MS buys vivendi games division?

[BenSkywalker]

Tahir-

And just cos Packard Bell is not thought of highly in the US doesnt mean shit either. We are talking sales figues not what you percieve. I think Packard Bell are shit too but they also sell shitloads of PC's here in the UK.

App shipping w/PC != app being used. Considering you can acquire OO for free, sales isn't particularly relevant to this discussion(in terms of Office v OO). What matters is what people use. I brought up PackardBell being thought of so highly in the US to allude to how much faith I place in their decission making.

More will follow PB's and other OEM's lead in Europe at the very least and ditch MS Office/MS Works in the future... sign of the times mate.. it's called competition or dont you believe in that when it comes to the all conquering MS?

And I could put a group of a dozen homeless bums together and have them play against a World Cup football team and call that competition, it would be nearly as valid.

Faf-

Oh come on... "IBM consumer product" is a contradiction of terms.

Huh? IBM has been running ad blitzes non stop for pretty much two years touting their consumer machines here in the US, their consumer PC ads are some of the most common in print publications and they have one of the highest levels of consumer sales in the US(trailing only Dell and Compaq/HP last numbers I saw). IBM is one of the largest makers of consumer PC products in the US, why is it a contradiction in terms?

V3-

But if you grew up with Microsoft, you would be screw to switch.

Actually, I grew up with Corel.

 

[V3]

Actually, I grew up with Corel.

In that case, you probably be glad with MS

 

[Magnum PI]

Magnum-

only the most rabid lovers bill gates won't recognize that a fully usable, complete and *free* office suite isn't a worthy alternative to MS office.

Thinking of the prospect of providing for my family using Open Office doesn't inspire me with confidence, quite the contrary.

what are you afraid of ? that their computer would melt ?

I'm assuming you think I haven't used the product? It isn't close to the level of Office yet, not by a long shot. I built a rig for my Mom in '02 and she didn't want to spend the money on Office so I told her I could get her OpenOffice for pretty much free(picked it up in an OEM bundle soft pack off of NewEgg) so she decided to give it a try. She spent one week with it before changing her mind and deciding that Office for $500 was a much better deal then OpenOffice for free.

i guess she's from the 5% openoffice couldn't satisfy... which version did she use ? i'm surprised of openoffice being distributed in an OEM bundle soft pack..

i mean it may not have every fonctionnality, but it does have enough for 95% of users... it may even be slower.. but it's free !

It has a lousy interface, is very slow, lacks the integration and is simply more of a pain in the ass to use then Office.

are you using it on a pentium 100 with 16 MB or RAM ?
or are you so fast that you are too fast for openoffice ?

have you used it ?

on a duron 600 its speed is at least decent, on my athlon xp 1500 it's fast..

and it's FREE. it means you don't have to pay for it. and with the money you didn't spend on office you can make you computer faster...

and i find the interface good enough for me. i have NO problem with it.
what is bothering you so much ? the lack of talking paperclip ?

i used staroffice as my only office suite for years, now i use openoffice 1.01.. and some office users i know are amazed at what you can do with the drawing application..

I use Corel Draw for imaging purposes. I know that Photoshop is the superior application so I don't ever try to argue otherwise. The reason? My finances do not depend on how well Draw works. It's cheaper then PS, and it does what I need it to for my personal use. Those that rely on their imaging apps output for their careers are not going to care that a casual non professional consumer can get by with Draw, just as a person who relies on Office to pay the bills isn't going to care that a non professional end consumer who could get by with Works thinks that OpenOffice is good enough.

photoshop ?

i didn't mean an application to modify photography etc.. but rather a vertorized drawing application to manipulate vectors, boxes, circles, beziers.. the drawing application from staroffice do it rather well. (i guess you wil answer that it wouldn't satisfy the needs from architects blablabla...)

for my imaging needs i use gimp.. under linux and windows (the windows port is now stable and fast).. and so does our graphist/webmaster..

Tahir-

Right so why are companies like Medion and even Packard Bell moving away from MS Works/MS Office and going for Star Office?

PackardBell is synonomous with shit in the US, the reason they failed and had to exit the market here. Who the hell is Medion?[/quote]

and i guess sony has became shit now they dumped microsoft for staroffice..

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-976239.html?tag=fd_top

Tag-

Right next to them I saw StarOffice (by SUN Microsystems, and I like SUN) for... $39.95.

Which one do you think I bought and use today to do school work?

