[sbt]

I agree, I find it difficult to see how Gates lurking around would be productive for Microsoft. A new CEO needs to establish their own direction and rapport among employees, but the mere presence of Gates could prove too much in the way of politics there.

I think Bill Gates is brilliant, but if I was a major shareholder in MSFT, I would have him focus all his efforts on his foundation.

[pmelendez]

The new CEO actually asked Gates for help, so I guess it would be cooperation more than anything.

[hga]

If the new CEO wants to change the culture for the better, Gates could be helpful, the Ballmer regime eliminated a lot of the failsafes Gates put into it.

Without a cultural change Microsoft should end its here to now futile attempts to expand outside of its core (has the Xbox, at net, ever made the a lot of money?), put Windows and Office in maintenance mode after restoring the utility of the former for normal desktops, and mostly become a stodgy enterprise software company.

[Encosia]

The Xbox as a foothold in the living room is huge.

[hga]

I'm not arguing against that. I'm asking have they been able to make serious money off of it, and while I'm at it, what's the potential for the future?

I assume the first generation wasn't wildly profitable due to the costs in establishing the ecosystem.

The second generation's hardware execution was infamously botched; we know they took a $900 million write-down on that debacle, and can be sure there were massive additional costs in e.g. brand equity.

How has it done since then?

[hershel]

Cloud gaming , chromecast and virtual reality(which better fits pc's due their power) will pose big challenges to the xbox .

[Encosia]

I have a Chromecast (plugged into the HDMI input on my Xbox One, actually). I don't see that being a credible threat to Xbox among consumers who can afford an Xbox. Possibly something used in tandem when there's not a native app (the Xbox apps for YouTube and Netflix are a much better experience than Chromecasting from a laptop or phone for me).

What do you mean by cloud gaming? Something like the Ouya or Steam's new device?

VR will be interesting. I'm not familiar enough with the hardware requirements to comment intelligently about that. I haven't done much with VR since the late 90s. Is the PS4/XB1's hardware not powerful enough to drive the kind of things that we're seeing the beginning of with Oculus Rift?

[hershel]

Regarding VR: Valve claims that pc's are a better fit to VR and they've done some serious research on VR. I'm taking it on face value(maybe i shouldn't ?).

Cloud gaming is when games are run on a server and streamed to your home. Combine chromecast and cloud gaming, and you suddenly got a huge platform, with much more users than xboox one/ps4. And since it's google ,it would probably run android games which there are tons. This could make the platform preferable for AAA gaming.

One more element that could be important in this is microsoft's "project spark" which let users build games with amazing creativity and amazing graphics. It's still in beta , but when it's release it could be a huge force in gaming , especially together with VR.

[Noxchi]

Cloud gaming is when a server renders your content for you, then streams the video to you. So you could play a very resource intensive game on e.g. a cheap tablet.