Why Microsoft Got Into the Console Business 257
An anonymous reader writes "Joachim Kempin, former vice president of Windows Sales, has explained how the original Xbox came to be. It turns out it was Sony's fault, simply because the Japanese company wasn't very friendly towards Microsoft, and Microsoft eventually decided they had to 'stop Sony.' Apparently, long before the Xbox was even an idea, Microsoft was trying to collaborate with Sony in a number of areas they thought there was overlap. That collaboration was sought before even Sony had a games console coming to market, and would have focused on products for the entertainment sector."
I remember a story when I worked at Microsoft... (Score:3, Interesting)
About Bill Gates throwing a fit in front of Sony because they refused to put his garbage software on their hardware. Also not that while Xbox is profitable for Microsoft, it is not considered profitable enough.
Re:I remember a story when I worked at Microsoft.. (Score:5, Funny)
Spite.
Linux/Windows/OS X (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I remember a story when I worked at Microsoft.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, that's also the reasonining behind a number of open source projects.
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Call it spite, if you like.
If millions of users need an app, or a functionality, that is only available at prices up to ten thousand dollars per seat - you can expect an open source alternative to spring up, sooner or later.
Yeah, call it spite. Or, you could say, "It's the economy, stupid!"
If it can be demonstrated that people can teach an animal to roll over and play dead, should everyone in the world who wishes to do so have to pay ten, fifty, or maybe a thousand dollars to the guy who figured out how to
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The GP wrote:
"Unfortunately, that's also the reasonining behind a number of open source projects."
You replied:
"Call it spite, if you like.
If millions of users need an app, or a functionality, that is only available at prices up to ten thousand dollars per seat - you can expect an open source alternative to spring up, sooner or later."
Your comment is valid if we take the GP's post to refer to opensource as against expensive proprietary software. My own reading is that the GP was referring to two competing op
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no open source project has ever been successful without the help of a large corporation
Heh... wait... were you serious?
Just because a large corporation uses something, does not make it "theirs".
Linux, bittorrent, tcp/ip, html are just a few examples that have nothing to do with corporations in their inception.
Big Corporations and open source (Score:3)
Linux, bittorrent, tcp/ip, html are just a few examples that have nothing to do with corporations in their inception.
Inception != Success. And do not underestimate the contributions of big corporations to open source. The original premise is not without merit. Big corporations have been instrumental in the success of most if not all major open source projects. The only way you can claim that big companies have nothing to do with these technologies is if you are willfully blind to the facts. Just because the big companies are not always the ones that start these projects doesn't mean they aren't important to the succe
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Ok but no one considers Microsoft's contribution significant by itself. If I cared to build my own kernel I'd likely not build that one module. I suspect that's true of almost anyone, but the distributions who want to provide long tail (Google "long tail" if you're lost) features. Microsoft is the largest corporation out there but its contribution is really fucking small to the much larger picture.
Yes, each part is less than the whole. What exactly are you suggesting? That Microsoft didn't contribute until they couldn't ignore the benefits any longer? Couldn't the same be argued about any corporate contributor?
Corporations owe their success with Linux to its development model's independence of any one participant. The smalltime players are just as much responsible as the bigtime. Of the whole list of corporations you listed, only 4 of them contributed more than 5% to Linux development. Only one of them managed over 10%. How do all these corporations manage by being in the 2 percentile or less? Development wise, Linux is all long tail.
On what metric are you basing contributions? Checkins? LoC?
Linux didn't get successful because it was it was born. Linux got successful because it was a Unix work-a-like. Work on it developed to a point where it was useful enough to be the no-cost alternative to $$$$$$ big iron implementations.
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And you could say that Valve is getting into the console gaming business with Steam Box because of Microsoft (although blaming that entirely on Microsoft is questionable and ignores other variables, but the point is there on a surface level). History repeats itself indeed.
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About Bill Gates throwing a fit in front of Sony because they refused to put his garbage software on their hardware. Also not that while Xbox is profitable for Microsoft, it is not considered profitable enough.
It might be making profits now (as in bringing more than current expenses), but it still has a LONG (5? 6? billion dollars) to go.
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Microsoft's garbage software uses way less RAM than Sony's OS on the PS3. One of the chief complaints I hear from PS3 developers is how much more overhead there is from the PS3 OS compared to the 360.
