Micro$oft and their ways... !OT!

I recently heard of a business deal between a popular retailer in Britain, named Dixons, and Microsoft. It seems that Microsoft had put forward a contract stating basically "We give you money, you dont sell any console other than our own". Dixons accepted, and so, the Xbox has an advantage in the videogaming market. Evidently, the amount of money Microsoft offered compensated for all the PS2's and GC's they would have sold - and that must have been a lot! I dont know how long this deal is set to go on for, but i do know that GC is losing its place in the market, slowly.
Another, VERY popular branch of stores, named Argos, had recently reduced the price of the GC to ?70 (also including a memory card and any game the customer wanted) in a bid to get rid of all their stock. They feared that the GC was flopping, however when they heard that Zelda: Wind waker was soon to be released, they cancelled the deal and restocked up on GC's.
Nintendo's hanging on, but only just, meanwhile Microsoft is avoiding the edge of the videogaming market platter by their usual means, buying out. Fortunately for them, there are quite a few sources willing to SELL out. And because of this, the Xbox is slowly surpassing the GC in sales, after a long stretch of being on par with them.
Microsoft were saved by their money; nintendo can only save themselves with the quality of their games.
This topic is devoted to stating all the bad things about Microsoft.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ July 02, 2003 09:47 PM: Message edited by: Cataferal ]</font>

I'm not surprised, that's micro$oft's typical strategy - whenever they run into trouble, Billy writes a cheque, spends one millionth of his money, and problem solved. If pushed, micro$oft will:

- Lie
- Bribe the media
- Buy retailers out
- Buy the competitors' companies to close them

and other usual practices on them.

While it's a shame an uninteresting tweaked machine is outselling a real console, it's more of a shame that an evil intentioned loser which doesn't give a shit for videogames is winning to a real videogame company like Nintendo, which does care for games.

(Nintendo has its share of culpability though, for focusing on kiddy, short games, instead of huge, epic, deep, involving, breath-taking adult-oriented games, but this is a subject for a different thread.)

Also, i recently read an article on gamespot (i dont know if you guys have read it too), about how Microsofts Xbox division in Japan decided to fire a load of employee's due to losses in sales over there (JUSTICE!). However, this good news is compensated for through the manner at which they dismissed their employee's.
This is the link to the article:

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/news/news_6030528.html

This shows that Microsoft bears no respect for their employee's rights, and it looks like they may have another fly to swat with a big wad of cash (no doubt at all...).

[ July 01, 2003 12:39 PM: Message edited by: Cataferal ]

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ July 01, 2003 12:40 PM: Message edited by: Cataferal ]</font>

Micro$oft stinks. They must feel like they are some sort of maffia or paramilitary organization, Bill Gates being the Commander in Chief of it.

When working for micro$oft, you're ok as long as the godfather is happy with your results. Otherwise expect the worst.

And I'm sure if their Xbox is selling poorly in Japan, it's because Billy doesn't fucking realize CONSOLE gamers, especially the Japanese, want CONSOLE-STYLE games, and not their usual load of PC stuff. It wasn't those workers fault. But Billy thinks people has to play whatever he wants.

I hope there are some laws in Japan to punish companies for this, and micro$oft gets its ass kicked. How will I laugh if micro$oft gets in the Japanese Government list of "undesirable companies", if they aren't listed already by the time I'm writing this.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ July 02, 2003 07:37 AM: Message edited by: -Wiseman- ]</font>

Foolish Wiseman, the reason the Xbox is failing in Japan is because it's too big. The Japanese don't have very big places to live, so everything needs to be small. A Xbox is like a house to them. It's not because their software is PC stuff.

Once again Wiseman is being unfair. *OCB shuts up before the icy hand of banning returns to his shoulder.*

Actually, OCB, its because the Japanese seem to have a better judgement when it comes to games and consoles, having the majority of them available (unlike europe). They also take their games very seriously and dont care for games like Halo (rpg's being the mainstream preference over there), and so took the GC option intead (most already owned a PS2 anyway). Microsoft are trying to redeem themselves by releasing rpg's such as True Fantasy Online (seen the logo? Any more similair and Square could sue...), aswell as buying out Rare (who are making an rpg for them aswell).

