The Big Bad Console Thread - Sway your Station with an Xboner !

Tuco_sl said:

IF that's true how would they get the Ps4s in the warehouse?

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Truck driver backs into unloading slot. Crew inside warehouse opens and unloads truck then closes door. Truck driver comes back later and picks truck up.

That's how HP did it when I worked there

Selix_sl said:

Truck driver backs into unloading slot. Crew inside warehouse opens and unloads truck then closes door. Truck driver comes back later and picks truck up.

That's how HP did it when I worked there

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edit - damn you broken .gif!

Soy is in love with that jiff.

Xalara_sl said:

Is it an official pic? Because if not, I am fairly sure that is not an Amazon warehouse. Namely because walking into one while keeping any sort of electronic/metallic objects on your person is pretty much impossible.

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The pic originated from the Amazon facebook page apparently

Joining Microsoft

Elop is set to join Microsoft after agreeing to sell Nokia's handset business to the software maker for $7.2 billion in September. He resigned as Nokia's CEO when the sale was announced, and said he would become head of a new Microsoft devices unit responsible for hardware such as the Surface tablet and Xbox game console.

Elop's assumption is that Microsoft could create more value by maximizing sales of Office rather than by using it to prop up sales of Windows-based devices, said two of the people with knowledge of his thinking. Market-research firm Gartner Inc. projects PC shipments will fall 11 percent this year.

Microsoft (MSFT)'s Windows division reported that revenue rose 4.6 percent to $19.2 billion in the latest fiscal year, which ended June 30. The unit that includes Office and other corporate software products saw sales rise 2.5 percent to $24.7 billion. Microsoft scrapped that reporting structure for the current fiscal year and now reports earnings based on devices and software for consumers as well as enterprises.

More Focus

Besides emphasizing Office, Elop would be prepared to sell or shut down major businesses to sharpen the company's focus, the people said. He would consider ending Microsoft's costly effort to take on Google with its Bing search engine, and would also consider selling healthy businesses such as the Xbox game console if he determined they weren't critical to the company's strategy, the people said.

Earlier this week, investors drove Microsoft shares to their highest price since mid-2000, after Nomura Holdings Inc. analyst Rick Sherlund said the sale of Bing and Xbox, along with other moves, could lift fiscal 2015 earnings by 40 percent.

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Microsoft CEO Candidate Elop Said to Mull Windows Shift - Bloomberg

Interesting.

If they sell the Xbox division, does the xbone lose access to the all powerful cloud?

Foggy_sl said:

If they sell the Xbox division, does the xbone lose access to the all powerful cloud?

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If they sell the Xbox division, I'm fairly sure that'll be the end of the Xbox.

The question is.... who buys the Xbox division?

Szlia_sl said:

The question is.... who buys the Xbox division?

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I don't think there are many (if any) potential buyers.

Samsung obviously aren't interested in consoles. They would have already released one if they saw potential in the console market. Likewise for LG, Lenovo, etc. I think these companies will be unveiling their own Steam Machines at CES, anyway.

Panasonic are hemorrhaging money; I don't think they could afford to buy or run Xbox at the moment.

Valve? They have Steam Machines.

Amazon is already developing their own low cost console.

Apple and Google clearly aren't interested. They already have ios and Android, and they're quickly taking over gaming anyway.

Maybe a media conglomerate like Disney? That's all I can think of.

Cor_sl said:

I don't think there are many (if any) potential buyers.

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Usually such large corporate purchases are done at the peak and when they want full marketshare.

Buying the xbox brand now would mean that a company would by a console that will most likely be the underdog of the current generation (they would have more luck having sold it at the peak of the 360 era before the announcement of the xbox one). A business that is apparently at a loss, with several competitors.

Only two options that I see it

1) Sony buys it for complete next gen market domination. It would be a "hostile" takeover, as in it would not continue as a line. It would be dismantled and the earnings from it would come from selling copyrights, patents, etc.

2) Another company buys it. Dismantles it, and sells/uses some of the patents.

Nr 2 is much more likely (and doubt Sony has the money for it) as the end result of an eventual sale will be the same. Xbox would no longer be a direct competitor. I don't think there is any buyer out there that would continue the brand as a next gen console. Valve might be a buyer for rights to various patents, etc, if they truly want to start going into the console market. That way they could adapt their steam box to allow xbox one development kits to work for it, making it far more likely that developers would create games for it instead of trying to convince them to use an entirely different software development kit.

An upgradable pc component "Steam Box One" running on linux with the ability to run occulus rift, kinect and developers could develop for it similar to the xbox one without the need for a different software kit.... that would kick Sony right in the nuts.

I would think that Samsung might actually throw in a bid for Xbox. They could run the next model with their Taizen OS. Yes, it would be different than the current system, but Samsung has pretty much unlimited capital to throw at a problem and make it better.
The only down side is they don't like sitting on hardware too long, especially in the mobile world. They have 4-6 "big" phone releases every year. They couldn't do that with a console.