Re:I remember a story when I worked at Microsoft.. (Score:4, Informative)
It's true, and I think it first really hit home with most people when Business Insider posted their "Microsoft Operating Profit By Division [businessinsider.com]" chart about 3 years ago. Since then the XBox group has had some profitable quarters and some losses (a big one last spring), but is still down a couple billion. If you're "genuinely interested" in the exact amount, just open Excel and type in the numbers from all of Microsoft's quarterly reports for the last decade to get an exact amount-- the numbers aren't secret.
Re:I remember a story when I worked at Microsoft.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I remember a story when I worked at Microsoft.. (Score:5, Interesting)
There was an April, 2007 article written by analyst Roger Ehrenberg called "When Will Microsoft Own Up To The Xbox 360 Bomb?". Essentially, he ran the numbers for the divisions of Microsoft where they'd stuffed their console business, and determine they'd invested over $21 billion (at that time) in the console business, and had earned a whopping $5.4 billion of cumulative operating losses in return. That didn't fully account for the Red Ring Of Death either, which apparently cost them another $1 - $5 billion.
They have had profitable quarters since then, but as far as I know they haven't come anywhere close to earning $26-$30 billion just in order to break even on their investment in the console business.
Consoles have been a money pit for Microsoft.
Worse, in order to remain competitive with Nintendo and Sony, they're going to have to sink billions more into the next-generation of consoles if they want to stay in that business (and pride pretty much dictates they have to stay in that business).
It's likely they'll never break even on their investment. They may have blocked Sony or Nintendo from becoming the de facto home entertainment hub, but it isn't clear to me that keeping their options open in that space has been worth close to $30 billion. There's also the considerable threat that Apple will waltz into that space with a compelling new offering and blow most everybody else out of contention (while spending far less than $30 billion to do it). Google and Amazon are disruptive threats as well in that space.
Ironically, Apple spent far, far less than $30 billion developing the iPod, iPhone and iPad, combined - a combo that's proven a money machine for Cupertino almost since the day the products were released into the market. Each one of those products could have come from Microsoft - they were certainly years ahead of Apple at one point when it came to smart phones and tablets. Redmond took their eye off of that space while chasing the console business, a decision which I think will go down as one of the biggest misallocations of resources any corporation ever made.
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Consoles have been a money pit for Microsoft.
Worse, in order to remain competitive with Nintendo and Sony, they're going to have to sink billions more into the next-generation of consoles if they want to stay in that business (and pride pretty much dictates they have to stay in that business).
MS's loss is our gain. I think MS's competition has kept Sony and Nintendo on their toes in the console market and improved the options available to gamers.
Though I wouldn't mind if more of the XBox game library was available on the PC ...
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Citation? With the accounting vortex surrounding the RROD replacement problem approaching the reality-warping equations of the Starship Bistromath, we'll never know exactly how profitable, if at all, the XBox division is. Too many fungible parts. There's no way to tell, but reason to suspect that the GP is correct. Or not.
Doesn't matter, unless you own stock.
No news here (Score:4, Insightful)
It was pretty well agreed eight years ago that the living room was a possible avenue for a "Trojan Horse" that would take over as the household computing center and push aside the consumer PC. And Bill Gates was always paranoid about competition, not just established players in personal computing like Apple but also new entrants large and small. That's why MS got into so much trouble with the anti-trust regulators in the '90s. Sony didn't want to make some sweetheart development deal with MS... so what? Sony was big and powerful, and some of the last companies that made the mistake of trying to buddy up to Microsoft were IBM (with the original PC) and Sybase (with SQL Server development for Windows). Jerry Kaplan wrote about his own close encounter with Bill Gates in his book "Startup" (Kaplan demo'd the Go tablet computer for Gates and Jeff Raikes, hoping to interest them in application development; instead, Gates turned around and launched the Pen Windows project. Guess who was put in charge? Yup. Jeff Raikes).
As usual, Steve Jobs got it right... the game console wasn't going to be the centerpiece for consumer technology. It looks so obvious in retrospect.
Oh the irony. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh the irony. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, that's inaccurate:
"Using the same Super Disc technology as the proposed SNES drive, Sony began development on what was to eventually become the PlayStaion. Initially called the Super Disc, it was supposed to be able to play both SNES cartridges and CD-ROMs, of which Sony was to be the 'sole worldwide licenser,' as stated in the contract. Nintendo was now to be at the mercy of Sony, who could manufacture their own CDs, play SNES carts, and play Sony CDs. Needless to say, Nintendo began to get worried."
