[dajt]

That's been obvious for years. It feels like they're extracting whatever remaining money they can get from the home PC market while it lasts but won't much miss it when it's gone.

I'm surprised they haven't given up on xbox and games but perhaps there's enough money there to keep it going.

[razorfen]

Their new appointment of leader for their Xbox group suggests that they intend to wind down that business unit in time. The founder of the Xbox team has commented that he believes it’s the beginning of the end for Xbox, for the exact reasons of this thread.

[permo-w]

Which is odd because the major reason Xbox is petering out is because it's been completely mismanaged. Sony and Nintendo are still doing just fine. Nintendo even had a dodgy console that no one bought within relatively recent memory. Xbox messed up with the One and then have just failed to get back on track. It's not like the industry is dying.

[iknowstuff]

Sony’s best selling console is still the PS2. They make more profit per console these days but the market doesn’t seem all that healthy.

I think Microsoft will just allow strong DRM to prevent cheats/piracy in PCs instead of dedicated xboxes.

[breakingcups]

It's skewed by the PS2 being one of the cheapest DVD players available at the time, which is no longer needed now.

[darth_avocado]

> home PC market while it lasts

Tinfoil hat thought: Microsoft only focuses on B2B and not consumer market, because they make it so that consumers can only rent from Microsoft and other businesses, not actually own anything. That way, Microsoft can keep jacking up prices as they see fit.

[GuB-42]

If Microsoft wanted to be monopolistic, and it wouldn't be the first time, then why are they abandoning their strongest exclusives (Windows, Office) and instead enter a more competitive market, where Google, Amazon, etc... are well established and with no sign of letting go.

[deaux]

> why are they abandoning their strongest exclusives (Windows, Office)

They're abandoning the consumer versions of these, not the enterprise versions. The consumer versions are the competitive market, where they're competing against iPads and such. They're not abandoning Windows for businesses, Office for businesses, where there is still no established business end-user OS/office suite alternative.

[jasomill]

Given Office 365 and day-one Game Pass release of all first-party titles, I don't think you need a tinfoil hat to imagine this.

I suspect lingering antitrust concerns are one of the few things standing in the way of locking consumer Windows updates behind a paywall, possibly alongside a "free with ads" version.

[Melonai]

It's not fully clear yet but they definitely gave up on the current Xbox strategy, after firing both the CEO and the next-in-line and replacing them with people previously working on integrating AI around the entire product line. Sure they said they won't fill up Xbox with soulless AI slop, not sure I believe them.

Consoles are probably getting phased out, which makes financial sense at this point if they don't manage a massive comeback, and Xbox might try to go with a more Steam-based model (they've been trying for the last decade with not much success), maybe trying to make PCs more console-like with their new Xbox Windows changes, as well as putting AI everywhere, so that's going to be fun!

[hinkley]

That's been obvious for decades. Everyone who worked in the 90's or 00's has stories about coming in one day to find that the VP has been conned into a $1m contract for MS office or development software everyone hates and now we all have to use it because if we don't then he made a huge mistake and VPs don't make huge mistakes.

So we have to eat shit or find open source software to work around MS's garbage check-box-driven software.

[dajt]

This is still happening. The org I work at was all-in on Google stuff, then just before I joined 5 years ago, some senior exec joined. Must have been in tight with Microsoft because suddenly the org was all in on Microsoft. The exec left, job well done, and the org suffered for years during the changeover; we still suffer because all the Microsoft stuff is total garbage these days.

I yearn for the Microsoft software of the 90s and 00s, pre-cloud, pre-webslop, pre-AI.

[ForOldHack]

Clearly you were there.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Nadella has been the best thing to happen to MS since Gates. He came from Azure.

I’m pretty sure that Amazon now makes most of their money from AWS.

[lproven]

> Nadella has been the best thing to happen to MS since Gates.

Wow. My impression, as an MS watcher since 1988, is the exact reverse: that he is guiding the death-spiral.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Depends. Number go up, and he's good at that.

[lproven]

Good point, at least for certain values of "good".