[alexqgb]

Meanwhile, back in Redmond, Microsoft (!) has opened the Kinect to 3rd party developers.

I doubt this was done to deliberately underscore the galactic idiocy of their chief rival. Still, the contrast between the two approaches is pretty astonishing.

[aspir]

A company supporting their involved, early adopting developer base? What?

In all seriousness, its a huge marketing backfire for Sony to act in this manner, and a huge plus for Microsoft in it's respective choice. I understand the "magic black box" theory of product development as it referes to the 99% of the population that doesn't mod, but that 1% is a vital asset who's influence far exceeds their numbers.

These two populations are inherently different, and should be treated as such. It would be a bad marketing move in this day and age to force typical users to hack, and its an equally bad move to force hacker users to follow suit.

[Groxx]

Sony has a history of huge backfiring actions. This is just another point to add to the trend-line.

[dexen]

Perhaps somebody at Sony HQ is reasoning along the lines, ``it's more important to be talked/written about, than it to be only positive news'' -- all this bickering about PS3 keys and Other OS feature created quite a bit of publicity anyway.

[redthrowaway]

Microsoft's new 'hacker-friendly' approach is refreshing, but I'll be interested to see how long it lasts or how deep it goes. It's a great way to curry favor with developers, which is critically important if WP7 is to be a success, but when push comes to shove I have a sneaking suspicion we'll see the old Microsoft take over.

[CrazedGeek]

For a recent example:

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/11/03/xbox-live-indie-games-move...

(They did end up fixing it a little later, though.)

[rhizome]

I suggest rereading "The Scorpion and the Frog" as well as "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish."

[s3graham]

To be fair, Microsoft would be bringing down a might fury if they didn't have efuses to solve their kernel problems.

I can't imagine Sony being concerned about someone hacking the Move.

[Natsu]

Yeah, their handling of the Kinect has been unexpectedly good. And it really does stand in stark contrast to Sony's actions.