[eddanger]

Oh god no. I might be just too old. But back in my day Microsoft would buy a company and kill their product. They were referred to as the "Evil Empire" back then, they'd consume companies left, right and center. I still have a bad taste in my mouth and wish they would go away rather than this slow painful death.

[jmspring]

I recall many a purchase that was killed. Modern day, Google has taken over that role.

Look at Microsoft acquisitions of late - Yammer and Skype being two of the larger ones that come to mind. Still there and running.

[ekianjo]

Skype may still be running but their service has become significantly worse after the centralized all the servers instead of the previous P2P architecture. At least I can clearly tell the difference.

[Aloha]

I've had the opposite, the service has improved since MS bought them, I suspect thats because I'm in the continental US, and networkwise close to the datacenters Microsoft/Skype is using.

[neolefty]

It seems more reliable in China too.

[batoure]

Fair comment, the xBox division has for the most part turned out to be a different beast from main-line Microsoft though.

[eddanger]

So true. Microsoft used to be only about productivity software. Then they became a game company. I see a lot of parallels with Facebook. A social company becoming a game company.

Xbox is to Microsoft like Oculus is to Facebook.

[ekianjo]

I don't think so. For Microsoft it was natural to make the Xbox. They were involved in the PC so much, and the first Xbox was basically a PC trapped into a black and green colored box. Most of the work they did then was on software, which was their specialty in the first place.

Facebook has no direct connection with hardware, serious 3D gaming, VR or anything close to it. I fail to see how you can draw a comparison between the two. And the Xbox was not an acquisition, it was developed internally by Microsoft.

[batoure]

Maybe I don't know enough about the internal workings of Facebook but Xbox was the perfect storm of a number of different initiatives that were going on internally at Microsoft at the time. their existing supplychain around peripherals coupled with the fact that windows PCs have always been the primary gaming platform of choice Microsoft was well positioned to leverage existing relationships in the industry to launch a dedicated platform.