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What went wrong? The corporate culture degraded until it was poison to both retaining good employees and taking on challenging projects. What went wrong? Ballm

What went wrong? The corporate culture degraded until it was poison to both retaining good employees and taking on challenging projects. What went wrong? Ballmer expended a lot of effort to remove any potential challengers to the throne during his tenure, ridding the company of many talented and ambitious high-level managers, having an obvious impact on the company. What went wrong? Microsoft reacted to the economic downturn in '08 by treating its employees like shit for a few years in order to pinch pennies even while it kept tens of billions of dollars of cash on hand. What went wrong? Instead of making each part of the company more autonomous and independent, or even spinning off parts of the company into separate ventures, the whole company remained one giant, bloated empire while the industry changed dramatically around it. Most parts of the company aren't "hungry" the way they would be if they were spun off as startups. What went wrong? The strategy tax got shoved down everyone's throats in every way imaginable. Microsoft wanted to own every market out there instead of concentrating on its core strengths and executing well on what it could. It dumped a lot of money into trying to catch google et al with the "live" rebrand and then "bing". It dumped a lot of money and opportunity cost through strategy tax in trying to catch flash through silverlight, which is now virtually defunct. What went wrong? At nearly every step MS is capable of executing on engineering ground well but failing to make things that people actually want. The Xbox One is by far the most impressive console of the next generation but it's marketed so poorly that few people are aware of its actual capabilities and advantages though many are aware of its downsides and limitations. Windows phone and surface are solid products but they're not the products they need to be to actually compete against samsung and apple. And the list just continues. What went wrong? The company made a lot of key mistakes over the last half decade, many of them at a strategic level. Who exactly is most responsible for that?

foamdino 13y ago
As someone that spends a lot of time reading about games, gaming culture and gaming hardware, I can assert that the Xbox One is not the most impressive console of the next (soon to be launched) gen. In terms of GPU hardware it is a reduced version of the PS4 GPU (50% fewer compute units). As a package XBox One + Kinect 2 might be quite impressive, but in which markets? None of the TV integration technology works outside of the US (as far as anyone can tell). Between PS4 and XBox One there are many similarities and a few differences - and in terms of console hardware they're both very impressive pieces of kit. Microsoft's messaging has been atrocious though - a case study in how not to launch a games console.
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  Pure hardware performance has never been the deciding factor in any console generation. Most of the things that give the xbox one an edge are not apparent by merely looking at the console in its inert state, they are built into how the system works as a whole.
einhverfr 13y ago
I am not saying Ballmer is not to blame btw, just that the company was way ahead of the curve in understanding what the market wanted and where it was going. So it isn't a matter of "they missed opportunities" so much as "they couldn't take advantage of important opportunities no matter how hard they tried."

foamdino 13y ago

As someone that spends a lot of time reading about games, gaming culture and gaming hardware, I can assert that the Xbox One is not the most impressive console of the next (soon to be launched) gen. In terms of GPU hardware it is a reduced version of the PS4 GPU (50% fewer compute units). As a package XBox One + Kinect 2 might be quite impressive, but in which markets? None of the TV integration technology works outside of the US (as far as anyone can tell). Between PS4 and XBox One there are many similarities and a few differences - and in terms of console hardware they're both very impressive pieces of kit. Microsoft's messaging has been atrocious though - a case study in how not to launch a games console.

InclinedPlane 13y ago
Pure hardware performance has never been the deciding factor in any console generation. Most of the things that give the xbox one an edge are not apparent by merely looking at the console in its inert state, they are built into how the system works as a whole.

einhverfr 13y ago

I am not saying Ballmer is not to blame btw, just that the company was way ahead of the curve in understanding what the market wanted and where it was going. So it isn't a matter of "they missed opportunities" so much as "they couldn't take advantage of important opportunities no matter how hard they tried."