XBOX Dis-Kinected?
First I apologize to my readers for being off-line for a bit. I subscribe to the belief that a good blogger should shut-up when they have nothing to say instead of fabricating content to retain their audience. Unfortunately I have a lot going on that is very exciting but also business so I can’t talk about it. It’s unprofessional if the people you work with have to worry about you blabbing about their business with you publicly. It involves lots of CUDA work so I’ve accumulated a ton of things to say on that subject, but I have to get my work done for everybody first before I can indulge in talking about all the cool stuff I’ve gotten to do recently. Standby and rest assured that when I take the time to write something it will be worth reading! 🙂
Now, here’s something topical that I can’t resist commenting on… Bill Gates dropping the hint that XBOX may be for sale, despite XBOX chief Phil Spencer loudly declaring that Microsoft is TOTALLY committed to it!
http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/6/5686380/bill-gates-comments-on-potential-microsoft-xbox-sale
http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/8/5080192/microsoft-ceo-candidate-stephen-elop-bing-xbox-rumors
So many conflicting reports… who to believe? Are they selling XBOX or not? Bill and Elop say “maybe” but Phil Spencer says “absolutely not!” Who to believe? Well, let’s see if we can figure it out…
Here we have Phil assuring us that there will never be an XBOX ONE without Kinect.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/8/5080192/microsoft-ceo-candidate-stephen-elop-bing-xbox-rumors
…and Phil back-tracking on Kinect support as Microsoft announces a Kinectless bundle.
http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/13/5713634/xbox-one-kinect-integral-add-on
It would appear that Phil’s definition of “committed” is a little looser than the one found on Dictionary.com.
“to bind or obligate, as by pledge or assurance; pledge: to commit oneself to a promise; to be committed to a course of action.”
Mind you it’s not fair to grind Phil that hard for having to back-track… first it was a good decision, second only the companies CEO can really make that kind of “commitment” and Bill Gates who is probably closest to the CEO just damned XBOX support with faint praise. You might think that these different messages are conflicting but actually they are not. You can’t sell a huge business unit at a premium if the market for the business loses faith in it. So Phil Harrison who will be listened to by the gamer press says “we’re committed to it”, while Bill Gates says in PR double speak for the business press “We’re willing to sell it if that’s best for the company”
The real XBOX problem for Microsoft is that the company is institutionally an Enterprise focused company. Although they recognize the important strategic link between Enterprise adoption of their platforms and consumer adoption, they have historically REALLY SUCKED at executing in the consumer space. They don’t understand what consumers want or what makes them love a product so they rely on strategy to force adoption of products and features that consumers don’t like. If Microsoft can’t find a way to make consumer facing strategy and platforms align with their Enterprise products and strategy then they should dump the XBOX and doing so will probably be best for everybody involved. It would be sad for me if that happened because I would like to think that the early DirectX team was responsible for showing Microsoft HOW a great consumer gaming strategy could benefit the entire company, but if they can’t sort it out, they’ll have to dump XBOX eventually.
Also I want to give a big shout out to my former management team at WildTangent Inc. Now the largest mobile game publisher in the United States according to Comscore! WildTangent also has a bigger online gaming audience and larger gaming subscriber base then XBOX! They have more gaming audience then Microsoft, Disney, EA or Zynga in the US…
http://www.einnews.com/pr_news/204903476/wildtangent-1-in-comscore-us-mobile-games-network-rankings
How is that accomplished without billions of dollars, a huge organization, a massive hit game title, huge traffic purchases, or control of a gaming hardware platform like the XBOX or Apple IOS device? Execution and focus on providing a great service for game developers, your consumers and your channel! Amazing! Such a mystery… Congratulations to my old team, you guys make me really proud… and for the record, that’s all them… I would never have tried to dominate mobile gaming like that, I would have thought it was impossible. >26million mobile users… isn’t that more than all Windows mobile device sales? Isn’t it interesting how such a small company with only 140 employees can make REPEATEDLY dominating online game publishing on different platforms look so easy? Somebody should acquire that team and put them in charge of their gaming business, apparently THEY know what they are doing! 🙂
Whats this part mean? Smoke and mirrors?
http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/27/5756760/microsofts-nadella-has-no-intentions-of-selling-xbox
My only point is that they have to say that regardless of their actual intent. IF they intended to sell it they can hardly publicly declare it without causing all sorts of investor havoc. Personally I don’t think they WANT to sell it and it’s hard to imagine who would buy it. Spinning it out is a more likely scenario. The interesting observation is that Gates feels compelled to publicly address the possibility which is an indication that there is investor pressure to ditch it. I personally doubt that pressure will prevail unless/until they have a really bad financial period. As long as they’re making numbers management will tend to get its way, but clearly they feel obligated to “consider” it so that investors have confidence that management is acting in their interest even it means sacrificing an internally popular business unit.
The fact that they hired an internal CEO is a strong indication that Bill/Steve are still in charge as I anticipated.
Alex,
Talisman was all about dominating the entire gaming market at the expense of Microsoft partners. Isn’t XBOX more of the same, I mean, kill the PC market, move everything to the XBOX where Microsoft has far more control and a far bigger share of the revenue pie?
Well it’s a little different because the XBOX doesn’t attempt to be a productivity device… well… it barely even attempts to be an entertainment device… and doesn’t really displace any of Microsoft’s partners, at least with XBOX Microsoft isn’t eating it’s own partners… but yes… it’s an attempt to own an entire ecosystem. In the case of XBOX I have no problem with that, being closed is what used to gurantee that a console was a safe reliable experience… although Microsoft somehow managed to screw that bit up to.
Problem with the consoles for me is that Microsoft isn’t trying to build a closed ecosystem (I’m okay with that) but that they are trying to build a closed ecosystem at the expense of their open ecosystem.
I see no reason on why isn’t Microsoft fomenting Steambox-like devices built on a very lean version of windows just to play DX games, but using their partners’ store to selling the games.
Instead they prefer to build a proprietary ecosystem, in a market where the hardware are usually sold at loss. That’s so… metro.