---- History of the PlayStation [ign.com]
Co-operate with Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Sony made the right decision there. If Microsoft approached me about "co-operating" I wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole. Look how well it worked out for IBM (with MS-DOS and OS/2) or Sun (with Java).
Re:Co-operate with Microsoft? (Score:5, Informative)
I think Sony made the right decision there. If Microsoft approached me about "co-operating" I wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole. Look how well it worked out for IBM (with MS-DOS and OS/2) or Sun (with Java).
Add Robert Metcalfe and 3Com. Here is a video clip from the documentary "Nerds 2.0.1" where he is talking about how M$ f***ed them over: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaCFHuVZAU0&t=4m [youtube.com]
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Don't forget Real while you're at it (not that Real is a fantastic company any more or anything)
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and for a more recent example, Novell and (by extension) SUSE.
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Re:Co-operate with Microsoft? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Co-operate with Microsoft? (Score:4, Insightful)
IBM (with MS-DOS
They defined the PC as we know it including a lot of standards that persist to this day. It was immensely successful and allowed for IBM to dominate the personal computing space for years.
and OS/2)
Was doomed from the start. IBM is equally to blame for its demise, despite the haterade that people on slashdot are drinking.
Sun (with Java)
I seem to remember that involving more lawsuits than any sort of cooperation. In any case Java is currently a very popular language in the enterprise.
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You guys making this argument really need to start picking better examples.
I have one that is both topical and accurate. Sega worked with Microsoft, I have no idea what they got out of it but I presume it included the promise of some games and probably access to partners to build the Dreamcast. In return Microsoft laughed as Sony murdered the DC with fraudulent specs and built their own console, then sunk massive amounts of money into it in order to remain relevant.
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Sega licensed Windows CE to use as the base for the Dreamcast's OS. I don't think there was any other involvement.
You actually have no useful information, but you're willing to counter-speculate? Got it. That would be contrary to every other venture Microsoft has gotten into...
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I think Sony made the right decision there. If Microsoft approached me about "co-operating" I wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole. Look how well it worked out for IBM (with MS-DOS and OS/2) or Sun (with Java).
You only have to see how Toshiba's "cooperation" with Microsoft worked out for them with HD DVD to see what a bad idea it could be. Nokia could be the next victim of that "cooperation".
Could?!? (Score:2)
YNokia could be the next victim of that "cooperation".
Could?!? It's already happened.
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Don't forget the Farenheit 3D API effort with SGI (SGI made it their focus, while Microsoft quietly worked on DirectX instead)
Embrace... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given MS's strategy of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, it's obvious Sony made the right choice.
In all honesty, why would any hardware vendor want to tie themselves to a platform over which they have no control? Look at how MS throws around their desktop hardware partners, dictating to them which minimum and maximum hardware requirements the system can have. No doubt they would try to pull the same shenanigans with Sony. And then look at how MS blames its hardware partners for crappy Win8 sales when it's really fault for designing the OS in ways that no consumer ever wanted? And then there's the atrocity that's Windows RT, and how nothing runs on it!! I'm guessing that there isn't a single hardware vendor on the planet that wouldn't love to never have to deal with MS again, were it not for their desktop monopoly... probably even MS itself!
It's not unreasonable that Sony executives made the simple observation: companies that entangle with MS never do well. Seriously - for each and every company that MS has partnered with that's doing decently, you can name 5 that are in the gutter or dead altogether.
At least MS did a better job with the Xbox than they did with WinMo. That's not saying much, but hey, when you're Microsoft, that's really all you've got...
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or each and every company that MS has partnered with that's doing decently
I can't think of any, to be honest. Unless you count the ones MS bought outright, but even there, MS managed to turdify the acquired product.
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And what exactly would they 'embrace, extend and extinguish'?
Sega.
And Sony got into the console business... (Score:3)
As long as you have enough Rupees (Score:2)
However, Nintendo dropped a bombshell on Sony at the '91 CES: they were severing their ties with Sony and instead partnering with Phillips
Are you sure it wasn't a lamp oil-shell or rope-shell? This [youtube.com] is what became of the partnership with Philips.