Hmm...

Droigan_sl said:

Nr 2 is much more likely (and doubt Sony has the money for it) as the end result of an eventual sale will be the same. Xbox would no longer be a direct competitor. I don't think there is any buyer out there that would continue the brand as a next gen console. Valve might be a buyer for rights to various patents, etc, if they truly want to start going into the console market. That way they could adapt their steam box to allow xbox one development kits to work for it, making it far more likely that developers would create games for it instead of trying to convince them to use an entirely different software development kit.

An upgradable pc component "Steam Box One" running on linux with the ability to run occulus rift, kinect and developers could develop for it similar to the xbox one without the need for a different software kit.... that would kick Sony right in the nuts.

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Well, SteamOS will apparently run OpenGL, which is a pretty common development platform, as I understand it. OpenGL is also compatible with ARM hardware, which is going to be a lot more important in the future.

And as for the bolded part - I'm 99% sure that's what Steam Machines/SteamOS are, anyway.

Valve will be unveiling their hardware partners at CES, and I'm expecting Asus, Acer, MSI, Lenovo, LG, Samsung, etc. to be on that list. They've apparently been talking to publishers and developers about SteamOS for nearly three years, too, and I expect they'll have big names like Ubisoft and Activision on their side.

If that's the case (and I'm fairly sure it is), Valve won't need Xbox at all.

Xarpolis_sl said:

I would think that Samsung might actually throw in a bid for Xbox. They could run the next model with their Taizen OS. Yes, it would be different than the current system, but Samsung has pretty much unlimited capital to throw at a problem and make it better.
The only down side is they don't like sitting on hardware too long, especially in the mobile world. They have 4-6 "big" phone releases every year. They couldn't do that with a console.

Hmm...

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Yes they could. They could release bi-annual Steam Machines with some extra Samsung software bundled in. Think of Valve's own Steam Machines as Google's Nexus line - stock software with good hardware - while other companies will release their own Steam Machines with extra software bundled in.

Valve is copying Google's Android strategy. Build the software and let others handle the hardware. I can see it working.

I think it's much more likely that would just spin off the Xbox division, take on major investors like Goldman Sachs etc to try and determine what it might be worth and a couple years down the line do an IPO to sell off their shares. I can't see a lot of people lining up to buy Xbox, and it wouldn't make any sense to spin it off until the height of this console generation when they are posting the most profit, which in turn would give them the highest valuation with investors.

Szlia_sl said:

The question is.... who buys the Xbox division?

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It could depend if there are any patents involved. Amazon, Google or Samsung might buy into it if there are juicy patents for future lawsuits.

There's also the whole worldwide Xbox Live infrastructure. That's probably worth quite a lot to someone.

Utnayan_sl said:

This guy from Nokia is a backward thinker. If anyone thinks Microsoft will be riding the operating system sale/office sale for long, they are flat out, out of touch.

With Apple now giving away their OS and all updates for free with hardware purchases (This isn't without a ploy to drive hardware sales though. Introduce new software, slow down a system, sell another piece of hardware) and free fully functional and implemented office suites of their own, along with competition from google, those days of Microsoft charging boatloads of cash for their O/S"s are soon going to die. Steam O/S will also make a huge impact. If anything because it is yet another disrupter, and another choice, while Microosoft stagnates. If you cannot see yet, MS is slowly becoming the next Blackberry. Albeit a slow death because they are followers not completely 100% stagnant.

With that said, the Xbox division is fried.

Amazing how fast something can turn from one of the best consoles this generation, to seeing consumer backlash due to inept policies and horrible money grabbing/pay walls.

It's really good to see. This is what happens when people start voting with their wallets. If only I, and everyone here, could do the same with shitty games so the software gaming industry would follow suit. Hopefully indies drive that.

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Agreed. Elop's strategy will deliver short term gains at the expense of long term growth. I'm not a fan at all.

Agreed with you about software, too. Software is a lot easier to develop nowadays, and I can see the world's reliance on Microsoft diminishing in the future. Look at a company like '37 Signals'; tens (hundreds?) of thousands of customers and only a handful of employees. That wouldn't have been doable a decade ago.

RE: Consoles

Thing is, if you look purely at the number of consoles sold and the amount of software being sold and only that, then the console market seems very healthy. Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony shifted 240 million units last gen - great, right?

But none of the companies are making good money. Sony made money hand over fist with the PS1 and PS2, but threw it all away with the PS3. Microsoft never made any money, and Nintendo is on its way to losing all of its well earned Wii and NDS profits.

If we look at software, how many development houses have shut down during the past generation? It must be more than a hundred, at this point.

The console market seems poisonous, not healthy.

As a gamer, I'm not worried at all, though. I really do enjoy tablet/smartphone gaming, and I'm loving Steam. I think things are going to be just fine in the future.

The real question is how much does it cost Soygen?