Asher, As An Anal Sex Expert, Do You Think Microsoft Was Just Penetrated Anally?

[Elok]

Does anybody think the no-used-games thing could hurt MS over the long term? It sounds great for them, in that nobody's getting the game without paying them for it. But each person/household has a certain budget for entertainment; if I can buy X new games for XBone or 2X used games for PS4 (or some other option), that makes the XBone a lot less attractive unless I have a LOT of cash to spare--so much that 2X is more games than I have time to play anyway. And, as a grumpy article on Cracked recently pointed out, no used games makes the XBone unaffordable for lower/lower middle class households.

[kentonio]

Lower/Lower middle class households aren't priced out the market, just a percentage of them. It's a hit, but not a critical one. Incidentally it's not MS who care most about used games, it's third party developers and publishers who get completely cut out of the profit equation with second hand games.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

It's still cutting off their nose to spite their face. There will be a decline in first-day and presales as people wait on all but the most hyped titles. I know a lot of people who only bought games at full price because they knew they could flip them to a friend later and get a good chunk of their money back. The people that were buying the used titles aren't going to just decide to pay full price on day one either, they were already willing to wait until somebody else played through it and resold it, they'll wait for an inevitable price drop that comes later.

The end effect will be that consumers are more cautious about taking risks with their purchases, and that's already a huge problem in the game industry that has led to sequel spam. Maybe the big distributors with high marketing budgets will do ok, but the smaller houses are going to suffer. I liked the line I saw from someone at Nintendo the other day: we don't worry about the second hand market because we make games that people don't want to sell. (The part he left out is that they made those games twenty years ago, but...)

[onodera]

Office 2013

http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2013/04/19/microsoft-shakes-off-pc-slump-as-office-and-servers-sales-swell/

SharePoint

Office 2013 is iteration, not innovation. What about the adoption rate of Office 365?

Sharepoint is 12 years old and I wish that abomination never gained traction. Hell, even Lotus Notes is better than Sharepoint.

[kentonio]

It's still cutting off their nose to spite their face. There will be a decline in first-day and presales as people wait on all but the most hyped titles. I know a lot of people who only bought games at full price because they knew they could flip them to a friend later and get a good chunk of their money back. The people that were buying the used titles aren't going to just decide to pay full price on day one either, they were already willing to wait until somebody else played through it and resold it, they'll wait for an inevitable price drop that comes later.

People justify their purchases all the time. People are terrible at waiting for new media. Calling it now that it makes a small but not crucial difference.

The end effect will be that consumers are more cautious about taking risks with their purchases, and that's already a huge problem in the game industry that has led to sequel spam. Maybe the big distributors with high marketing budgets will do ok, but the smaller houses are going to suffer.

The smaller studios are already suffering and dying. As a result they're branching out into lower cost games and different platforms.

I liked the line I saw from someone at Nintendo the other day: we don't worry about the second hand market because we make games that people don't want to sell. (The part he left out is that they made those games twenty years ago, but...)

The part he left out was that Nintendo spend vast sums on their first party titles and don't provide much support to third party developers.

[kentonio]

Jon Miller

[Asher]

Just to be clear EliteBooks > MacBook Pros according to you. Right?

No.

[Asher]

Office 2013 is iteration, not innovation. What about the adoption rate of Office 365?

Sharepoint is 12 years old and I wish that abomination never gained traction. Hell, even Lotus Notes is better than Sharepoint.

Sorry, onodera. You asked for a corporate hit and I smacked you down with a couple massive ones - to the tunes of billions of dollars in profit every quarter.

Sharepoint 2013 is quite unlike its predecessors. I hated SharePoint until a few months ago, when we rolled out SharePoint 2013 at work. It is quite a productivity boost for large teams.

Corporations, as it turns out, love it.

[regexcellent]

I don't know what sharepoint 2013 is like but every time I've used other versions of it at work it's been a downright depressing experience.

[ZEE]

Mr friends B trippin over ps4 right now based on the cKost. I'll be laughin when they finally cKave next year and get a Xbox One an feel real stoopid.

Xbox all the way.

[Sir Og]

No.

I am surprised that there are more expensive brands than Apple.

[self biased]

sb please don't repost ****ty pictures thanks

[regexcellent]

lol nintendo is the one getting raped most of all lets be honest

[lightblue]

So a bit of u-turn then...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22980973

Microsoft interactive president Don Mattrick said the company had "heard loud and clear" from its customers.

"You told us how much you loved the flexibility you have today with games delivered on disc," Mr Mattrick said in a statement posted online.

"The ability to lend, share, and resell these games at your discretion is of incredible importance to you. Also important to you is the freedom to play offline, for any length of time, anywhere in the world."

The statement, which was for some time inaccessible due to heavy traffic, went on to backtrack fully on the controversial aspects of their DRM - digital rights management - plans:

"An internet connection will not be required to play offline Xbox One games - after a one-time system set-up with a new Xbox One, you can play any disc based game without ever connecting online again. There is no 24-hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360.
"Trade-in, lend, resell, gift, and rent disc based games just like you do today - there will be no limitations to using and sharing games, it will work just as it does today on Xbox 360."

[Wiglaf]

Really catty of them to kill digital/family game sharing. There's no reason they had to do that.