Xbox Subscription (Score:3, Interesting)
Xbox sucks. One must own a Gold membership (about $5/month) to install many key applications, such as Netflix (for which a paid Netflix subscription is required, of course). And whenever an update is available, refusing to install it immediately will close the Live session, preventing any access to Netflix. This is hugely annoying as those pesky updates frequently happen at the least convenient time.
They really do milk the customers. I bought a 1-year Gold membership but I probably won't renew. Unfortunately the alternative (Playstation) is not that great.
Re:Xbox Subscription (Score:5, Insightful)
Wii? 150 bucks new. Does not do HD, but I personally don't care. Also gets hulu and amazon and has a decent youtube app. Also you can softmod it for homebrew and get wiimc and vlc shares. Also stream movies, music, pictures over wifi from your pc. And you can play some great video games. Hook up a hard drive and you don't even need to leave your couch to put in the dvd. AND no online fees. Plus it's approachable to play videogames with your girlfriend or her parents, even if they are terrible at them. Has a terrible web browser though, but that's what your ipad/phone is for. Seriously, if you don't give a crap about HD, Wii is hands down the most amazing piece of TV machinery ever.
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One must own a Gold membership (about $5/month)
Holy crap! 5 whole dollars per month?!
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Agreed - it isn't much of a sacrifice. On that note, please post your banking info so that I can initiate a $5/month transfer into my account. You'll never miss it.
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Agreed - it isn't much of a sacrifice.
Not for what you get, no. But if you're too tight for that you could always go the PC route.
The issue is not the amount, it's paying a gatekeeper fee. There is absolutely no reason why one should pay just to access a third party service from a console that has already been paid for using an internet connection that is also being paid for. All those apps, including Netflix, should be available without the Gold membership.
It's a racket, plain and simple, and saying that the amount is too small to matter is how they get away with it.
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I disagree. It's not as though MS introduced a subscription after the 360 was marketed. XBL was available for the XBox 1 and it was implicit in the marketing of the 360 that subscription to XBL was required to play online. They even gave you a trial membership!
The cost involved in maintaining XBL, which is pretty slick IMHO, must be massive and that cost must be generated from somewhere. Not the consoles or the games as those might stop selling or might not cover the cost. Subscription all the way.
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The online aspect is available by subscription and apps, netflix, lovefilm, whatever are additions to that subscription service. You are saying that you want those additions for free and not have to pay for the multiplayer content - are you the sort of person that refuses to pay for a 'buy one, get one free' offer as you only want the free one?
I pay $7 a month to watch Netflix movies (I'd probably pay a lot more but don't tell them). I can do that on my PC, my laptop, on a Wii, on a PS3 with no extra cost. However on a Xbox I must also pay $5 to Microsoft for a Gold membership even if I use it only to access Netflix.
I get nothing from this membership other than not being prevented from using a device I paid for to connect on my own internet connection to a third party service that has nothing to do with Microsoft. This is textbook racket: "being
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There is absolutely no reason why one should pay just to access a third party service from a console that has already been paid for using an internet connection that is also being paid for.
If that really is the case then they won't and it is simply a value add for Gold subscribers.
All those apps, including Netflix, should be available without the Gold membership.
Yeah they should just develop, maintain and run them on their network for free. It's not an open platform - this may be news to you - which is why companies like Netflix can't just develop an app and put it on there. The console market is about making up the hardware loss-leader with software royalties, they are either going to charge Netflix more to use their platform and network (which netflix would likely pass on
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Except you really do have to pay Microsoft to use the internet with the Xbox to do anything other than download sponsored demos or game updates, and meanwhile you have to actively filter some addresses (better to filter URLs) in order to not receive their video advertisements, whether or not you are paying for their service. Video advertisements are offensive no matter how you slice it; either I'm paying for the bandwidth and getting nothing or I'm paying for the bandwidth and the service and still having t
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XBLG has always been a paid service and they add new features to it, yes the XBox is a locked down platform, why is people are still only just realizing this? 40 million+ people don't care, some of those who don't like it choose PC gaming, those who don't want to pay for XBLG fea
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Meanwhile? Up until recently you couldn't browse the net on your XBox360 at all, it's not as if they are suddenly charging for browsing, it's that they recently wrote a browser and added it to the already existing XBLG subscription.
You're confusing internet with web. Fail, fail.
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You're confusing internet with web.
Nope, browsing is just an example of internet use, duh. And you're using the internet through their network, if you don't want to do that then don't use XBL.