Given what you are using it for, I would never have reccomended Office. Works is plenty to handle what you are going to be doing(and can be had for a comparable price, at least compared to OpenOffice). For basic utilization OpenOffice can work fine for people, it's when you start needing to utilize ever Office application in conjunction to post internal reports to the company web site and such that the real limitations of OpenOffice start to show up(the level of integration and amout of features missing starts to become very apparent).[/quote]

man are you reading our posts ? i said that openoffice functionnality is sufficient for 95 % of users... how many people do you think will post internal reports the company web site ? and i suspect that openoffice would do that rather well as you can easily print to pdf using free apps under linux.

i use exclusively openoffice at home and at work, and i use it to send reports to my colleagues, direction, clients.. no problems so far..

and i think school work often requires a lot from an office application, more than the casual consumer would do at home...

 

[BenSkywalker]

Magnum-

what are you afraid of ? that their computer would melt ?

Decline in productivity(how long it takes to complete a certain task).

i guess she's from the 5% openoffice couldn't satisfy... which version did she use ? i'm surprised of openoffice being distributed in an OEM bundle soft pack..

5%..... As far as the OEM pack http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProdu...ory=1411&DEPA=1&sortby=14&order=1

are you using it on a pentium 100 with 16 MB or RAM ?
or are you so fast that you are too fast for openoffice ?

Take a spreadsheet, convert it into a chart, add in some text and convert it over to html. In Office this is a ten-fifteen second operation.

have you used it ?

Yes, it's UI is extremely clunky. The whole navigate like its a Mac file system idea was piss poor back in '84, forget today.

it means you don't have to pay for it. and with the money you didn't spend on office you can make you computer faster...

Doesn't change the lousy level of integration which slows things down significantly.

what is bothering you so much ?

Lack of features, lack of automation, lack of integration.

i didn't mean an application to modify photography etc.. but rather a vertorized drawing application to manipulate vectors, boxes, circles, beziers.. the drawing application from staroffice do it rather well. (i guess you wil answer that it wouldn't satisfy the needs from architects blablabla...)

Ok, you've never used Photoshop or Draw(very obvious). Freehand drawing is one of the 'little' features that PS and Draw have in them, and both of them are much better then the included imaging app included in OO. Hell, some people are happy with the shit that PaintShopPro spits out, if it works for you then that's great. 'Freehand' art is actually one of the major functions of both applications, editing photos is but one area that they handle.

and i guess sony has became shit now they dumped microsoft for staroffice..

For PCs? You can't be trying to compare them to Dell or IBM.

man are you reading our posts ? i said that openoffice functionnality is sufficient for 95 % of users... how many people do you think will post internal reports the company web site ?

You are talking about end consumers who don't work at home, something that Works targets, not Office. For people that post reports to company websites, there are a few hundred in my company alone. The company my mother works for almost everyone in the company uses Office to post things to their intranet(she works for an insurance company).

i use exclusively openoffice at home and at work, and i use it to send reports to my colleagues, direction, clients.. no problems so far..

I could send a report using Paint and Notepad, it is a matter of productivity.

and i think school work often requires a lot from an office application,

Then you sound like someone who would be happy with OO. School work isn't comparable in any way shape or form to a businesses productivity. Take that five months you spent on your senior thesis and cut it down to four days. That is the big difference between a situation where a quaint application will cover things and where it won't. School v business isn't even close, end results are all that matter for school. In the business world you have to be perfect and fast.

more than the casual consumer would do at home...

And that is the realm of Works, not Office. Office at home is for people who need to take work home with them. Works is for those that are looking for typical home type productivity applications. Building a macro in Excel to calculate out your bills isn't something that is common, that is why they have apps like Money to make things simple for the end consumer. Money, Quicken and the like dominate the home market, Office the corporate one. Those that need the features of both(one for work and one for home) use both. Office dominates because of businesses, even if you could get end consumers to swap over it wouldn't change the big picture.

 

[Magnum PI]

are you using it on a pentium 100 with 16 MB or RAM ?
or are you so fast that you are too fast for openoffice ?

Take a spreadsheet, convert it into a chart, add in some text and convert it over to html. In Office this is a ten-fifteen second operation.

no way !
i would never use office to generate HTML documents...

anyway i can do that in openoffice except i would save in a PDF. and it's fast: i don't see how ms office could it make faster.

