microsoft Is Spread Too Thin. That's it. That is the reason most of their products are half-assed. They have database systems. Server, desktop, and tablet/phone operating systems. Web, desktop, mobile development environments, all in multiple languages. They have their IaaS and PaaS offerings. They have end user services like Skydrive and Outlook. Then there is everything Office. And games, both PC and Xbox. Also, Bing. And Skype. Edit: And hardware: Xbox, peripherals and the surface. ... This is probably an incredibly incomplete list. Try making this list for Apple, and you'll get my point.

jiggy2011 13y ago
Microsoft's business model is basically "we are all things to all men". It's all about vertical integration. They aren't attractive because their products are necessarily that compelling on their own, it's that if your entire computing is Microsoft (as it was for many people late 90s-early 2000s) a lot of problems go away. The killer app for Windows server is that it is designed for managing Windows desktops for example. If you are running OS X desktops, why bother with it?
- arethuza 13y ago
  "If you are running OS X desktops, why bother with it?" Because you want to run applications that only run on Windows Server?
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    But a large chunk of the really compelling Windows Server applications are about management of Windows desktop.
    - rednukleus 13y ago
      > If you are running OS X desktops, why bother with it? If you are one of the small minority of people running OS X in a business environment then of course Microsoft's vertical integration is less useful. But well over 90% of business desktops/laptops are Windows based, so Microsoft has an attractive model for many businesses.

tenfingers 13y ago

> Developer registration renewal every 30 days? Mandatory internet connection while programming Windows Store apps? really?) Hah. This has to be the most ridiculous thing ever. I always despised the windows platform for development (except maybe for DirectX), but damn, this is going to affect the number of native apps, making their platform obsolete much quicker.

arethuza 13y ago

The £429 price in the UK looks like a mistake to me - I know the launch price of the 360 was ~£280 and a Kinect is ~£100 but I still think that in these times of austerity it is a bit steep. Mind you, I will buy one once Halo 5 (for me) or FIFA 14 (teenage son) comes out...

jiggy2011 13y ago
I think you may have answered your own complaint there. IIRC the PS3 was even more expensive when it came out. One advantage of a console is that it is an "investment" in that you know buying one will give you at least 5 years worth of supported gaming. Compare that to buying an iPad, the first gen iPad was released in 2010 and it basically obsolete now.
- arethuza 13y ago
  I wasn't thinking of my own situation. Whether it is £300 or £429 doesn't make much difference to me - but there will a lot of households where it does. [Even my teenage son, who thinks that money magically grows in the Bank of Mum & Dad thought that £429 was a lot - if he noticed then MS probably have a pricing problem].
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    That's true enough, I guess those households will wait for a price drop or find one on the back of a lorry. I remember when I was a lad, the "posh" kids would get the new gaming systems when they came out. Everyone went over to their houses to marvel at them, so when the price drop came next xmas they went on everyone's list.

jiggy2011 13y ago

Everyone on reddit seems to be up in arms about used game sales, as in the ability to trade in a box + disk. But really, this will likely be the last generation of consoles to support a physical disk. I imagine that by the end of this "round" of consoles 60%+ of game sales for these consoles will be digital downloads. What do use game sales look like in a digital marketplace? If you allow gamers to freely transfer licenses then what is to stop me selling my game to someone in singapore at 1AM when I have finished playing and then coming back the next day and buying the same game back at a reduced rate from someone in australia who has just gone to bed and picking up where I left off? The only sensible way to allow this would be via DRM which makes /r/gaming shit the bed.

rainforest 13y ago
The problem with Microsoft's approach the way I see it is that they're offering no value-add for the inconvenience. Gamers are used to discs being transferrable but MS is making a bold choice to devalue them and treat them as tokens to be redeemed (despite the fact this already happens with online purchases of 360 games). Since they're going with the requirement for 24hr checkins it would seem that going digital-only would have been an option. I daresay if they'd have done that there'd be less of a fuss. w.r.t. the use of transfers to share copies, why is that a problem specifically? The same ``problem'' exists with on-disc media (for the current consoles at least).
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  Physical media is much higher friction to transfer since you have to shift a physical box around which is slow , expensive and time consuming. I have a ton of original xbox games I could have traded in but never bothered because I was too lazy to put them on ebay or take them into the shop. There is also the risk that the disk is scratched which puts people off buying used. OTOH a digital license can be transferred across the globe in a matter of seconds and the product does not degrade with use or get damaged in transit. This means that there is no point buying a new game, just buy the game when you want to play it and sell it when you don't. The total number of new licenses bought only has to support the number of people who want to play it concurrently, not the total number of people who want to play at all. The only way around this would be to impose artificial restrictions on used game sales. For example, you can only sell to people in your own country, a license can only be transferred a fixed number of times etc.

orf 13y ago

I thought the mindless Microsoft/Xbox bashing was Reddit's job. The XBox One will sell and it will sell well - it has loads of blockbuster titles and is pretty powerful, and I personally love the idea of integrating my Sky box with my XBox.