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana,Tahoma">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#E0E0E0"><font size=2 face="Verdana,Tahoma">Originally posted by -Wiseman-:
Micro$oft stinks. They must feel like they are some sort of maffia or paramilitary organization, Bill Gates being the Commander in Chief of it.
</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

I agree with the metaphor there. However, our good friend Billy doesnt contribute anything towards Microsoft anymore, let alone their computer entertainment division. However your point still stands, he was the one who started the ruthless and unscrupulous attitude towards opposition, their own employee's, and their customers, and in his absence, the company didnt change that one aspect which brought them success.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ July 02, 2003 09:45 PM: Message edited by: Cataferal ]</font>

Typical MS strategies, but firing people because the console is not selling well is just ridiculous, IMO.

The sad thing is that XBOX is a good machine, capable of really impressive things (Wiseman, any new demo done with raytracing on "Intel" processors?), the only flaw it has is that "it is Microsoft" And that plays a lot against the console.

IRT Melfice:
The sad thing is that XBOX is a good machine

It's not an optimal gaming machine, and that's one of the reasons why micro$oft is losing so much money in its production.


IRT OCB: Every time you disagree you start insulting. You're not worth talking to.


IRT Cataferal: I agree

our good friend Billy doesnt contribute anything towards Microsoft anymore

Yup, I know he retired from being the CEO, and he has much less power in the company's decisions, but it's fun to think he's the godfather behind micro$oft [img]smile.gif[/img] . (BTW, I think that was a smart move; I would have done the same there, if you got all that money you've got to enjoy it, not to be worried about this and that.)


IRT Xellos: I agree, and come to think of it, yes, micro$oft doesn't seem to benefit from Rare... they probably bought it just to piss off Nintendo fans and for marketing ("we have Rare").

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana,Tahoma">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#E0E0E0"><font size=2 face="Verdana,Tahoma">IRT OCB: Every time you disagree you start insulting. You're not worth talking to.</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'd like to suggest, when these situations arise, not to post any single byte relating to it. as if nothing had happened. okay?, it avoids troubles.^_^

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana,Tahoma">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#E0E0E0"><font size=2 face="Verdana,Tahoma">Once again Wiseman is being unfair. *OCB shuts up before the icy hand of banning returns to his shoulder.*</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Microsoft, this time, has acted really bad, they've FIRED people because of the bad sales of the console when they were not to blame.

If there is something Unfair this time is Microsoft actions. Firing people would be understandable if they were losing so much money that they had no other choice but firing them, but Microsoft is not precisely a "poor" company. and firing employes like that looks much more like the action of an annoyed child when his toys are broken.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana,Tahoma">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#E0E0E0"><font size=2 face="Verdana,Tahoma"> [...] the reason the Xbox is failing in Japan is because it's too big.</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

That is completely absurd, don't you think? DVD players are big, PS2 is not precisely little, and desktop computers still sell well in Japan, i think...

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana,Tahoma">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#E0E0E0"><font size=2 face="Verdana,Tahoma">It's not because their software is PC stuff.</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

I agree, PC software keeps selling well. Just as an example, much young companies start doing their games on the PC platform. it would not have much logic, if the bad sales of MS XBOX were because "they are PC stuff"

The point is: XBOX = USA stuff, and Japan uses not to receive well the "Gaijin" stuff. Even if we ignore this point, still the XBOX games are not of the like of the Japanesse market, as people has said here, Japanesse like much more adventure, RPG's, graphical games than sports, or war games (to say an example..).

Uh... OCB, the size of XB has NOTHING to do wiht it's popularty in Japan. If size mattered, GCN wand DC would be supreme. The thing about XB, is that it ahs US style games, and the few Japanese, aren't that good.

Buying Rare's done NOTHING for them. I doutb te'll see any Rare games for the XB, maybe for the XB2. Nintendo totally got the better end of that deal.

IRT Melfice:

I'd like to suggest, when these situations arise, not to post any single byte relating to it. as if nothing had happened. okay?, it avoids troubles.^_^

And I did avoid it, despite others insulting me. Keep in mind that it's not me the one who should be making an effort to avoid trouble, hence my goodwill.

PC software keeps selling well.