Ok, you've never used Photoshop or Draw(very obvious). Freehand drawing is one of the 'little' features that PS and Draw have in them, and both of them are much better then the included imaging app included in OO. Hell, some people are happy with the shit that PaintShopPro spits out, if it works for you then that's great. 'Freehand' art is actually one of the major functions of both applications, editing photos is but one area that they handle.

i guess there is a little misunderstanding..
we are comparing two office suites here, isn't it ?

i wouldn't use an office suite to do serious image editing...

in fact what i was opposing wasn't freehand vs not freehand but manipulation of vectorized graphics and manipulation of bitmap graphics.

the drawing application i use in openoffice is made for creating figures made from vectors, no to edit photography or to create bitmap graphics.

i would definitely NOT use photoshop to do the kind of thing i do with openoffice draw, and vice versa.

i use gimp for the bitmap image edition/creation (it does everything photoshop would do for me and it's free), and i use openoffice draw to create vectorized graphics. and you can do freehand drawing on oppenoffice draw (it converts it to bezier curves).

it makes no sense to compare photoshop and draw, as they are totally different apps.. it's like comparing a sound editor and a textwriter..

you could eventually compare gimp and photoshop.

and why do you mention paintshop pro ?

i use exclusively openoffice at home and at work, and i use it to send reports to my colleagues, direction, clients.. no problems so far..

I could send a report using Paint and Notepad, it is a matter of productivity.

and i am as productive with openoffice as i was with MS office (i migrated from MS office to openoffice).

i guess i'm not using it the same manner you do... some technical reports, memos, formation material.. all in all i'm not an office poweruser.

 

[Guest]

January 30, 2003
Electronic Arts Posts 89% Earnings Increase
By MATT RICHTEL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/b...nt&position=top

AN FRANCISCO, Jan. 29 — Buoyed by games like Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Madden N.F.L. 2003, Electronic Arts today reported earnings that far exceeded Wall Street's expectations, showing continued dominance in the video game industry.

Electronic Arts said that in its third quarter, which ended in December, 11 of its games sold more than a million copies each, a remarkable result in a business where any game that sells more than 750,000 copies is considered a major hit.

Electronic Arts posted revenue of $1.23 billion for the quarter, compared with the $1.13 billion average estimate of Wall Street analysts. The company reported net earnings of $250 million, an 89 percent increase over the year-earlier period. Earnings per share were $1.69, compared with analysts' estimate of $1.57.

But the positive news was tempered by the lower-than-expected performance of the Sims Online, an online cyberworld that Electronic Arts brought out last month. Industry analysts and Electronic Arts pinned big hopes on the game as a growth market and a bellwether of consumer acceptance of online game playing in general.

The game has attracted 82,000 registered players, who pay $9.95 a month, which is "behind where we thought we'd be," said Warren C. Jenson, the company's chief financial and administrative officer. He did not say what the company's expectations had been.

Suggesting that the company has growth plans beyond the Sims, Electronic Arts also announced today that it had filed with the Securities Exchange Commission for a universal shelf registration — a regulatory requirement when a company intends to take out a line of credit, and that is generally intended to pave the way for a company to borrow to make acquisitions. Electronic Arts said it intended to borrow $2 billion.

The sizable amount of the line of credit suggests that Electronic Arts may be seeking to buy a major competitor, like the game unit of Sega or Vivendi Universal Games, said Edward Williams, an analyst with Gerard Klauer Mattison.

Industry analysts have speculated that Electronic Arts is competing with Microsoft to acquire Vivendi's game unit. Jeff Brown, a spokesman for Electronic Arts, declined to comment on that speculation.

"I think they want a piece of Vivendi; I think they want Blizzard," said Mr. Williams, the analyst. Blizzard Entertainment is part of Vivendi Universal Games.

The company had a huge quarter, bolstered by holiday sales, said Shawn Milne, an analyst with the Soundview Technology Corporation. "They blew away the numbers."

The company's profit margins hit 55 percent, compared with 52 percent in the quarter last year.

The success is not a surprise in at least one respect. The video game industry is heavily cyclical, with growth when new video game platforms are released. The market is flush with new platforms, like the Sony PlayStation 2, the Nintendo GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox, paving the way for big sales.

Electronic Arts closed at $50.97 in regular trading before its earnings announcement, up 20 cents. It fell as low as $48.87 in after-hours trading.

EA buys Sega = IRONIC!
EA buys Blizzard = ultimate crapola!
MS with Blizzard will be better for all.

 

[Gollum]

Oh PLEASE, not EA! I don't want no stinkin' Warcraft 2004 with enhanced commentatry and crowd voices damnit! Would anybody BUT EA please buy out Vivendi's game division FAST already?!?!?!?!!!!

 

[Gollum]

What did I just talk about a few posts up? Well news is in that Westwood Studios as we know it will also close shop this week! A few employees will be transfered to EA L.A., the majority will simply be laid off. Maybe its for the best, ever since they were bought up by EA their games got worse with every released sequel or spin-off, still sucks though even if its just for nostalgia...

