Comment by colechristensen
5 hours ago
They want to be Apple. Apple sells hardware, services, and takes a huge cut being a software store.
Microsoft sells software. They turned office into a service but it's still software. Nobody really wants to use their store. Their hardware is a cute little side hustle.
Microsoft's strategy for turning into Apple is kneecapping their own software.
> Their hardware is a cute little side hustle.
Considering that at this point most Microsoft OEMs are failing, Microsoft should just start building a lot of consumer hardware.
Apple makes more money selling consumer hardware than the entire PC hardware market combined. I'm exaggerating, but only a little. This would have been unimaginable in 1999.
>Their hardware is a cute little side hustle.
It didn't have to be. The same toxic dynamics that compromised their software poisoned their hardware, but they had too many products, or eras of a product, that Just Worked(TM) for it to have been a fluke. Someone knew what they were doing. They were screwed over by competing interests.
Zune people loved their Zunes. Windows Phone 8 people loved their Nokias. I've seen Surface Pro 2s "boot" to the same session for half a decade (that is: put it to sleep, stick it in a drawer for a year, take it out, plug it in, turn it on, all of the same files and folders and apps are open; I've NEVER seen this happen with any other device, they always lose state after enough time unplugged). And it's crazy how badly the Courier/Surface Duo was botched, given the excitement for it. Even newer Surfaces are great for the first year, before all of the compromises and poor engineering decisions make themselves known.
Imagine if it had been managed by someone who actually cared about their users, instead of people who treated them like marks and rubes.
And that’s without mentioning XBox, a brand they built up to be pretty good over many years, and now they don’t seem to know what to do with.
They have a HW+SW+store ecosystem right there. Gently stagnating.
I got a Zune on clearance when they were shutting down the whole mess (a nice fugly brown one for 80% off).
Build quality was rock solid, UI felt premium, and it mostly just got out of my way/let me play tracks. They were great little media players, as good as or ahead of the equivalent iPod.
Hardware was really good out of MSFT at the time, although when mistakes were made (e.g. the RROD Xbox 360 debacle), the broader organization seemed allergic to making thing right.
> Nobody really wants to use their store. Their hardware is a cute little side hustle.
*XBox and Microsoft gaming's $23.5b revenue (~10% of MS's total) enter the chat*
You were saying something about not letting facts get in the way of a preferred narrative, I believe?
xbox is a catch-it-umbrella that includes all the studios bought, and game pass. The xbox hardware sales are beyond appalling[0], $220m a quarter, and it'd be below $1b yearly. That's revenue - the consoles have pretty terrible profit margin by design. (likely negative when it comes to xbox)
No need for snarky remarks.
[0]: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/111349/xbox-hardware-revenue-...