In a lively interview with the Wall Street Journal, Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer compliments Bill Gates' salesmanship and unintentionally reveals his preoccupation with the Xbox 360.
The WSJ conducted the interview in front of an audience at the publication's D: All Things Digital conference last week, where the Sony boss inadvertently revealed his own fixation with the videogames market.
When talking up the box office sales of Sony's Da Vinci Code movie, Stringer said, "It also beat Xbox 3 in Europe in its second weekend," at which point WSJ tech columnist Walt Mossberg corrected, "You mean X-Men 3." Laughing, Stringer retorted, "There's an obsession!"
When the interview's topic switched to videogames and Xbox, Stringer said, "God I walked into that, didn't I ... Look, the skill of Bill Gates is he's so brilliant at his detail that when he slips in the salesmanship, most of us think: oh my God, he must be right. ... He talked on the one hand, and I loved it, he talked about [Windows] Vista [being] delayed as if the delay was normal, and then he started mocking me for delaying PS3 [PlayStation 3]."
This could be fun as they make great tables. Go big or go extinct. Prime your senses for a neural handshake and step into the cockpit of a Jaeger. It is on you to cancel the apocalypse when Pacific Rim Pinball comes to Pinball FX on May 16.
Microsoft just posted the third quarter of its 2024 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $61.9 billion in revenue and a net income of $21.9 billion during Q3. Revenue is up 17 percent, and net income has increased by 20 percent.
Xbox content + services up 62% while hardware down 31%... seems about right with the way they tout you don't need the hardware to play. People can play on their phones or smart tv or other means. I don't hardly play on my consoles directly since getting devices like the logitech g-cloud and ps portal. Which is to also say I have been playing more digital than physical because of these devices.
Too expensive hardware when others offer the same or more for less? Good work, Green Team.
"Despite some early successes for Xbox games on rival platforms, Xbox hardware is down by a massive 31 percent this quarter."
"Without Activision Blizzard, Microsoft’s overall gaming revenue would have actually declined this quarter."
"Xbox content and services would have only been up a single percent without Activision Blizzard..."
"It looks like next quarter is going to be a similar story for gaming at Microsoft, too."
That is crazy... so A/B/K is carrying the whole Xbox gaming.
Oh and Microsoft will be fine. Windows, Office and Cloud are growing with each pc purchase.
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
They buy IPs not talent. That's why these buyouts never work and the IPs die. Right now it's too expensive to develop games - but I expect that to shift maybe as AI tools can make it easier. The best games have been indie games for awhile as big developers fuck their ips to death with "games as a service" -
HAHA that was funny. :)
What, I knew it Sony employees all own a xbox 360
At least he's cordial.
The problem I have is that the strengths of the PS3 he's referring to are what I feel are it's weaknesses. Saying it will be the center of my living room entertainment center, it has more features than a 747...I want a gaming system.
Gates loved that the ps3 was delayed for two reasons...it gave the 360 no competition for another 8 months, and there was no reason for it other than the blu-ray drive.
As for the Vista delay...does anyone actually care about Vista anyway? It comes out when it comes out.
Correction!! we have the ps2 ,which still rocks despite it`s age