I will take any bet that the exact same thing is going to happen in less than 2-3 years should EA gets their hands on Blizzard, Valve etc.! It has happened with just about every big name developer they bought! And if they're not gone then they're damned to pump out endless sequels until even the most loved franchise is milked to the last penny and the last grain of innovation is down the drain! I never thought I would say something as emotional as this about a company in this biz, but I really, truly hate EA from the depths of my heart for this kind of crap!

edit: typo

 

[Colourless]

*WARNING BAD JOKE AHEAD*

What? Are you saying that Valve might be 'forced' to release Half-Life 2.... this is a bad thing?????

EA is quite possibly the worst company to buy out Vivendi's game division. It is no understatement to call EA the Destroyer of Developers.

 

[cybamerc]

BenSkywalker:

> Ok, you've never used Photoshop or Draw(very obvious).

One could claim the same about you since you compare them. Photoshop is a bitmap editor while Draw is a vector drawing application. Adobe's equivalent to Draw is Illustrator and Corel's equivalent to Photoshop is PhotoPaint. They're totally different apps for totally different purposes and, to some extent, markets.

 

[Vince]

Yes, EA is teh destroyer of worlds.

EA's moving of it's assets is just logical. Why should they all stay completely seperate entities when it's cheaper and more productive to have them closely linked?

Ohh, yeah Nostalgia - and we can't forget the "EA pumps out CFCs and is responcible for the ozone hole" or the "I'm a love child between the evil relationship of EA and my mother, that asshole abandon my mom and I on the street"


Watch in a year as EA presents a new RTS developed by the team that brought you "C&C" - but by then no-one gives a shit because they can bitch at EA in countless other ways.

I hope EA gets Vivendi.

 

[Qroach]

If you've known any body that has worked for EA before, they'd give you the inside scoop on why they are somewhat disliked from a differnt point of view. They pay well, but that's it.

Also, EA is now closing both Westwood studios and trying to move everyone to cali. I'd much rather see vivendi sell off to MS just because EA desn't always do a good thing to these companies. All I can think of are the AOL+EA.com fiasco. What a mess and bunch of BS that was...

 

[Vince]

If you've known any body that has worked for EA before, they'd give you the inside scoop on why they are somewhat disliked from a differnt point of view. They pay well, but that's it.

I'm not talking about that Q, more or less the ability of the common obsessive compulsive 'net geek to have this deep hatred of EA, "Just because" or because of Sega's fall and continued problems, etc.

 

[Geeforcer]

BullFrog
Origin
Janes
Westwood

What do they have in common?

 

[BenSkywalker]

Magnum-

no way !
i would never use office to generate HTML documents...

Why not?

anyway i can do that in openoffice except i would save in a PDF. and it's fast: i don't see how ms office could it make faster.

And how would you be able to cross reference the images stored in the document that someone else did to show relationary numbers when you turn it into a pdf? Send them over an email, wait for their reply with attachement(if your company has lose email security precautions) then open the file then place it in another pdf? Sure sounds a lot faster then right clicking- copy and then paste doesn't it?

the drawing application i use in openoffice is made for creating figures made from vectors, no to edit photography or to create bitmap graphics.

i would definitely NOT use photoshop to do the kind of thing i do with openoffice draw, and vice versa.

And you are under the impression that PS can't create vector based graphics, did you know PS can handle the creation of .css also? It does a hell of a lot more then editing bitmap images(a whole hell of a lot more).

and why do you mention paintshop pro ?

People's tollerance for low quality output and cumbersome operation.

Cybermac-

One could claim the same about you since you compare them. Photoshop is a bitmap editor while Draw is a vector drawing application. Adobe's equivalent to Draw is Illustrator and Corel's equivalent to Photoshop is PhotoPaint. They're totally different apps for totally different purposes and, to some extent, markets.

You look at an ad in a magazine to come up with that?

Draw ships with PhotoPaint, as long back as I can recall it always has(it used to come with RayDream also, although they called it Dream3D and had the wrong version number, and several other types of applications related to media creation and editing, if you'd like we can discuss some of the obscure one off apps that shipped with various versions of Draw ). I use Draw as a term for the suite of applications that Corel calls.... Draw.

Photoshop handles a lot more then photo editing, I actually don't know anyone who uses Photoshop with the primary purpose being photo editing. It can handle vector based images(along with a whole lot of other things) My original reason for bringing up PS/Draw in the first place was that I used Draw despite Adobe's offering being superior and compared that to OO being comparable for some people's tastes. Obviously Illustrator is better at handling vector based images then PS, and you could argue that Macromedia's Freehand is better then Illustrator, but trying to state that one application can't handle certain types of operations based on what the general populace thinks it is supposed to do is not something I tend to partake in.

