You have to remember that the only person who ever really wanted Microsoft to get into console gaming was Bill Gates and this was largely an extension of his own love of video games and obsession with getting MS into the living room. Other efforts included things like WebTV, MSNBC, and a device that led to the creation of TiVo. Ballmer cared about Bill’s legacy but once the two of them were gone nobody was left who gave a rat’s ass about Xbox.
They had vision and knew how to build a brand. The current CEO’s idea of branding is to name their products after a tool that absolutely no one will be using.
I get what you’re saying, but it’s probably worth pointing out that the Xbox was built on the ashes of the Dreamcast. The Dreamcast ran Windows CE, a precursor of sorts to Windows Mobile. Microsoft was perfectly happy using an already wounded Sega, who had mismanaged their last two console generations and lost a lot of users to the then fairly new PlayStation line, as the test bed for the software platforms that would eventually power the Xbox, though under a slightly different hardware platform. This is why, among other things, the Duke controller looks very much like a Dreamcast controller.
Like a lot of things that Gates did, he was standing on the shoulders of giants.
fwiw very few DC games used WinCE, though I do agree that the Xbox is basically the spiritual successor to the Dreamcast.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/916412-dreamcast/79453073
Yeah, this isn’t news and the studio owners who can cash big checks to sell don’t care.
Microsoft has a lot more problems than that, but I suppose that’s the only one Steve Jobs would care about.
In the future they will have difficulty recruiting talent for projects and as a result will have to pay people way more like Meta because of the stigma.
They also don’t understand their customers.
But they do understand what they care about. Short term “Shareholder value”
Microsoft are the EA of yEAsterday
Yeah, because they are a business first and everything else, second. Business ruins everything.
Playing devil’s advocate, sometimes the blame is not solely on Microsoft.
Bethesda Softworks is a good example. They’d basically doomed Arkane to dev hell with that vampire game, and kept that little detail hidden during the acquisition; Microsoft gave them total leeway when the Arkane team supposedly hoped a “rescue” instead, and never got it.
It’s a hard argument though.
Take Phil Spencer. Just Phil Spencer. Thats an incredible crater, right there, and he failed upwards for it.
The only thing that matters to MS is money.
Micro$oft
More like ‘carpet bombed a lot of bridges’ repeatedly while condescending all the screaming.
All developers should refuse to develop for Microsoft. Starve them out
The problem with employees and employed is that the thing goes the other way around… unfortunately.
That’s right. Can’t trust the legacy of Bill “Epstein Island” Gates to be a good company.
Microsoft has always been a law firm in a full body silicon merkin.
