Business Approach Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox

[dagamer]

Ballmer should have been fired a long time ago. He just sits in his high throne and is completely oblivious to what happens down below... I can't think of much he has done to help MS break into markets while he has been the top dog, and he has been the top dog at MS for a very, very long time. And unhealthy amount of time I might say...

If you want to fire Ballmer for being incompetent, you'd need to fire most CEOs for being incompetent and losing tons of money. Have you noticed that MS stock is near a 10-year high? Or the record profits they are bringing in each quarter, or the numerous number of new businesses generating $1+ billion revenue in the last few years like Sharepoint and Office 365? No? Because you seem not to know what investors care about. Little hint: they do NOT care about your feelings.

The Interactive Entertainment Business division makes up 3% of Microsoft's revenue. Perhaps he pays attention to things that actually make him money hand over first. And for those who want to say Windows 8 sucks, they generated more revenue in Q1 2013 than they did in Q1 2012.

This is a business. NEVER forget that.

 

[bkilian]

The Interactive Entertainment Business division makes up 3% of Microsoft's revenue. Perhaps he pays attention to things that actually make him money hand over first. And for those who want to say Windows 8 sucks, they generated more revenue in Q1 2013 than they did in Q1 2012.

This is a business. NEVER forget that.

Um, Q1 2013, if you're talking microsoft's fiscal year, was July through September 2012, before Windows 8 shipped. Unless you mean CY Q1 2013, which MS refers to as Q3?

 

[dagamer]

Um, Q1 2013, if you're talking microsoft's fiscal year, was July through September 2012, before Windows 8 shipped. Unless you mean CY Q1 2013, which MS refers to as Q3?

Yeah... It gets tricky when company quarters aren't the same as calendar ones.

 

[rockaman]

The Interactive Entertainment Business division makes up 3% of Microsoft's revenue. Perhaps he pays attention to things that actually make him money hand over first. And for those who want to say Windows 8 sucks, they generated more revenue in Q1 2013 than they did in Q1 2012.

This is a business. NEVER forget that.

By ten year high... you mean the same level as ten years ago? Lol.

The only thing I would say against that is... MS could be doing even better. And it's kind of sad that a company with so much capital is not breaking into new markets.

Investors like MS because of their dividends, not because their stock price goes up. They aren't a 'buy,' but they should be.

MS could do much better. In fact, they *should* be doing much better.

The only comparable companies to MS, which are basically just Google and Apple as far as the tech sector goes, have left them in the dust by innovating in new markets. MS has failed to capitalize where they could be doing so.

With Ballmer, MS is not reaching it's potential. Investors are happy with the status quo with them, because it provides great dividends, not necessarily anything else. Their stock is liquid, but it doesn't go up in value ever (re: their investors could be happier). MS is prototypical blue chip company, a great status, but they could be even better with new leadership.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Both MS and Sony have struggled in their markets. Maybe there's a correlation between less-than-the-best companies and an interest in the console space?

 

[dagamer]

By ten year high... you mean the same level as ten years ago? Lol.

The only thing I would say against that is... MS could be doing even better. And it's kind of sad that a company with so much capital is not breaking into new markets.

Investors like MS because of their dividends, not because their stock price goes up. They aren't a 'buy,' but they should be.

MS could do much better. In fact, they *should* be doing much better.

The only comparable companies to MS, which are basically just Google and Apple, have left them in the dust by innovating in new markets. MS has failed to capitalize where they could be doing so.

With Ballmer, MS is not reaching it's potential. Investors are happy with the status quo with them, because it provides great dividends, not necessarily anything else. Their stock value is liquid, but it doesn't go up in value ever (re: their investors could be happier).

I think normal people want consumer space innovation when people really need to admit that Microsoft is an enterprise company that just happens to make its OS available to normal people. When you look at where revenues come from, it's hardly from consumer products unlike Apple. Nor are most of their products consumer facing like Google.

Most attempts to actually push into the consumer space besides Xbox have failed. And I think up until the Xbox One fiasco, many wouldn't have associated Xbox with Microsoft at all.

I'm not saying that Microsoft totally missed the ball on some things, but the standard to actually get Ballmer fired is pretty high. Besides, he's already practically announced when he's going to leave anyway (when his youngest child goes to college in a few years) so it's a waste of time to fight over it now. It just makes your company look disorganized, rather than a smooth transition to a new CEO.

 

[rockaman]

^That's a good point too, they are mostly business oriented in reality. I just wonder when MS will be expanding a bit more into the consumer sector and really mean it...

I think it's getting more and more important for companies which have a presence in the consumer sector to be more adamant about having a positive public image, with products and services. There's a lot of money to be made in consumer products even for a huge company as Apple has shown.

I thought (and was hoping) MS would be more aggressive in the tablet market mainly... people really love their iPads. I was hoping MS would try to really dig deep and put out a cutting edge tablet OS.

 

[blakjedi]

^That's a good point too, they are mostly business oriented in reality. I just wonder when MS will be expanding a bit more into the consumer sector and really mean it...

I think it's getting more and more important for companies which have a presence in the consumer sector to be more adamant about having a positive public image, with products and services. There's a lot of money to be made in consumer products even for a huge company as Apple has shown.

I thought (and was hoping) MS would be more aggressive in the tablet market mainly... people really love their iPads. I was hoping MS would try to really dig deep and put out a cutting edge tablet OS.

I think MS is very serious about the consumer space and the cloud is a both a metaphor and a prime driver of that commitment. Again multiple new billion dollar businesses in the last six months all with a potential consumer face including azure and office 365. Reorganizing all of their software platforms around the WinRT API and the winnt kernel.

