

What is Microsoft smoking? - irrlichthn
http://www.irrlicht3d.org/pivot/entry.php?id=1379

======
mattchamb
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
I think that idea probably works well...

...until you have to drag an entire BluRay disc over the Internet before Halo
14 will start.

~~~
mattchamb
I agree, but that that is a problem with the distribution method, not the
licencing model. The most reasonable answer to this would be that the game
disc can be used to install on any console, but only allow that disc to confer
a licence once.

I do not know how it will actually work, but I am actually excited to see what
happens.

edit: actually, thinking about it now - I think this is where the always
online requirement comes from. If i was implementing this feature, I would
allow the console to install the game content and have it associated with a
unique ID for that disc. But I would have to check with the servers to see if
that specific disc ID was already used elsewhere. If this is correct, then I
think the always-onlne "feature" could be relaxed in the case where there are
no unchecked games installed. This is just pure speculation, however.

~~~
JonnieCache
It's gonna be a lot of fun when the master keys leak and someone writes a fake
server that just authorises every game. Surely microsoft know that this is
100% going to happen?

~~~
jiggy2011
I'm sure there will eventually be some form of jailbreak for the console that
allows the execution of pirate games.

However the number of people who are willing to jailbreak will probably be
small enough that they don't really care.

The beauty of online activation is that the console doesn't need to store the
activation key, so you can't leak it by hacking the console as was done on the
PS3.

You just sign game activations with a hardware encryption module in a high
security datacenter. The console then only has to know the corresponding
public key which is not enough to authorize a game for a console that has not
been jailbroken.

------
zainny
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.

~~~
venomsnake
Microsoft had all the cards to win the device war. But they forgot what made
them win the PC war.

They tried to emulate apple while forgetting that people that bought into
apple ideology already had apple.

If the W8 arm was unlocked it would have been a big winner. WP7 just needed
fast moving instead of stagnation and they almost got everything right with
the original xbox and X360 in the beginning.

But I am moving away from microsoft right now even as a desktop. Arch with KDE
is almost as good. There is surprising gaming support and the only real show
stopper is the terrible fonts in JetBrains products.

~~~
jemeshsu
> They tried to emulate apple while forgetting that people that bought into
> apple ideology already had apple.

Agreed. Their enterprise offering is strong. And one day they will realize it
is IBM that is their destiny, and drop out of consumer market.

~~~
Zarathust
I see Microsoft in a position similar to RIM 5 - 8 years back. They have tons
of revenue from big business that are kinda locked in to their stack. There is
no need for large innovation in those very mature markets and they innovate by
pushing more of the same. I may not be an office power use, but I see very
little significant changes in Office since 2003, only small features tweaked.

~~~
kryten
It's even worse than that. If you are a power user and turn off the toolbars
etc, excel 97 isn't that much different to excel 2013.

~~~
mark_integerdsv
If you can say this then you are not a power user. If only by one MASSIVE
measure and that is the row limit increase between these two versions, but
there are plenty others.

------
falcolas
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
> _" 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.

~~~
untog
_This isn 't about Microsoft's bottom line, this is about the bottom line of
GameStop, EA, Activision, etc._

And it's them that will make or break this choice. If they deprioritise the
Playstation platform because it allows customers to sell used games, MS could
still win out. If they back down and support the Playstation just fine, MS
loses. So it's not even in Microsoft's hands.

~~~
kalms
In the end, the publishers will go where the consumers are. And if we judge by
the titles available on the PS4, I'd say that Sony has a pretty good hand
right now.

------
AlexanderDhoore
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.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _This is probably an incredibly incomplete list._

You've actually hit Microsoft's five business units. In order of revenue:

Business Division (ie, Office): $24B

Windows & Windows Live: $18.8B

Server & Tools: $18.7B

Entertainment & Devices: $9.5B

Online Services: $3B.

With the exception of Online Services, each of these business units _alone_ is
doing enough revenue to qualify for inclusion on the Fortune 500 list.

Entertainment & Devices makes more revenue than Yahoo does in total. More than
Hertz and Barnes & Noble.

I would love -- love! -- to be spread so thin.

~~~
venomsnake
The speed with which one technological company can fall is amazing as history
has shown time and time again. According to joel spolsky Excel 4 made lotus
1-2-3 obsolete virtually overnight and that was the beginning of the end for
them.

The fact that MS is strong now means nothing in the long and even midterm.

The total share of world computing that Microsoft controls now is lower than
in the 90s. They have trouble getting good products out except in Server and
Azure divisions. They are bleeding developer loyalty and they are turning into
Apple style control freaks without having the charm of Apple.

