[latch]

You are talking about small projects, which, in the scale of things, are insignificant. They are all DevDiv projects, and even within DevDiv, they are fairly small. It's a company of 92000 employees, with some of their projects worth billions quarterly. Your perspective, from your examples, is completely skewed.

[mattmanser]

Other examples include Windows Phone and XBox both of which seemingly came from nowhere in a 'just get it done' style.

There's some real love and skill that's been put into the XBox for example, just browse around it some time.

My perspective is coloured by the developer stuff as that's what I'm most interested in.

[latch]

Windows Phone came out 3+ years (almost 4) after the iPhone. It was the most obvious and slowest product launch in recent memory. It also hasn't been a great success. If Windows Phone is proof that Microsoft is doing well....It also wasn't some spontaneous/organic product that just sprung up. It was a massive coordinated company-wide event that took years to "pull off".

As for the Xbox, it's a huge loss leaders. The division is billions in the red. XBox 360 (which had a 33% failure rate) started to make a bit of money last year (or maybe the year before that)..but it's a fraction of what they've put into it. In the long term, the strategy of owning the living room might work out, but so far, no, it neither "came out of nowhere" nor is it a succes. The problem with consoles is that, you are only as good as your current generation. Also, no one has managed to crack the living room yet, and they've all tried. History tells us it's a waste of money.

[Goronmon]

As for the Xbox, it's a huge loss leaders. The division is billions in the red. XBox 360 (which had a 33% failure rate) started to make a bit of money last year (or maybe the year before that)..but it's a fraction of what they've put into it.

From what I've gathered, the entertainment division has been making a profit since 2008. It's tough to get solid numbers on the contribution of the 360 to that, since the division contained things like the Zune for a while. I would be surprised if they don't end up profiting overall on the 360.

Sure, that might not make up for the losses on the original Xbox, but that generation was always about gaining a foothold, not making a profit. MS didn't have a horse in race until a year after the release of the PS2. To go from that to the market share that the 360 commands right now is impressive.

Eve that said I don't think making money on console sales was ever the main reason MS got into the market in the first place. I think they realized that gaming consoles were going to become an important part of household entertainment, even outside of gaming itself. Consoles are becoming one-stop shops for all forms of enterainment nowadays. I use my systems to watch disc-based media, streaming off other devices in my house, Netflix, etc. MS would be in a really tough spot if they had let Sony snatch up this market without putting up a fight.

[quadhome]

Windows Phone definitely didn't come out of nowhere. A good friend of mine was one of the PM leads there. We used to have conversations on the bus every evening— him sweating decisions, fighting for inches, and showing off slow weekly progress on his debug unit.

Windows Phone was a lot of hard yards by some talented people working too late for too little. I long since left, but I expect it was the typical herculean project where 80% of the team left after it was out the door.