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Re:Xbox Subscription (Score:4, Insightful)
Then along came Microsoft with Xbox Live. Voice chat in every game, cross games friend list, voice messages, game invites, it was crazy. For years Xbox had, basically, the only choice for online gaming. Ps2 online was crap compared to Xbox.
And you know the thing about all that is? It costs money. $50/year. If you can't pay that you probably should spend more time working and less time buying Xboxes.
As to Netflix, of course the system kicks you off for having different software than the servers. You can't wait a minute for a 20 mb download every few months?
If you own a console, Xbox Live is the best option. Speed, reliability, and even the updates are shorter than any other console. Playstation is getting pretty good (But Oh No! Playstation Plus isn't free either!), but they are always playing catchup.
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And you know the thing about all that is? It costs money. $50/year. If you can't pay that you probably should spend more time working and less time buying Xboxes.
This is not how value is calculated. I have no need whatsoever for "xbox friends" or in-game chat. I use my Xbox to play single-player games and watch movies on Netflix. Yet, I have to subsidize YOUR usage of the Xbox network with this $50 membership. Even $1 would still be more than what it's worth to me, especially since I can get Netflix running on a PS3 or a WII or a computer without paying that useless fee.
As to Netflix, of course the system kicks you off for having different software than the servers. You can't wait a minute for a 20 mb download every few months?
I was talking about Xbox updates, which have nothing to do with Netflix and should not prevent me
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This is not how value is calculated. I have no need whatsoever for "xbox friends" or in-game chat. I use my Xbox to play single-player games and watch movies on Netflix. Yet, I have to subsidize YOUR usage of the Xbox network with this $50 membership. Even $1 would still be more than what it's worth to me, especially since I can get Netflix running on a PS3 or a WII or a computer without paying that useless fee.
Sometimes i think sad cunts like you deliberately choose not to exercise freedom of choice to get something they know suits their needs better just so they have something to whinge about.
I was talking about Xbox updates, which have nothing to do with Netflix
And happen like once a year, what an inconvenience.
First of all, I was not aware that I needed a Gold membership to watch Netflix (which I pay for separately) when I bought the console. This is very surprising as it does not happen on any other console or device.
Also there has been 3 updates in 2013 already. I don't know why you get only one a year, either you are lucky or time goes by very very slowly in your life (happens to boring people).
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Xbox sucks. One must own a Gold membership (about $5/month) to install many key applications, such as Netflix (for which a paid Netflix subscription is required, of course). And whenever an update is available, refusing to install it immediately will close the Live session, preventing any access to Netflix. This is hugely annoying as those pesky updates frequently happen at the least convenient time.
They really do milk the customers. I bought a 1-year Gold membership but I probably won't renew. Unfortunately the alternative (Playstation) is not that great.
I agree. I have had a 360 since the begining, but haven't used it since switching to PS3 years ago. I hated having to pay for online multiplayer. The final straw were the multiple red ring of deaths and system replacements. Why am I going to keep buying games (investing) for a system I know won't last. In contrast my C64 and NES still work.
I love the media player for PS3, but dislike the controller for gaming. I also felt (at the time) that xbox had better game selection. I'm not much of a gamer anymore,
Dreamcast (Score:5, Interesting)
I always thought it was because Sega failed with the Dreamcast. Sega had worked with Microsoft for 2 years for the OS on the Dreamcast. So I assumed Microsoft decided to go on their own with out Sega.
Re:Dreamcast (Score:4, Interesting)
Having owned both a Dreamcast and a first-generation XBox, I was surprised at the similarities. The controller for XBox looked like it was very much patterned off the Sega Dreamcast and some of the earlier games had a very similar look and feel. I had thought that Microsoft basically brought out the XBox as a Dreamcast II, but under their name instead of Sega's.
Re:Dreamcast (Score:4, Interesting)
And word on the streets on the time was that XBox would be DC compatible, as the DC hardware had been reduced to a single chip.
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Some games who were made for the DreamCast towards the end of its life were ported to be early titles on the XBOX.
Such as, for example, Gunvalkyrie. It's a pity because we have reports the game was made with online play options on the DreamCast (all models had a modem integrated, ethernet card add-on available), and didn't get it on the XBOX (on-line capabilities weren't available then : Halo CE doesn't have XBLA play).
Re:Dreamcast (Score:5, Informative)
They worked with Sega on an operating system for the Dreamcast, based on Windows CE. According to this list [dcemu.co.uk], only 48 of the 688 commercially-released DC games used it.
