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Dean Takahashi (author of Opening the Xbox) on what Ballmer's exit means for Xbox

G

Guevara

Member
Short article but it's hard to pull one quote from it.

Microsoft has gone through huge changes in recent months. Mattrick always wanted to test the potential of the Xbox. He wanted to spin the division off as a separate company. But Ballmer as CEO wanted Microsoft to reap the rewards of an integrated Windows and Xbox company, fulfilling the long-held dream of a single operating system running across the office, home, mobile, and games. When the time for a reorganization happened, Ballmer chose to elevate Julie Larson-Green above Mattrick, putting a single leader in charge of Windows and Xbox. Mattrick left to take the CEO job at social-games publisher Zynga.

The reorg was consistent with the way that Microsoft designed the upcoming Xbox One: It has the Metro interface, it integrates other Microsoft products like Skype, and it has plenty of entertainment services beyond games. In other words, the Xbox One is about more than just games.
Click to expand...

http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/23/what-ballmer-did-for-xbox-and-what-his-retirement-means-for-its-future/
 
M

Massa

Member
"In other words, the Xbox One is about more than just games."

In other words, the Xbox One is about bringing down Xbox with the rest of the ship.
 
T

timlot

Banned
Bill Gate's still runs the company. He holds the most stock and as Chairman of the board he is finale say on hire and fire of the CEO or any other executive. I expect Ballmer will get a spot on the board when they find a new CEO. I personally think Bill should just be Chairman and CEO because a company like Microsoft needs a strong recognizable leader at the helm.
 
S

SwiftDeath

Member
Yeah good luck with that MS

I'll buy a used X1 a year from now

Thanks for making Halo a console game

Would never had played it on a Mac
 
V

Vashetti

Banned
We've known this for ages

Xbox-One.jpg
 
S

Septimus Prime

Member
Massa said:
"In other words, the Xbox One is about more than just games."

In other words, the Xbox One is about bringing down Xbox with the rest of the ship.
Click to expand...
Can't say anything about the Xbox brand, but "the rest of the ship" is doing just fine. Great, even.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/08/microsoft-ceo-steve-ballmer-to-retire-within-12-months/

Ars Technica said:
Though much pilloried in the tech press for Microsoft's more recent missteps, including Windows RT and, most famously, Windows Vista, Ballmer's tenure as CEO has been a positive one for Microsoft—at least from a revenue perspective. Under his leadership, Microsoft's net income has increased to $23 billion, with annual revenue climbing from $25 billion to $70 billion, with an average annual profit growth of over 16 percent.
Click to expand...
 
Pagusas

Pagusas

Elden Member
Does Balmer get to choose a successor or is there a board of directors that get to choose?


as for ""In other words, the Xbox One is about more than just games."" its not like MS has hid this fact in anyway, they have shouted it at the top of there lungs sense the thing was revealed!
 
S

Sean

Banned
Along the way, there were amusing Ballmer stories. When former Sega executive Peter Moore (now COO at Electronic Arts) joined the company, Ballmer got so excited about the Xbox business that he was pounding a table with his fist, yelling “Xbox! Xbox! Xbox!” He accidentally hit a Polycom conference phone and broke it.
Click to expand...

lol
 
C

Curufinwe

Member
Massa said:
"In other words, the Xbox One is about more than just games."

In other words, the Xbox One is about bringing down Xbox with the rest of the ship.
Click to expand...

The Xbox division wishes it could produce the kind of profits the Windows, Business and Server divisions bring in.
 
M

MCD

Junior Member
When Thompson balked at first, Ballmer called him into his office. Ballmer was swinging a baseball bat into his own palm, trying to hammer home a point about how important the job was. Thompson accepted, and he went around to the different game companies, asking the likes of Nintendo and Electronic Arts if they wanted to be acquired. As it performed this due diligence, Microsoft lost critical moments in the market as Sony raced ahead.
Click to expand...

LMAO

Guy was insane and will be sorely missed.
 
