Did Microsoft INtENTIONALLY want HD-DVD to fail?

[Reasonable]

Squilliam said:

Reasonable said:

Squilliam said:

Reasonable said:

While clearly not 'evil' backing a format you have no interest in just to try and mess up another format you have no interest in, because the second format is crucial for a competitor, is somewhat malicious.  Fair play in the nasty world of corporate competition, but clearly a lot closer to playing dirty than taking the high road and backing neither format until a winner emerged.

What about taking a hit of billions of dollars to ensure your format won? Dumping consoles onto the market at over a hundred dollars cheaper than they cost to manufacture? Noone is squeeky clean, especially not in the console business.

I'm not talking about Sony hence have no reason to mention them - other than the overly silly reason to seem 'fair' when I don't need to.

I'm refering to a comment on MS pointing out they were clearly far from squeakly clean in their actions in this specific case.  The generic mention of how this is standard in corportate business not only covers Sony but others.

I don't believe in the approach that says if I'm speaking about MS specifically I have to mention Sony too, or I have to mention Nintendo.

Sure Sony have played plenty of 'angles' too - I have never heard of a major business who has not.  However, when responding to a comment clearly saying MS had no ulterior motive I can respond without having to say that Sony have also made decisions with ulterior motives.

 

 

Corporate competition in general is nothing like the combined nastyness of technology companies. Console companies can be considered near the top of that scale because they will go as far as harming their own interests in order to harm other companies and promote their own agenda. The whole console business is insipid, and I don;t believe anyone should mention one specifically as malicious without mentioning the other two to get the point across and maintain that they are all malicious.

 

I work for Oracle.  Trust me, I know how malicious technology companies can get.

I take you point, but I'm just going to have to agree to disagree.

Specifically I disagree with the apologist approach that's crept into open discource (which might be an age thing) where you have to take care to try and caveat everything you say.  In my opinion it's an unecessary form of political correctness.  I'm not going to point out something about MS, then provide three examples of Sony and Nintendo each so people's knickers don't get in a twist.

Instead, I'm going to hold out for people being mature and being able to extrapolate and understand without needing everything on a silver plate.  Mind you, I saw in another thread someone appear to claim that being able to spell correctly was becoming mostly redundant - so maybe the truth is more and more people are going to need everything on a silver plate and qualified for them so they don't actually have to put in any effort themselves.  I hope they were just joking about the spelling, though.

But I'm going to be old fashioned and speak only to the topic without bring in a bunch of apologist examples that I don't need to.

So there!