Mostly have learned their lesson? (Score:2)
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The rootkit thing happened like 8 years ago on a few select CDs. It was before there was an Anonymous, and Slashdot still whines about it every time Sony comes up, even peripherally. So it's not like they slipped it in under the radar.
Re:Mostly have learned their lesson? (Score:4, Insightful)
Furthermore, it was limited to BMG, and BMG was bought by Sony at just about the same time the kit came out. Sony ended up with the blame for something that clearly had to be planned, designed, and implented before they even came into the picture. It should be referred to as the BMG rootkit, not the Sony rootkit, but who the heck remembers BMG these days?
Not that I want to defend Sony. They've made more than their share of horrible misteps over the last few years, and any lingering respect I might have had for them is long gone. But yeah, I think the rootkit thing gets seriously overblown around here. Heck, Microsoft has completely pwned the entire OS on many people's systems. :)
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It should be referred to as the BMG rootkit, not the Sony rootkit, but who the heck remembers BMG these days?
You know how to work the bread, cheese, and dough
from scratch but see the catch is you can get caught
Know what you're selling and what you bought so cut that big talk
So MIcrosoft's basic premise is (Score:3)
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That's what MS did back then. Everyone lived in fear of them. Now nobody could care less. You're going to crush us? Yeah, whatever.
I don't understand... (Score:2)
All Microsoft wanted to do was Embrace Sony.... and after that Extend them into new areas....
There's a third E in that but I don't remember what it stands for...
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There's a third E in that but I don't remember what it stands for...
I believe the word, as used by Microsoft France, is "enculer".
Old news (Score:4, Insightful)
The same thing happend with blu ray that totally destroyed microsoft hd dvd push. The xbox never has been about gaming and I'm even sure that for the next xbox the focus will be also bigger on non gaming capabilities.
The irony of the whole thing is that the xbox seriously weakend their windows platform as it weakened the argument "I need windows because I want to game"
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The irony of the whole thing is that the xbox seriously weakend their windows platform as it weakened the argument "I need windows because I want to game"
This is pretty inaccurate. Their approach with the XBox and DirectX has allowed for much less painful porting, giving the game producers a 2-for-1 hit. If you recall the time before the XBox, there were a lot of PC games and a lot of console games, but most console games were exclusive to the medium. Today is a completely different story with significantly fewer console exclusives and more similar hardware inside consoles and PCs. Gaming drives a lot of Windows sales, and at any point where Windows lost
Not sure I believe it (Score:2)
It was the first E3 (Score:3)
The very first Electronic Entertainment Expo, held in LA (at the Staples Center if I recall correctly), had the Sony and Microsoft booths next to one another. (MS, if I recall was squeezed between Sony and Sega) Sony's was HUGE, as they were at the time, pushing the Playstation (which wasn't even out in the USA yet, but had been released in Japan). Sega had already released the Sega Saturn and was pushing some 3-D dragon game (forgot the name).
MS's booth, was not so big, they were showing flight simulator and a few other entertainment packages for the PC. MS, used to being the biggest player at any PC/computer show, was not used to being dwarfed by the behemoths of Sony, Sega, and Nintendo.
When Sony ran an entire Marching Band through MS's booth (and around the entire show), I think MS had had enough and decided then and there to get into the Console Biz.
No used sale market on steam... (Score:2)
with the steam box from valve there will probably be no used sale market since there is none on steam on windows/mac/linux at present. microsoft eliminating used sales for their console would give a big boost to the steam box by removing a big differentiator, esp. if potential purchasers of the steam box are used to steam sales and think the steambox will have similar.
of course, if microsoft and perhaps sony go down the no resale route, and valve went in the other direction and actually came up with a syst
This is very rich (Score:2)
That Microsoft didn't like how another company was doing business...
Another dumb submission (Score:2)
Is it so weird that a corporation with excess capital will enter an entertainment market tangentially related to their core technology market?
More curious than Microsoft's entrance into video games is perhaps Nintendo's. Apparently Nintendo just got tired of printing hanafuda decks and expanded into electronics and eventually entertainment electronics.
Re:Sony run by idiots, news at 11 (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, they could've coexisted with the Xbox if the play station 3 didn't cost 599 at launch. Well, there's also the argument that the SDK could've been better, but I tend to think of developers as whiny. Not to mention spoiled considering the Xbox tool chain was directx and the windows kernel running on PowerPC.
