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Forums - Microsoft - One of Microsoft's biggest product failures may not have been its fault

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OneKartVita said:
Teeqoz said:

 

They still printed money

 

They spent over a billion advertising it.  it may have printed money but did it print profit? 

 

Yup. A Billion is chump change compared to how much money they get from sales of Windows licences

To use the same link as Conina did:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Sales

Over 330 million Vista licences were sold, and I have a hard time believing hte average price for a Vista licence was 3 dollars



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That is completely taken out of context.

The interview states it wasn't Microsoft forcing Rare to become a casual studio making Kinect games.

Microsoft is commonly blamed for Rare's transformation into a so-called "casual" studio, but Price feels this is a step too far. "Phil Spencer taking the mantle of Xbox is one of the best things that could have happened for Rare," he comments. "Because he's always said to people at Rare [as general manager of Microsoft Studios], 'Do what you want to do and we'll back you,' and he's always stayed true to his word in that regard. It was people in Rare's management at the time who said: 'Well, Kinect is a great opportunity for the studio - go all in on it.' So when executives at Microsoft see that the management team are passionate about doing that, they back them. Microsoft to their credit did that, and perhaps the story online isn't quite reflective of the truth.

"Every company makes mistakes, and people forgive certain companies more than others. We all love Nintendo so much we can forgive them for whatever they do. We'll always forgive them, the day the next Zelda comes around. Everybody likes to create this narrative that Microsoft are evil, but that's not the case - they were very supportive. I guess there were a few people who have since left who thought: 'I wanted to be working on this game or my pet project, and I didn't get to.' And they've kind of painted a picture that it's all Microsoft's fault."

Nothing there says it was Rare asking for Kinect or telling MS to make Kinect mandatory. That was all MS.

Kinect 2.0's undoing would ultimately prove, however, to be Microsoft's vision for entertainment consumption across the board, rather than any particular issue with recognition. The device had become central to Microsoft's efforts to transform Xbox into an all-singing, all-dancing delivery vector for every kind of media, backed by a futuristic UI, with video games merely part of the package.


What kind of journalism is this.
Microsoft has moved on from Kinect and is pushing HoloLens, the augmented reality headset, as its next big thing in gaming.
It's not even meant for gaming. Gaming was used to get attention to HoloLens with a couple of misleading video. Even if it was meant for gaming, they would be making the exact same mistakes as with Kinect, overpromising. Which is what that Rise and Fall of Kinect article is all about.

Many of the activities ultimately supported by 2014's Kinect Sports Rivals were designed to show off the new sensor's capabilities. Jet-skiing was an advertisement for being able to play while seated; rock-climbing was added to show that Kinect could distinguish between open and closed hands. The new sensor was a formidable overhaul, with a wider field of view to offset the removal of the original's tilt motor, but there were still gaps between the rhetoric and the reality. Rare had intended to track trigger finger movements with target shooting in Rivals, for example - in practice, the precision wasn't quite there. "With the second one it maybe got to the level of promise of the first one, technically," says Sutherland. "But by then we were promising more."


If anything, MS sabotaged it themselves at an early stage by removing the processor from Kinect.

One of Microsoft's more significant decisions was to drop a built-in processor that would have handled skeletal mapping, obliging Kinect to draw on Xbox 360's CPU instead. This lowered the cost of production, but also ate into performance, torpedoing more aspirational motion-controlled projects such as Capcom and From Software's Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor years in advance.


Blame it on Rare LOL.



Teeqoz said:

Kinect was a collossal success though.... I thought this was a Zune thread

EDIT: Unless they mean Kinect being bundled with all XBOs, in which casem yes, it was a pretty big failure.

I also thought this was going to be a Zune thread, lol.

I wouldn't call Kinect a complete failure. Microsoft made a lot of oney on it, far more than they lost. The way I see it, they just too their money and ran.

As for thie revelation about Rare, yes they may have decided to do it but keep in mind that Rare is now managed by people who were hired by Microsoft. Had Rare still been an independent company under the Stampers' supervision, they may have tried a Kinect game, but they would have never had the entire company working on nothing but Kinect games. They would have had a developer who currently had nothing to work on do experiments in the testing department (a department which Microsoft closed down btw) and if they came up with something viable, one team would have been assigned to the game, whereas the other two or so teams would be working on something entirely different, non-Kinect related. It goes to show that even with a whole team of great people, incompetent management is enough to ruin everything.



Check out my art blog: http://jon-erich-art.blogspot.com

Teeqoz said:
OneKartVita said:

 

They spent over a billion advertising it.  it may have printed money but did it print profit? 

 

Yup. A Billion is chump change compared to how much money they get from sales of Windows licences

To use the same link as Conina did:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Sales

Over 330 million Vista licences were sold, and I have a hard time believing hte average price for a Vista licence was 3 dollars

 

What?! I asked did Kinect make a profit not Microsoft as a whole! 



OneKartVita said:
Teeqoz said:

 

Yup. A Billion is chump change compared to how much money they get from sales of Windows licences

To use the same link as Conina did:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Sales

Over 330 million Vista licences were sold, and I have a hard time believing hte average price for a Vista licence was 3 dollars

 

What?! I asked did Kinect make a profit not Microsoft as a whole! 

 

You quoted a post where I was talking about Windows Vista and Windows 8... How on earth am I then supposed to know that you're talking about Kinect?



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Teeqoz said:
OneKartVita said:

 

What?! I asked did Kinect make a profit not Microsoft as a whole! 

 

You quoted a post where I was talking about Windows Vista and Windows 8... How on earth am I then supposed to know that you're talking about Kinect?

 

Sorry I had a few drinks on me.  I meant t quote someone else.  Merry Christmas :)



Conina said:
Ruler said:
Teeqoz said:
betacon said:
tiffac said:

Microsoft does not fail. They only print money. Hmph!

What was Vista and windows 8 then?

They still printed money

Not really, MS gets so much money because of investors and maybe with server hosting. Their stocks are probably in a bubble as well

Bullshit. Microsoft sold over 300 million Vista licenses... how much do you think they needed to sell to break even?

"The internet-usage market share for Windows Vista after two years of availability, in January 2009, was 20.61%. This figure combined with World Internet Users and Population Stats yielded a user base of roughly 330 million,  which exceeded Microsoft's two-year post launch expectations by 130 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Sales

Additionally, their work on Vista was not in vain, since it was the solid base for the Windows 7 adjustments. Windows 7 was mainly a service pack for Vista with a fancy name, since the "Vista" name was burned.

The same goes for Windows 8 and 8.1... most of the improvements are carried over to the next Windows versions. Under the surface (no pun intended) of the polarizing Windows8-GUI was a very fast and very reliable OS.

so what its their existing bussiness allready but what else has MS done recentley which expanded their horizon? Xbox, Zune, Windows Phones they all turned not to be so hot. 





Shifting goal posts? You doubted that Vista and Windows 8 were profitable, we proof the opposite... and now it doesn't count because "it's their existing business already"?

And what has Sony done recently to expand their horizon, which turned out to be very profitable? The PS4 success doesn't count by your logic, since home consoles are their existing business already.

What has Nintendo done recently to expand their horizon, which turned out to be very profitable besides selling DLC-toys?



I though they would talk about X1 being a failure, but being consumer fault.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

Nope, not their fault. Lol.