S

SporeCrawler

Member
timlot said:
Bill Gate's still runs the company. He holds the most stock and as Chairman of the board he is finale say on hire and fire of the CEO or any other executive. I expect Ballmer will get a spot on the board when they find a new CEO. I personally think Bill should just be Chairman and CEO because a company like Microsoft needs a strong recognizable leader at the helm.
Click to expand...

Gates holds 6%
 
F

FunkyPajamas

Member
Wasn't Dean Takahashi the guy that slammed Mass Effect partly because he didn't know he could level up his character?

He may be an insider but I'm not sure the guy is smart (functional?) enough to know what the hell he's talking about.
 
G

Guevara

Member
FunkyPajamas said:
Wasn't Dean Takahashi the guy that slammed Mass Effect partly because he didn't know he could level up his character?

He may be an insider but I'm not sure the guy is smart (functional?) enough to know what the hell he's talking about.
Click to expand...
He's not a gamer he's a tech journalist. He's much more in that role now at Venture Beat.
 
J

jaypah

Member
Sean said:
Along the way, there were amusing Ballmer stories. When former Sega executive Peter Moore (now COO at Electronic Arts) joined the company, Ballmer got so excited about the Xbox business that he was pounding a table with his fist, yelling “Xbox! Xbox! Xbox!” He accidentally hit a Polycom conference phone and broke it.

lol
Click to expand...

Man Ballmer has got to be full of that booger-sugar.
 
E

Eusis

Member
FunkyPajamas said:
Wasn't Dean Takahashi the guy that slammed Mass Effect partly because he didn't know he could level up his character?

He may be an insider but I'm not sure the guy is smart (functional?) enough to know what the hell he's talking about.
Click to expand...
You can be smart in one area but dumb in another, and there's also the angle he'd care more to investigate something like this versus investigating how to level in ME.
 
B

BolognaOni

Member
2MF said:
That quote indeed makes MS sound very healthy. I wonder why their stock has decreased since 2000 even though their revenue and profits allegedly went up so much.
Click to expand...

Stock prices are heavily swayed by the perception for future growth. MS has struggled to find that outside of just running their traditional businesses better (and Ballmer was a pretty good leader for that- windows and office still make a metric fuck ton of money). It's just a more mature stock now- relatively low P/E, offers a fairly fat dividend, etc. It's a cash machine now, not a big growth engine.

They're also hurt by a general perception that they can't do anything outside their core businesses. XBox is something on an exception to a growing list of big investments that have generated marginal returns at best.
 
The Faceless Master

The Faceless Master

Member
Massa said:
"In other words, the Xbox One is about more than just games."

In other words, the Xbox One is about bringing down Xbox with the rest of the ship.
Click to expand...
you say that now but when Office 365 integration hits and i can polish off a spreadsheet in between rounds of Titanfall, i will have the last laugh!
 
I

ironcreed

Banned
The Xbox One will no doubt have some games that will appeal to me, but I just hate where the brand is headed as a whole. Loved how it started with the first Xbox and still enjoy the 360, but the price, the stronger focus on Kinect and services, the desperate flip-flopping and the abhorrent shit they originally were trying to pull has relegated the Xbox One to a 'maybe' purchase in a couple of years for me. I just can't help but be turned off by everything they have done in preparation for this launch. Bad mojo vibes all around.
 
B

border

Member
But Gates and Ballmer decided to go into the business anyway because it was strategically important to Microsoft’s future, and it would stop others like Sony from taking over the living room and supplanting the PC as the key entertainment device in the home.
Click to expand...

Kinda funny that while chasing after Sony, they basically forfeited the mobile and tablet markets to Google/Apple. And those devices have almost certainly usurped the PC as a key entertainment device.
 
G

Guevara

Member
border said:
Kinda funny that while chasing after Sony, they basically forfeited the mobile and tablet markets to Google/Apple. And those devices have almost certainly usurped the PC as a key entertainment device.
Click to expand...

Yes. For more than 10 years (and billions of dollars) MS and Sony competed for the "next big thing": the living room. It's hilarious in retrospect.
 
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