Still. The idiocy of Sony wasn't spitting in Billy G's face, it was fucking up the ps3
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You haven't played any PS3 games lately or actually looked at the sales figures, have you? Just going by what you hear from your friends huh?
How about I just wait a few minutes while you check with them again so you can re-post about how horrible Heavy Rain or Uncharted is or how 1080p/60fps/3D in GT5 isn't an incredible achievement for a console.
Re:Sony run by idiots, news at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Did I mention graphics? I said SDK. A lot of developers have been bitching about the ps3's SDK. Even if the games look great, that doesn't mean the SDK doesn't suck.
But I'm willing to err on the side of Sony here because the notion that developers are whiny and spoiled is more attractive to me.
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A lot of developers have been bitching about the ps3's SDK.
I imagine part of the issue is the PS3's weird architecture.
From what I understand, the XBox 360 has some processors, some RAM, a GPU, and a few IO controllers, and it connects these via copper tracks in the normal manner. The PS3 has a many-headed daemon called Cell, and special magic incantations must be used when trying to access anything that's not Cell.
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The greater challenge would be architecting the game or app to make use of the cell
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Actually when you said "fucking up the PS3" it wasn't clear what you were talking about.
It's not clear because there's so many ways in which Sony fucked up with the PS3. It has little more raw power than the 360 but it's harder to make use of all the power it has, because of the goofy-ass architecture they dreamed up with their typical pie-in-the-sky bullshit. Remember when Sony was talking about building HPC-esque cell clusters in your household out of various cell-powered pieces of hardware? So in order to support that bullshit jerkoff wet dream they delivered a six hundred dollar console an
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its not really goofy-ass architecture, just different. Its actually a better solution for a games console (compared to the Xbox which is basically a PC). In a way, you can blame MS for thinking its goofy-ass because (like Windows) we're all conditioned to think everything must work in only 1 way.
For games, most of the power is required in graphics, and you need a load of not-particularly-complex processing for stuff like sound, game structures and so on. So putting a load of underpowered CPUs in a box with
Re:Sony run by idiots, news at 11 (Score:4, Informative)
its not really goofy-ass architecture, just different.
It has been dissected here time and again by games developers just how it's goofy.
In a way, you can blame MS for thinking its goofy-ass because (like Windows) we're all conditioned to think everything must work in only 1 way.
I have no love for DirectX, but MS arguably did things the more "right" way, in that their way is less of a pain in the ass.
You might not remember old style computers that had separate chips for sub functions, like the Amiga that kicked ass because it had a CPU with several discrete support chips for sound and video.
I own an A1200 and have owned A500, 2000, 2500, and 3000.
The PS3 is just much more of the same.
No, it certainly is not. That is a specious comparison. If you are actually familiar with the Amiga then you know that is pure bullshit. The Amiga was similar to game consoles in that it had unified memory, except hilariously the PS3 doesn't have unified memory, and the Xbox 360 does. But it was also very like modern PCs in that it had hardware to do the heavy lifting and free the CPU to perform computing tasks instead of doing so much shoveling.
The Amiga was completely cool, don't get me wrong. At the time, having a bunch of chips floating around the CPU doing DMA was a big deal. Today, we all have that, and PCs with unified memory are a dime a dozen. Even tablets have this, even though the various chips are on a single chip; the graphics are handled by a separate core! The Amiga was groundbreaking, but its legacy is not gone, it is everywhere. It is not, however, in the PS3. The PS3 has a wacky CPU, where the Amiga used a bog-standard COTS 68k CPU. That meant that you could re-use code written for other platforms, like the Atari ST, and then you could utilize the custom chips to make the software better. The PS3 has separate graphics and main memory, where the 360 permits you to partition it, as the Amiga did. The Amiga did have CHIP and FAST memory, but base (unexpanded) Amigas didn't actually have any FAST RAM, so most games didn't account for it anyway. It was more common for games to require 1MB CHIP than to require 1MB RAM generally, and then you needed a fatter Agnus or a later machine.
Now the crappy SDK probably didn't help matters at all. They should learn from that when they do the next console.
