Editorial: Microsoft continues to drop the Ball

No, it ain't but then again I ain't the one who is angry about Halo 2 being Vista exclusive. As I said, I just don't get what all the "OMG Vista exclusivity is teh suck" fuss is about if all of two games out of thousands are Vista exclusive. If anyone really, absolutely, positively must play these exact two games, I'd recommend to that person to go see a doctor. Or better yet, a shrink. Fast. Like yesterday. Because obsession ain't healthy...
 
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No, it ain't but then again I ain't the one who is angry about Halo 2 being Vista exclusive. As I said, I just don't get what all the "OMG Vista exclusivity is teh suck" fuss is about if all of two games out of thousands are Vista exclusive. If anyone really, absolutely, positively must play these exact two games, I'd recommend to that person to go see a doctor. Or better yet, a shrink. Fast. Like yesterday. Because obsession ain't healthy...

Hmmm, try as I may, I just couldn't find "OMG Vista exclusivity is teh suck"in any post in this thread, so I'm not quite sure what exactly you're talking about.


I don't feel that I "really, absolutely, positively must" play Halo 2, but I wouldn't mind playing it without have to spend an additional $100+ on an OS that I don't want. I just can't help feeling that Microsoft would have actually profitted more had they simply made it available for both OS's. What's even more annoying is the fact that they made virtually no improvements over the original game, which ran on DirectX 8, yet you somehow need DirectX 10 to play it.
 
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aries - whereas Gates may have step down from day to day operations its more likely because he doesn't want to hassle with a lot of work he doesn't like. Someone had to be able to fire Brian Valentine over the Vista debacle and take the company in the single direction its going right now.

Having watched the events happen with Big Blue in the '80s from my armchair I am well aware that IBM was the big dinosaur they were trying to catch. And they did. Basically, the antogonism against MS is the same that was against IBM. If you ready Steven Levy's old book on Hackers you can see how rotten IBM was on the inside even in the '60s.
Techies knew computers and money guys knew business. AS the industry grew there was a real need for guys that knew management. That's why Jobs brought in Scully and Sierra brought in whathisname etc. It still went on with CISCO. Gates and Allen are two of the few guys that had any business sense.

mike-I had forgotten that those PS3's come with Blu Rays and have been selling for less than the players do stand alone. That said, its surprising to learn that the 360 is selling at cost.

dhruiny - good point on the Wii. I've never actually played the games on the thing but if its anything like the those early arcade clones everyone made for consoles and then "hardcore games" started to be developed and really took off. Ones that took advantage of the time and patience players had. Wii is doing well now and the Sony MS wrote it off from the start. They impressed at E3 and their costs for development are half of their rivals. But again, I don't disagree with you. I would be surprised not to see triple A accidentally fall out of the word work. I'm not aware of any right now but I don't see why it couldn't happen. With half the costs could we see a major FPS or a realistic Sports show up? Or maybe an involved adventure or RPG? This is technology that is still superior to anything 5 or 6 years ago.

PJ - Well I was referring to XP's 64 and the problems of compatibility I've had with it. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions with claiming its not having 32 bit processing native to it like say SuSE did. However, I did have problems.
But your point about Vista's 64 bit operability is the one thing I was looking forward to. Vista being 64 bit compatible from the start is a very good thing IMO because we've started seeing already how reliable it is.

Also, I can't disagree with you about XP starting to show its age. Its interesting to notice in my research that PC Magazine ran an article claiming that there was a rebellion within MS's own ranks voer the delay to release it, they were calling for Steve Ballmer's head (it ended up being Brian Valentine, et al and I think Ballmer got shuffled). Much was also made about some claims that at least half of it should be rewritten from scratch back in Mar 2006. Nevertheless, the rumour was security issues

On the EU's finding against MS I've always thought this was bunk to begin with. We may be far removed from Mercantilism officially but Western gov'ts still operate squarely on those principals: to protect its own interest. After the Antitrust suit was semi-successful I felt the EU was looking simply to get some quick cash and to let their own media software developers benefit. Its the same reason France went after Apple's iTunes. Nevertheless, it fits the point of my article, that MS has stumbled over it.

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Two things I can remember about MS that I was going to add, and they are definite postives:

Sun-Jon Schwartz, CEO of Sun finally bows to the innevetible and partners with MS to release systems with Windows. This is less of a major coup for MS as a blow for the developer of Sparc servers and creator of Java. A few years ago Sun successfully kept MS from tinkering with Java to make it more Windows centric. Sun has taken a beating mainly as their flavour of Unix is getting passed over for Linux.

.NET-The framework, like many of MS's products, was initially criticized for typical bullying has taken off in recent years to become a defacto standard. Being a framework, it greatly improves coding times and their loading. .NET compatibility has still not been worked out by the open source community for Java so products developed with it are staying on Windows. As well C#, MS rival product to Sun's Java, has grown too.

Halo 3-Not released at the time of this article Halo 3 sold an estimated $170 million worth of Halo 3 and $300 million for the entire week. MS is making much of the fact this is the largest single media seller in entertainment history and in doing so has elevated the 360's reputation.
 
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