People want this immediate overtake of an industry but things don't happen that way when there are already entrenched actors in that space. Google hasn't unified their phone and tablet yet and don't have a desktop. Apple hasn't unified with the desktop and may never. MS will achieve this both in UI and underlying OS first and maybe only... Across phone, tablet, desktop, server, Xbox...which in terms of engineering is a hell of a feat. I think they are damn serious because they have spent billions on r and d, sales, store buld, unification, revisions, and advertising...

 

[jonabbey]

Arg, people continue to have this silly idea that "if I pay for something (aka Xbox Live), I should get no ads" when that isn't true at all in any other media: cable TV, theaters, DVD/Blu-ray discs, etc..

It is true with Netflix, though, and for those who rip DVDs to HD.

 

[wco81]

and apps including games.

 

[liolio]

Sorry but how MSFT environment more consistent than Google or Apple? Because you think Windows 8 is consistent?
I don't get the google has not yet unified the phone and tablets? I don't get what you mean at all...
As for the cloud, Google Docs has been here for a while, quite a while before MSFT got here, and so on.

Google has ChromeOS but I wonder if (if not when) they are going to dump it, and just deploy Android everywhere.

 

[blakjedi]

Xbox One Dashboard Created “With Advertising In Mind”



it's all about personalized ads and they let you pay for it.

Your quoted passage has nothing to do with advertising.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Google is not going to unify tablets and phones until all the old 2.3.3 phones are replaced with Android 4 phones. In Android development, this is on of the biggest frustrations. Android introduce new OS revisions with new developer-friendly features, but you can access them as a developer without either alienating half the userbase, or writing multiple code-streams to target different OSes. iOS to date has be rolled out to every iPad user, so you could target later OS revisions. Windows phone from this point on is the same as the tablet OS, and the PC app space, but we'll have to see if Windows hardware gets full OS update support or not.

 

[blakjedi]

Sorry but how MSFT environment more consistent than Google or Apple? Because you think Windows 8 is consistent?
I don't get the google has not yet unified the phone and tablets? I don't get what you mean at all...
As for the cloud, Google Docs has been here for a while, quite a while before MSFT got here, and so on.

Google has ChromeOS but I wonder if (if not when) they are going to dump it, and just deploy Android everywhere.

Google drive is like SkyDrive which also backends their application and email and photo storage. Yes I'm talking windows 8 .

 

[Nisaaru]

Your quoted passage has nothing to do with advertising.

How about reading the link to get the full context?

 

[liolio]

As a side note, the fact that plenty of phones don't receive the upgrade to newer version of Android has nothing to do with Google and everything to do with the phones vendors and network operators not giving a F
Mine is stuck at 2.3... There is an European version of that phone (really minor difference) that got Android 4.0. I guess it sold better in Europe.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

How about reading the link to get the full context?

Standard netiquette, or even plain sensible communication, means you quote a part of the text supporting your content rather than completely tangential to it.

eg.

An Xbox employee has commented as to how the architecture of the Xbox One dashboard has been created “with advertising in mind”. The team also gave us an exclusive insight into what the future of advertising on the Xbox One will and could look like using Kinect, Smartglass and personalised information.

 

[tuna]

I am to lazy to quote, but I think basically all of MS' profits come from the corporate sector. If they quit all their consumer pushes they could make a lot more money I believe...

 

[rockaman]

A lot more money, or the same amount of money they are making now basically?

It just seems weird that many people are very aggressive to promote MS' consumer contributions, but in the same breath admit that it's so small as to be meaningless...

If the charge is MS doesn't make money from gaming at all, the only reason they could be in the industry is to maintain a moderate level of attention on the Microsoft brand and ecosystem, so people will remember it when they buy their enterprise products lol.

Anyway, couldn't they make more money by having a successful enterprise and successful consumer electronics division? Why does each need to be so mutually exclusive... lol. Why would Sony be making medical grade cameras if it wasn't "worth it?"

There needs to be a point in investing all this money is all I'm saying. If it's just to "be present" at the table... I'd say hopefully a better effort could be made...

MS has made it known their goals with Xbox have been to make money, and they succeeded doing that with Xbox 360. I'm just very disappointed in their Surface and WP attempts... MS should be able to bring a lot more bread in this area.

 

[BoardBonobo]

A lot more money, or the same amount of money they are making now basically?

It just seems weird that many people are very aggressive to promote MS' consumer contributions, but in the same breath admit that it's so small as to be meaningless...

If the charge is MS doesn't make money from gaming at all, the only reason they could be in the industry is to maintain a moderate level of attention on the Microsoft brand and ecosystem, so people will remember it when they buy their enterprise products lol.

Anyway, couldn't they make more money by having a successful enterprise and successful consumer electronics division? Why does each need to be so mutually exclusive... lol. Why would Sony be making medical grade cameras if it wasn't "worth it?"

There needs to be a point in investing all this money is all I'm saying. If it's just to "be present" at the table... I'd say hopefully a better effort could be made...

MS has made it known their goals with Xbox have been to make money, and they succeeded doing that witthh Xbox 360. I'm just very disappointed in their Surface and WP attempts... MS should be able to bring a lot more bread in this area.

Or, as some pundits have announced, they realise that that the business model for corporate engagement is slowly and softly crumbling under a blanket of saturation coupled with diversification and that they are slowly becoming less of a player and more of a spectator to their own success.

And they understand that the only way to remain relevant is to diversify into a market that still has room for expansion and to which there is little real competition. They started off really well and that, along with mistakes from Sony, gave them the lead with the 360. But they seem to have fallen back into looking at the consumer market the same way they do the corporate market where they were the big fish for decades, and they have started to try and treat the console market the same way. The end result being the fiasco that is the XB1 - not the hardware - but the ecosystem built around it.