Bill Gates, Microsoft’s newly appointed “technical advisor,” has reignited the perennial debate about whether Microsoft should sell off its Xbox and Bing businesses. For years, analysts and investors have leaned on Microsoft to sell off the loss-making Xbox division. With new CEO Satya Nadella saying that the company should focus on its core markets, rumors that Stephen Elop (now Microsoft’s hardware chief) wanted to sell off the Xbox and Bing businesses, and now Gates’ comments that he would “absolutely” support the CEO if he chose to sell off Xbox, is a sell-off or spin-off imminent?
Personally, I think we are going to see a sell off; at least the XBOX division. Why?
Well, the XBOX One sales have been being killed by the Playstation 4. Now, I’m no fanboy of either Microsoft or Sony and I think they are both evil but Sony really kicked the XBOX One with their fourth rendition of the Playstation.
One of the major things that I think has killed the XBOX One is that it tried to be everything to everyone. Play movies, music, apps, surf the web, apps, play games. Note how I put “play games” last in the list, that wasn’t a mistake; it really was the last thing that Microsoft made the XBOX One capable of doing. The hardware inside the device is proof of that since the device can’t even play the games that are coming out decently. When you watch a high end game play at 1080p on the Playstation 4 yet the XBOX One’s rendition of the game only plays at 720p at half the frame rate, you have a big problem.
What Microsoft tried to do with the XBOX One was to make a set-top box, a living room entertainment machine if you will. Why? They wanted to go after the parts of the market that Google and Apple were going after. And just why did Microsoft want to do this? Well, we have only one person to blame for this… Steve “I want to f**king kill Google” Ballmer. If you want someone to blame for the XBOX One’s complete failure, you have no one else to look at but Steve Ballmer. He needs to be shown the door at Microsoft and told to go pound sand.
Last updated on Tuesday, May 6th, 2014 at 8:06 PM by trparky.