The Death of HD-DVD and Why Microsoft is Dying

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Bodhesatva said:

ZenfoldorVGI said:

Bodhesatva said:

Whew, just finished reading the entirety of that silliness. The easiest rebuttle is this one:

1) It's a blog. From a guy. Just some guy.

2) His description of his blog: "I’m Daniel Eran Dilger, and I write about technology, Apple, motorcycles and the place I call home: San Francisco"

Sooooo this is the analysis of some guy who happens to be an Apple fan, a notoriously rabid lot even by VGChartz standards. Not saying there isn't some valid information in there, just pointing out that this is clearly tilted analysis.

Perhaps, but I can't personally rebute a single line in it, and quite a lot of the stuff he did write is completely true, imo, such as the 360's position in the console race, and the failure of the Zune and Vista, as well as the overly complex and unneeded spin MS puts on every concievable piece of industry negativity that comes out, like January NPD.

Vista isn't a failure by economic standards. By image standards? Maybe, but that's all in the ether anyway. I personally have negative feelings about Vista but there is no real hard evidence to suggest it's a failure in business terms.

Most of what he's saying isn't refutable because it's vague. Take this, for example. "Microsoft’s monopoly power is dissolving, and its ability to create anti-competitive partnerships and exclusive alliances is also falling apart." Geez, I guess that might be true, but what proof do we have? I can give some evidence to the contrary: Microsoft profits are up up up, and they're making more money now than ever before.

He also had to correct himself about the Xbox/Xbox360 comparison, and used shipment data, not sold data, to compare the 360's second to its first year (the 360 actually seems to have sold more consoles to consumers, but shipped less because they stuffed the channel the Christmas prior). So when he does get specific, he's often explicitly wrong or at least misleading.

But there is one, big, major error here that I can point to specifically and say this is wrong: "The reality is that Microsoft is forced to falsify reports and color numbers because reality doesn’t support the illusion of Microsoft’s unquestionable market power."

Let me make this clear -- falsifying financial reports is a serious charge and has legal consequences for a publicly traded company. There is no indication that Microsoft has done any such thing, and he provides no evidence whatsoever. As for "coloring the numbers?" That's back to vagueries. Every company "colors their numbers." Every.single.one. It's like saying "Microsoft tries to beat out it's competition, even if they don't have a superior product."

 

A while back Business Week did an analysis on the cost to make Vista and estimated that just the payroll for the development was ~$10 billion.  The fact that they had to start from scratch part of the way through probably hurt them a bit but in no way is Vista anything but a complete and utter failure in terms of economics.  $10b to make an OS is retarded and its probably the most money spent on developing software by a factor of 10x or 20x.....seriously Vista is horrendous from an economic standpoint.

I will admit that its an estimate but I think even if they were off by 80% on the low side I would still be justified in saying Vista is an economic failure so it doesn't really matter....