It always sold poorly in Japan. It might help that the Japanese (and other gamers like yours trully) do not like dark, grotesque, colorless American-style games about a macho guy with a car-sized railgun saving the world all-alone by killing criminals or enemy soldiers you can't actually see because it's so dark.

much young companies start doing their games on the PC platform

Because of no royalties, cheap (even freeware) SDKs, no special hardware required, no deals with the big guys, and the PC being common-knowledge. Compare that to paying like 33000 ? to Sony and dealing with them, then dealing with the **********ing PS2 hardware, and once you've finally done your first game, having to pay royalties to Sony on a per-unit basis. Finally, the art standards in PC games are much weaker, so you don't need to hire great musicians and graphicians to start and you can get away with it. That's why most companies start with PC development (though the ones who start like this, often never do the jump to the real consoles). However, micro$oft does charge royalties to PC developers if they want to release their games for their machines.

IRT Xellos: Size does matter to the japanese. Like i said, they do have small houses over there, so the equipment they buy does need to fit in their house. Of course, other factors apply, such as game selection, company reputation and uses. Since there are much cheaper and smaller door stops out there (j/k), the japanese are much more likely to go for the consoles which have a better selection of games and will last longer, as well as fit in their room.

IRT Melfice: DVD players are thin and are almost required these days. PS2 can be placed on their side, opening up a lot of room for other items (like other consoles or vanilla coke). PCs are needed in many businesses to sort info, etc.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ July 04, 2003 03:41 PM: Message edited by: One Classy Bloke ]</font>

okay so they've bought they're way in, it's really no surprise to me. i don't find anything to get angry over, this is business and microsoft is powerful enough to have their way most of the time using money.

OCb, to say size is actually a factor whent ehy choose a console is just ignorant and stupid. The XB is only twice as big as the PS2, which doesn't make a huge difference in size. You can palc eit just about anywhere.

IRT WISEMAN

Though most people who starts, make really nice stuff (see, for example, the art on Hentai games, those CG are really splendid, IMO) if you don't like Hentai games you still have dating sims, or the like, that always have a nice graphic aspect.

I've seen amateur works that are indeed as good as professional works.

Most Hentai games are far too simple, you could do that with QuickBasic. Draw a bunch of gals in different positions, then backgrounds, then place them as follows: 1. Background (full screen), 2. Chick (middle), 3. Text window (bottom); ask for 3 choices at much, and you're done with it.

I hate the art in most hentai games, looks low quality to me for some reason &gt;_&lt;

BTW, placing a PS2 on it's side is bad. It can screw up dsics easy, and they move alot if any shaking occurs, this from experience with friends PoS2. I'll never place mine on it's side.

The problem with most H games is that ther aren't actually games. All you have to do is to click the mouse repeteadly. Every month, you are given choices... choose the first, if it doesn't work the choice will be presented again, so chose the next one, until you succeed.

"if any shaking occurs"

Erm... crazy idea, but maybe thats what screwed up the discs?

Size is a factor to the Japanese. When you compare other japanese products to the Xbox, the thing is huge. The Japanese don't like big, so they don't buy.

I don't get H-games. Why play a game for something when you can just search the net and find better results? I did play a good hentai puzzle game though.

The company I work for has decided to use Java as the platform to develop software instead of .NET.
Microsoft is losing a lot in the government markets in Europe.

If they want portable applications at the expense of speed and power, they did the right thing.

.NET rant:

Who on Earth would use .NET? That's like saying: you waste CPU, RAM and HD with our complex virtual machine, and you don't get anything in return, because your applications will run only on the platforms we want. What the hell, if I want something that runs only on Windows, I wouldn't waste system resources on that crap; I'd go for VC++ and Win32. Besides, that .NET thing wouldn't work on smaller computers even if they wanted to, unlike Java.
Personally, I think .NET is one the most fucked up idea micro$oft had in the last decades. It's absolutely useless, it makes things even more complex (as if they weren't complex enough), and what pisses me off the most, it's a waste of system resources. .NET is something micro$oft did to create confusion in their benefit.

Hmm I don't agree completely with you Wiseman.
The idea of a virtual machine is pretty good.
It makes the interface with the different languages used in .NET the same. Which is good when you have people using VB.NET for asp.net and C# for the services.
And at least it gives hope for cross platform compatibility in the future.

About VC++.... I hate it. C# is a very clean language (similar to Java).
C++ is a complete mess. It's some OO hack on C.
And VC++ has a horrible editor.

No, C# is a good language....
And believe me... as a sofware engineer I have no love for Microsoft.