Alphasite_ 13y ago
I don't think thats how it works, at least not at the moment. I'm pretty sure its designed specifically or cable, so only supports a limited subset of networks. Unless of course there is a branded adaptor for each network. Since we know the TV tuner is another separate purchase it may end up as another PlayTV, cool, slick, but not very useful and limited to freeview.

wintersFright 13y ago

Working in a .NET corporate dev shop, I'm shocked how many .NET devs now run MacOS at home as their primary OS. It starts out as a mac for some iPhone dev and then they just use MacOS by default and Windows in a VM when they need to.

xradionut 13y ago
Some of us run Linux as the host.

pgsandstrom 13y ago

The average consumer will care much more about the platform exclusive games than any DRM systems. You can't sell used games on Steam either, and they receieve very little flak for it nowadays.

joelthelion 13y ago

If you don't want to depend on the arbitrary decisions of Microsoft anymore, the Linux ecosystem welcomes you and your developments :) You won't find Visual Studio, but I think everybody agrees Linux is a fine dev environment. And if someone makes a controversial change, a fork almost always happens, which is simply impossible in the Microsoft world.

fhd2 13y ago
I'm pretty sure the author of Irrlicht 3D is aware of Linux being a viable alternative. I guess the thing is, Visual Studio is actually quite a good C++ IDE. The best one out there, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not a big fan of IDEs, but if you're into that stuff...
pjmlp 13y ago
With its own set of warts.

baby 13y ago

IMO people are badly predicting the future of the Xbox One. They already have a huge market of players who will buy it no matter how hard the DRM are. And they had a big "pirating" problem before. This only means they can now focus on making the Xbox One safe from hacking and also something more than a console. They did it. Some people are unhappy but they will sell and they will make a lot of profit from it. As for Windows 8. It's not a failure, they launched their tablet product, windows phones, they're in two markets they weren't before.

lucb1e 13y ago
> they launched their tablet product For the PC as well, if you recall.

fhd2 13y ago

Seems like Microsoft has repeatedly hit their developers (developers, developers) recently. - They're beginning to lock down their platform - They effectively killed the once hailed .NET for desktop development - They're killing other popular technology, like XNA It appears as if they're in the process of migrating away from their island of proprietary technology, adopting stuff that has become popular in the rest of the world. I wouldn't be surprised if they killed off DirectX in favour of OpenGL at this point. And that'd be good, of course. But I'm wondering if alienating all those MS-only developers is a good idea.

adventured 13y ago

Microsoft has a long history of putting out terrible products, improving them with the subsequent version or two, finally putting out a good product, and then promptly turning around and screwing everything up. I think they have an amplified version of the 'need to be the underdog to do good work' syndrome. Once they finally climb that hill, they become their own worst enemy every time.

bromagosa 13y ago

I'm going to rant big time, and I expect downvotes, but this is my true opinion, has always been and will always be, so I see no reason to not write it down here. I don't think Microsoft ever cared at all about customers or products. Microsoft has been making money out of patents and white-gloved mobbing for ever, not out of customer happiness. Probably around 90% percent of what they earn in OS licenses comes from preinstalled laptops and desktops, where the user doesn't even have the choice to reject paying for them because they gently mobbed all manufacturers into shipping with their crapware installed, so they don't even need to care about making a great product, just one that's good enough and works most of the times. I've paid for at least 5 Windows licenses that I never, not even for a split second, have used. First thing I do when I get a laptop is install Debian on it. I have NEVER even seen the Windows logo come up in any of my PCs, yet I've still had to pay their mob tax. No matter how much you fight with the clerk or how many emails you send to the manufacturer. They can't do anything. It all comes from above. The hardware and the software are a unit. It's a bundle, you can't separate it. Xbox one sucks, alright. So did all Windowses from 1.0 till 3.1, Windows 95, Windows Me (especially), Windows Vista, and uncountable other terrible decisions that, somehow, didn't manage to sink the company. I don't think yet another awful product will even manage to make a notch to their massive fortune.