The PS3 suggests that Sony has a hard time learning. The Playstation dominated the Saturn in part because of developer acceptance. The Saturn was compared by one developer to a pile of chips on a board. The Playstation had a relatively elegant SDK and hardware for transparency, so it was much easier to make games for. Then instead of using MIPS cores relatively unadulterated Sony stuck them together with baling wire and glue to make the PS2's processor. And that made developers angry, and then they made an even wackier architecture for the PS3. But rumors suggest that the new machine will be using a fairly standard multicore CPU, so perhaps they will also unfuck the SDK.
Re:Sony run by idiots, news at 11 (Score:4, Funny)
And Giant Enemy Crabs. Oh, and you gotta love that real-time weapon change enabled only by the power of the PS3. RIIIIDGEE RACER!!! Only five hundred ninety-nine U.S. dollars.
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Funny thing is, if you look at Amazon for used first gen hardware-BC PS3s, you see they currently command more than their original MSRPs...
The original hardware turned out to be better that everything that followed in every way other than power consumption/fan noise.
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They are coexisting with the Xbox - The only place where the xbox has been significantly outselling the Ps3 is in the US. Everywhere else it's even-ish, except for Japan, where the PS3 rules. Globally, it's about even. Even with the higher price, the PS3 sold just about as much as the Xbox. The PS3 is currently easily outselling the xbox360.
I've still got my PS3 from launch date... an old 60gb model, which actually plays most ps2 titles (though now I don't need that with PCSX2). I wonder how many peop
Compare to the Super NES Play Station (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, Nintendo made its own worst enemy by dropping out of the "Play Station" (with a space) partnership with Sony to make a CD-ROM drive. The Play Station would have plugged into the clock port on the bottom of the Super NES using the HANDS protocol (Nintendo's version of Blast Processing). The trouble is that HANDS couldn't copy information directly into video memory; instead, it had to be bounced off the CPU's memory, and that couldn't be done full-screen at a solid 30 fps. So Nintendo dumped Sony for Philips CD-i, and Sony began the PS-X (PlayStation Experiment) project to rework what it had left into a stand-alone console.
In the Harry Potter universe, on the other hand, it might be the case that the Play Station accessory for Super NES came out on schedule, which explains Dudley Dursley having a Play Station in mid-1994 rather than the real-world release date of the late third quarter of 1995.
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I heard it was that Nintendo fucked up the contracts and realised at the last minute that they'd given Sony the rights for anything released on CDs, whilst they retained rights to anything released on carts. Given the way the market was clearly going, they realised they'd basically dropped the soap, so jumped out the shower and rather than "officially" cancelling the Play Station project, they switched to Phillips with some proper contracts and well...but this all took so long the numbers didn't add up...so
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I've been on /. a long time (lost my 3 digit...), and this is probably the nerdiest post I have ever seen.
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--Naaahhh... I've seen worse.
Scrolling requires loading in newly visible areas (Score:3)
there never was such a thing as "Blast Processing."
As far as I can tell, "Blast Processing" was Sega's marketing spin for the DMA unit in the Genesis, which allowed large copies to video memory without the CPU overhead of a software memcpy. The Super NES had a DMA unit of similar capability, just not marketed as such.
Fast scrolling just means you update your horizontal position by larger increments
Fast scrolling also means you need to copy the newly visible part of the map into video memory. Without DMA, there's a practical speed limit on this aspect of scrolling. DMA makes the copy so fast that a whole screen's worth of tile indices can
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Re:Man, They Stopped the HELL Out of SONY (Score:5, Insightful)
Like Microsoft operatives infiltrated SONY at all levels of management and sent the company crashing into the ground? I think that'd be funny.
Of course, if Microsoft were competent enough to do that...
Considering what they've done to Nokia, they definitely seem capable of doing just that.
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The one thing Microsoft actually does decently and now they may have to sell it off because of Windows 8.
Operating systems are the one thing Microsoft does decently. And by decently I do not mean well, I mean tolerably. The entertainment division may be turning a year to year profit but has it yet actually made a profit?
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Apparently it was successful everywhere but the US.
Probably because of the video game crash of '82. The crash missed Japan and Europe, so 8-bit stuff hung on longer there, but MSX came out in '83, post-dating both the IBM PC and the C-64. The US was tired of 8-bit 64K toys, and certainly didn't need to import the equivalent of a Coleco Adam from Japan. The C-64 only survived as long as it did because of its floppy drive.
By the time the crash thawed out (with the introduction of the NES in late '85), 16-bit systems were firmly in control for everything but
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