I haven't heard other but praises on C#, so it must be good. Now it would be a good idea to make an Intel x86/Win32 C# compiler, I hate wasting performance. Not gonna happen, though.

As for .NET turning multiplatform, do you think micro$oft will do that? They won't, unless it gets unavoidable because they are losing it. But I wouldn't count on it.

Java is inherently slower than C++. I know of some guys who do HW 3D on Java, but it was slow.

Also, keep in mind the speed and the memory that the processors and computers may have now a days

What you're telling me is "You have all that power, let's waste it". Developers think like that and the result is an old demo doing realtime raytracing while today's games require a GeForce 19 with 4 gigs of VRAM to run. Nope, when I buy a new machine I want to see teh fireworks. I mean, look 6 years in the past. With the standard PC, you could run Excel 95, Word 95, and a First Person Shooter. Now you have 10+ times faster machines, and what can you run? Excel 2000, Word 2000, and a First Person Shooter. Don't you think there's something wrong here? Today's software waste your computer more than yesterday's, but less than tomorrow's. This results in you spending the same money every X years to run newer versions of the same software that offer 20% more features and use 100% more system resources.

And it gives real multiplatform support, so, it is a good choice to have a wide market.

But sometimes this is not needed (for example, games... I wouldn't care for Linux, 98% of gamers use Windows, plus Linux sucks for graphics), and sometimes you want max performance regardless of other benefits.

You have garbage collectors for some C and C++ compilers.

I don't know of any non-Windows .NET C# compiler; I think DJGPP is only for Asm/C/C++, though I never used it (I use either LCC-Win32 or Dev-Cpp). Besides, I'm a C guy, I'm not that fond of OO, it has its uses, but sometimes all it does is making things unnecessary complex (e.g. Windows).

---

BTW, we're taking this a little offtopic, the purpose of this thread is to talk about Micro$oft's nasty practices. For technical stuff we have the technical thread over there...

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ July 07, 2003 01:12 PM: Message edited by: -Wiseman- ]</font>

I don't think Java is slow, the truth is that it has improved a lot the speed, and perhaps, you can use 3D Hardware acceleration features with Java. Also, keep in mind the speed and the memory that the processors and computers may have now a days, so, the relative Java Slow downs can be supplied with "brute" speed.

And it gives real multiplatform support, so, it is a good choice to have a wide market.

Also, Java is much better than C++, it is the same O.O. philosophy, but, it quits a lot of work because of the memory manager and garbage managers, for example. I haven't tried C# for example, do you know if DJGPP (you know what is DJGPP right?) can compile C#? or that is only on windows environments?

That is true! ^^ Anyway, i'm also a "C-guy" [img]tongue.gif[/img]

After seeing what they did because of the bad sales of XBOX in Japan, my apreciation for microsoft has decreased.

This is just one of the things Microsoft did:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana,Tahoma">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#E0E0E0"><font size=2 face="Verdana,Tahoma">
When Windows 3.1 was being introduced, Microsoft's operating system was MS-DOS. DR-DOS was a compatible competitor to MS-DOS. Microsoft added code to beta copies of Windows 3.1 so it would detect if it was being run on DR-DOS, and if so, display the spurious error message
"Invalid device interface. Unable to load." </font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ July 11, 2003 05:34 PM: Message edited by: Smelly Cat ]</font>

Oh, they did a lot of things like that. Here's another one:

Back at the MS-DOS days, third party memory managers were very popular. I loved QEMM, from Quarterdeck. I remember I had tuned my system driver by driver, TSR by TSR, boy I sure knew the MS-DOS internals better than my own body. (LOL, I had like 740 KB of free "conventional" RAM thanks to QEMM's Stealth ROM feature.)

Then Windows 95 came (*). When you ran the installer from your MS-DOS system with QEMM installed, it bitched about you having some baaad memory manager that wouldn't let poor Windows 95 run. (Micro$oft's Expanded Memory Manager, EMM386, was of course the only EMM that was compatible with Windows 95.)

All I had to do to boot my no-EMS MS-DOS configuration (without QEMM), so the Windows 95 installer would run. After installing it, the first thing I did was to bring QEMM back. Of course, it worked like a charm; m$ had lied. I benefitted from QEMM's features under Windows 95 for years.

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(*): BTW, Windows 95, contrary to what M$ always said, ran over MS-DOS 7.0, just like Windows 3.x had been running over previous MS-DOS versions. LOL.