Vince-

I hope EA gets Vivendi.

USA Today reported that Sony is trying to purchase Vivendi also. You sure you want EA to end up with them?

 

[Guest]

Source: [Bloomberg.com]

Vivendi Rejects Offer From Electronics Arts, Les Echos Says
By Jad Mouawad

Paris, Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Vivendi Universal SA, the world's second-largest media company, has rejected an all-stock offer for its games unit from Electronics Arts Inc., Les Echos newspaper said without citing anyone.

Paris-based Vivendi said last year it planned to sell its games business, which analysts value at about 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion), to pare debt. The French daily paper didn't say why Vivendi turned down the offer from the top U.S. gamemaker.

Microsoft Corp., which has been mentioned in press reports as a possible buyer for Vivendi Universal Games, isn't in talks with Vivendi, Les Echos said, citing Microsoft's Robert Bach, who heads the Xbox game console division.(right...........RARE anyone?)

So MS it IS!

 

[Magnum PI]

Magnum-

no way !
i would never use office to generate HTML documents...

Why not?

because of http://validator.w3.org

And how would you be able to cross reference the images stored in the document that someone else did to show relationary numbers when you turn it into a pdf? Send them over an email, wait for their reply with attachement(if your company has lose email security precautions) then open the file then place it in another pdf? Sure sounds a lot faster then right clicking- copy and then paste doesn't it?

let me remember you that the problem you submitted concerned publicating reports on an intranet.

if the parameters were different i would not use PDF and you would not use HTML..

a format like PDF is well suited for this.

And you are under the impression that PS can't create vector based graphics, did you know PS can handle the creation of .css also? It does a hell of a lot more then editing bitmap images(a whole hell of a lot more).

i didn't touch photoshop since 5.0, i didn't know you could manipulate vector graphics w/ recent versions.

anyway i'm confortable w/ openoffice draw and gimp so ...

my ultimate goal is not to use the best application on can buy but to use an application that suits my needs and that is preferably not expensive.

 

[Gollum]

Vince, you don't have to dig very deep in this industry to find loads of other reasons why EA is not considered the most likeable company around, but those are of no concern to this topic. I am not even going to comment on your uncalled for sarcasm as its totally out of place.

As a business, EA is extremely efficient and one of the few companies who have experienced continued growth and financial success over the last few years. Granted, that deserves some respect, but financial results don't tell the whole story. The problem I have with EA is that they don't seem to care about the people behind the games. They'd rather just buy into a brand name or popular franchise than risk coming up with new ones of their own. Or why is it that 9 out of 10 in-house productions are either sequels to popular franchises or otherwise big licenses. There's hardly ever a new original game in development at EA's in-house studios, there sure are exceptions but its extremely rare. Their aquired studios occasionally do come up with a good original title, but those get rarer and worse the longer a company has been with EA (Westwood being a good example). Its not just nostalgia for those once top-quality developers getting disbanded or "relocated" (if its just a relocation, why are so many people actually going to loose their job in this?) that makes people dislike EA. It's the shame that most of the brilliant people who originally created the games and brands EA has spent so much money on aquiring, felt forced to leave the company as they were ginven almost no creative headroom to explore and come up with actually NEW games anymore.

As for your oh so witty example of "a new RTS developed by the team that brought you "C&C"", sorry but . It was already stated that the new studio would continue developing games of the ever so popular C&C franchise, so much for a "new RTS". EA owns the rights for C&C and will continue using it Westwood or not. Statements like "from the team that brought you ..." also have little to no meaning if its the wrong part of the team that's being refered to, thus its degraded to marketing eye-wash (like those CRAP movies being advertised as [booming voice]"from the people who brought you The Matrix"[/booming voice], hell I wonder why those new movies are so extremely bad? Maybe its because those movies actually have nothing in common with The Matrix except for the guy putting his name on the paychecks?). And so the only argument from your post goes down the drain...

At least Sega's, Sony's, Nintendo's and even MS' developers come up with an original game every now and then, with EA such an occasion is extremely rare. That's why I'd rather have anyone BUT EA get their hands on some of the gems included in this deal...

 

[cybamerc]

BenSkywalker:

> You look at an ad in a magazine to come up with that?

I used Corel before switching to Adobe.

> I actually don't know anyone who uses Photoshop with the primary
> purpose being photo editing.

A whole lot more than ppl who use it for drawing. Working with paths is considerably different than working with Illustrator's drawing tools. Sure you can get similar results if you spend enough time but noone working in a production house has time for that.

Besides, I'm not arguing that Photoshop isn't superior to PhotoPaint. My point about comparing Draw (be it the application or the suite) to Photoshop still stands.