~~~
adventured
Actually, their substantial diversification beyond Windows means that it's
very, very unlikely Microsoft is going to fall (easily or quickly). Microsoft
could lose the entire consumer Windows business and be just fine (despite the
hit their stock would take), particularly as they keep growing in other
sectors while Windows becomes less important by the day (and is clearly done
growing as a business). Consumer Windows is about 1/3 of Microsoft's profit
these days.

Apple by comparison gets about 3/4 of its profit from the iPhone. Google is
even worse, 95% of their profit comes directly from search.

~~~
alextingle
The vast majority of Microsoft's profits come from Office. Windows makes a
little bit, and everything else loses money.

~~~
jodoglevy
This is fundamentally incorrect. Only Online Services Division (Bing) loses
money. Everything else makes money, and Windows definitely makes more than "a
little bit."

Operating Income by Division FY13 Q3: Windows: $3.46 B Server and Tools: $1.98
B Online Services: -$262 M (loss) Business: $4.1 B Entertainment and Devices:
$342 M

It is interesting that people perceive so many businesses at Microsoft as
"failing" even when they have healthy income and growth year after year.

Source:
[http://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earn...](http://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earnings/PressReleaseAndWebcast/FY13/Q3/default.aspx)

~~~
alextingle
Even though Xbox (Entertainment) is now making a small profit, they've got a
long, long way to go before it recoups the vast investment/losses of the early
days:

[http://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-xbox-
division-h...](http://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-xbox-division-has-
lost-nearly-3-billion-in-10-years)

------
bromagosa
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.

~~~
adventured
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.

~~~
vetinari
So while we are here, why the entitlement to use Intel CPUs, right? They
should go and and make their own silicon ingots and then their own CPUs in
their own fab, right?

There is a reason why the world is organized around this 'division of labor'
concept. Excluding someone from it and then calling the complains about it an
entitlement is not a good way forward.

~~~
yuhong
Reminds of the days when Compaq etc built their own chipsets. Of course I am
not expecting them to do it now, but I do wish they were still as willing to
fix BIOS bugs.

------
cpfohl
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.

~~~
supercoder
It'll pass in time I'm sure, but everytime I hear 'Xbox One' i think 'Xbox 1'.
Some people are going to think they get some pretty good deals on ebay..

I don't know why they just couldnt have gone with 'Xbox'. Not like there is
one coming out every year (let alone every decade) , like the iPad people will
just say 'the new xbox'.

"Xbox One" just seems like some marketing guys idea of a good thing to
patronise people and make them think it's 'the only one', 'the single device
to do it all' etc.

~~~
cpfohl
Ok. I can see that. Thanks for explaining.

------
kryten
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.

------
elorant
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
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.

------
greyman
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.

~~~
valdiorn
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
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
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)

------
tenfingers
> 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.

------
blibble
Xbox One: designed by executives, for executives

~~~
raverbashing
So it will run Java? And Office?

~~~
kfk
Seems weird for you, but executives are now moving to iphones and ipads too.

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

~~~
yitchelle
Region locking is one of the most evil things in our industry. Nothing more to
say..

~~~
csense
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.

------
wintersFright
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
Some of us run Linux as the host.

------
jiggy2011
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.

~~~
baby
One of the guy introducing "The Crew" at the E3 told one journalist : "you
have an iPad? How does it feel whan you don't have WIFI or 3G for it? It feels
empty and dead right? I believe consoles are becoming about online now and in
a few years you'll understand what I meant here".

~~~
bergie
When I still had an iPad, I spent many long flights playing games or watching
films with it offline.

But poor comparison in that iPad is a mobile device you're supposed to carry
around with you, while the consoles are stationary.

~~~
baby
I didn't say it wasn't working when offline. It's like taking your laptop in
the airplane/train without WIFI. You just feel like you're very limited.

------
zerohm
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.

------
JimmaDaRustla
#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.

------
dschiptsov
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..)

------
vacri
_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
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
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
Agreed it's still frustrating, but it's no where near the clusterfuck the OP
implies.

------
orf
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_
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.

------
fhd2
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.

------
jimmar
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.

------
joelthelion
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
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...

------
sz4kerto
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.

~~~
rjd
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
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.

------
arethuza
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
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
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
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.

------
pgsandstrom
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.

------
pjmlp
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.

------
uptown
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.

------
baby
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
> they launched their tablet product

For the PC as well, if you recall.

------
eliben
"For me as developer, Windows is my "home" operating system"

This is your big problem. Liberate yourself - you won't look back.

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

------
adventured
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.

------
gesman
Ballmer = Being Always Late + Letting My Ego Roar

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