tekromancr 13y ago
Yea, but 98se was bulletproof.
adventured 13y ago
Ok, interesting claim. So, how much money has Microsoft been making from patents exactly? Since you've made a very dramatic statement, I'd like to see a specific figure. And then I'd like to see that compared to Office, Windows, Server & Tools, etc. Why would anybody buy hardware with Windows on it, only to install Debian? Build your own systems, that's the really obvious and really simple answer. You're blaming Microsoft for your bad choices. You don't have to pay any fake tax that you're making up - simply stop buying the products that you are. You have no right to any particularly configured product to begin with; you're not entitled to any such thing. Create your own laptops if you're so bent about it. Sounds like you're taxing yourself. You can rant like a champ, but you can't custom build a Debian laptop? Whose fault is that exactly? I fail to see how that's Microsoft's fault, or how they owe you or Debian anything.

pjmlp 13y ago

Even though I would rather like to see them invest more in C++11 than C++/CX, Microsoft is not alone in this as all compiler vendors have their own set of extensions.

elorant 13y ago

Back when Windows 8 was announced I used to wonder why didn’t they choose the path of Apple, thus making one operating system for the desktop and a different one for mobile devices (smartphones and tablets). I think that they invested too much on the Surface tablet, hoping to produce a tablet that will have comparable capabilities with a desktop PC. In such a device the traditional Windows OS is not enough because we need gestures and a mobile OS is also not enough cause you need the file-system support and all of the facilities you’ve come to think as fundamental in a desktop OS. That’s where Win8 fits. If Surface had succeed I think Windows 8 would have justified its existence. But now it looks like a product without a context. Why did they chose a path of an enhanced tablet? Probably because they didn’t want to compete with Apple in the $500 price tag. Or because they thought that there is market in the high end of tablets. The thing is that their tablet strategy has failed and along goes a line of products designed for it, namely Metro, Win RT and Windows 8. Add their inability to penetrate the smartphone market and you begin to realize why Microsoft is considered irrelevant these days. The only aspect where I read interesting news from MS is their development platform. Perhaps they should stop jerking around and return to their core, aka make software for the enterprise.

Shorel 13y ago
I think that they still did something too Apple-y. Not a totally different operating system, but a totally different runtime called RT for new apps. What I do think is the right approach? I recommend you to see the Ubuntu Phone videos.

dschiptsov 13y ago

They smoke pay checks and bonuses for an army of bone-headed managers, doing paper-pushing and finger-pointing to keep one's position, while the bulk of money comes from licensing to those idiots, who are too stupid to unhook themselves from MS in 2013 and would pay for any "new" even bigger (in terms of man-hours and LOCs) bloatware MS would "manage" to create..)

JimmaDaRustla 13y ago

#fireballmer??? Microsoft is so out of touch with what people want and how to respect their current users. They're like old people trying to mix in with hip adolescents. They remind me more of a bank than an IT industry leader. Seriously, how can a collective group of people decide that enabling publishers/developers to manipulate the users of the their platform a GOOD IDEA? I have no use for MSFT anymore except Windows/Office. Hope the day comes that MSFT wakes up, or someone actually competes against those products.

cpfohl 13y ago

What's wrong with the name 'XBox One'? Makes as much sense as 'xbox' or 'xbox 360.' Considerably more sense than Atari or Wii... And a focus on TV makes a good deal of business sense as more and more people are dropping cable in favor of streaming shows and movies. Something is going to replace that, for the most part people don't drop a service without replacing it. As far as where the games are...the XBox had 17 games on Nov. 14th (public release date). When it was retired it had 967 games. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games). It has always been Microsoft's strategy to encourage outside development of games. The announced pricing is indeed high compared to previous releases. I don't worry that it won't come down though. The XBox and 360 did. Furthermore, since the release isn't until November I wouldn't worry about it until we have reality. There's a million reasons to announce a price early knowing you might change it. DRM and region locking are your strongest points yet, and yet I'm inclined not to worry about DRM until the product is out and irate would-be-sellers have been emailing microsoft for a few weeks. As for region locking being a reason not to buy it at all that doesn't hold up: if you're in the US, Europe, or any of the 21 countries they've enabled you've got no reason not to buy it because of region locking. Do you seriously take your XBOX with you abroad!? It's a bold move calling the Windows 8 experiment (yes; that's what it is) a failure given the number of copy cat interfaces we've seen. (iOS7 anyone?). Their implementation had kinks to work out, and yet we're already seeing other people improving on it. If someone as big as Microsoft can't afford to experiment with UIs we're in trouble. Forward motion! App development depends on platform adoption, and it doesn't look like W8 tablets have much adoption yet. No sense wasting development hours on something no one will pay for or through. I really don't understand your problem with this: "... the Apps sold in the Windows Store are fullscreen apps ..." Tablets are designed for fullscreen. If they weren't fullscreen would you complain the opposite? Right now all I'm hearing is that you don't like windows changing...not a coherent argument. In your last paragraph you finally get to what I think is the main point: Windows is your 'home' operating system. And it's changing. And you don't like those changes. You liked Windows development on XP through W7. (Although I'm willing to bet you ignored Vista: changes are hard to get right, and from what I can observe Microsoft usually just goes for it and then adapts in the next version). Experiments aren't always successful, but let's give Microsoft some credit for doing them. Thank you for sharing your frustrations, but let's be a bit more positive here: we're making leaps and bounds forward, and experiments are the quanta of those leaps and bounds.

eliben 13y ago

"For me as developer, Windows is my "home" operating system" This is your big problem. Liberate yourself - you won't look back.

zerohm 13y ago

The worst thing that could happen to Microsoft in the next 10 years is that they become the next IBM. MS is in danger of becoming irrelevant in the consumer electronics space, but they are deeply entrenched in enterprise IT, where they can make lots of money for years to come. I don't think the Xbox One is that bad. No one has figured out the formula of owning the living room yet (or taking it away from cable providers) and MS is giving it a shot. I applaud them for that. Microsoft's strategy is to own the living room. Sony's strategy is to take the enthusiast gamers back from MS. Nintendo's strategy is to...well frankly I don't know what the hell Nintendo is trying to do.

sodiumphosphate 13y ago

I think .NET is pretty amazing (to have emerged out of Redmond, at least).

falcolas 13y ago

I don't think that Sony "won" E3, or that Microsoft lost. Instead, Sony called Microsoft's bluff. Stay with me here. All of the restrictions that Microsoft has put forth are enforced by software - they can all be pretty easily reverted. I'm willing to bet that Microsoft was really hoping that Sony would see this as the future of console gaming, and would follow their lead at E3. This way consumers would have been given two relatively equal choices, and both Microsoft and Sony would have higher revenue streams and control over their products. Sony, though, decided to appeal to consumers instead of their own pocketbooks, and now I feel that in order to be successful, Microsoft will have to follow suit, and slowly back out all of these restrictions "after further consideration". It was a good gamble, (let's face it, there was a time not so long ago that betting on Sony opting for more control over their devices was a sure thing) and Microsoft lost this time. But in a year, when the new consoles are out, and if Microsoft dials back the restrictions, nobody will care what was announced this year. They'll be playing Halo4, MGS (RDR style), and COD: Ghosts, and couldn't care less about where Microsoft's stance started.

potatolicious 13y ago
> "they can all be pretty easily reverted" Can they though? Sure, it's pretty trivial to remove the code that enforces these restrictions, but I don't think it's Microsoft enforcing it. Think about it - used games (mostly) go through authorized retailers, can only be sold once, where said retailers collect a cut, and Microsoft collects none. This isn't about Microsoft's bottom line, this is about the bottom line of GameStop, EA, Activision, etc. There's no way MS would enforce this kind of DRM scheme on their own - they don't stand to benefit at all. If this was promised to retailers/publishers, they cannot just unilaterally walk away from it. Knowing no secret information, it strikes me that they may have legally painted themselves into a corner.
- falcolas 13y ago
  Any pressure against Microsoft from the above retailers/publishers would be equally against Sony and Nintendo, since Microsoft doesn't own the market in any sense of the word. Since Sony didn't implement it, it's fair to say the pressure isn't that strong.

uptown 13y ago

What would you rather have? Ownership over the living-room / home entertainment center, or ownership of the waning console game market that's being swallowed up by mobile games? I think Microsoft is making a calculated choice that they'd rather widen their audience to market themselves to users looking to control their TV/movie experience more-so than they're hoping to sell their console just to gamers. It's why their console (and Playstation's for that matter) look like they'll blend in with more-traditional home-entertainment components.

jimmar 13y ago

If I get anything, it'd probably be an XBOX One. I have little kids who suck at using a controller to do anything. But they had a blast at a friend's house jumping around doing the little Kinect games (e.g. popping bubbles). The new Kinect is supposed to be even better. That's pretty much the selling point for me. The PS4 has a similar device, but you have to buy it separately, which puts the price on part with the XBOX One.

gesman 13y ago

Ballmer = Being Always Late + Letting My Ego Roar