"Gates, the founder and former CEO of Microsoft, said hes been helping new CEO Satya Nadella transition into his new leadership role and that he would support Nadella if the new CEO proposed a spinoff of one of Microsofts units. But Gates said he didnt foresee either Bing, the companys search engine division, or Xbox, its gaming division, as potential stand-alone companies because they are part of Microsofts long-term strategy."
So bill Gates says that he sees Xbox as a part of MS's long term strategy, and we have a thread about how it means that he and the CEO want to kill Xbox. Which the CEO didn't say. It was a hypothetical.
Link to full context for next pagehttp://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/05/05/buffett-leery-social-media-stocks-ipos/
Bill Gates' invisible hand still working the Microsoft strings.
Bill Gates tweets like that? Looks like the tweet of a 12-year-old.
I wonder how much xbox is worth. Like how much would Amazon need to shell out if they wanted to buy it. How many billions?
Nothing invisible about it.
I think part of MS replacing Ballmer was that Gates will regain a bunch of control.
Bill Gates tweets like that? Looks like the tweet of a 12-year-old.
The title is a quote of a tweet of a paraphrase of Bill Gates giving a pc answer to a hypothetical question.
If Microsoft does decide to sell off the Xbox business, who would be the likely candidate?
The only company I can think of is Samsung. That's not a console I'd ever want to own.
Invested? Its a division reporting at a loss.Can't see it happening. MS has invested so much in Xbox to simply walk away now. Isn't the Xbox division also one of the more successful parts of the company? Certainly crapping all over the Bing and Zune arms.
Can't see it happening. MS has invested so much in Xbox to simply walk away now. Isn't the Xbox division also one of the more successful parts of the company? Certainly crapping all over the Bing and Zune arms.
MS has invested so much in Xbox to simply walk away now.
Certainly crapping all over the Bing and Zune arms.
You think Xbox is worth as much as Nintendo, who have far more important/bigger IP and are themselves valued that high mostly on the basis of their cash reserves? Damnnnn.~$10-13b in my view. Its current status as a money maker is iffy but there is real value in the Halo and Gears IPs as well as the 10s of millions of Live users. Their movie/tv businesses are inconsequential but would be very likely to be bundled with Xbox. Kinect has gone from being a buzz product that would have added billions to the final pricetag to a complete non factor (another reason they should have done it in 2012 if they were serious).
I think you're being unfair to Bill Gates in your second point. He seems to go out of his way to free Nadella's hands every time.
hmm... Faceboxulus Rift?
To the people who are asking "Why is this news?":
Bill Gates remains an absolutely enormous shareholder in Microsoft, for the moment. The fact that he would not directly oppose an initiative to spin off the division is going to rally the smaller investor groups who were already pushing for this, but were having trouble due to even their combined voting power being dwarfed by his alone.
He doesn't have to "support" the new CEO as some sort of cheerleader. He remains an incredibly powerful shareholder in his own right, and the only reason he doesn't exercise more direct control over the company is entirely by his own choosing. Even him simply saying that he wouldn't throw his weight against something is a pretty big deal.
If Nintendo has the cash they say they do I don't get why they just don't pay the $5 billion to own Xbox.
Not true.
Bill Gates has been selling his stock steady over the past decade, since he stepped down as CEO. It goes towards the Bill & Melinda Gates Fund. I think I've read he sells 20 million shares per quarter, and in on track to have zero MS shares within 4 years.
If Nintendo has the cash they say they do I don't get why they just don't pay the $5 billion to own Xbox.
I'm going to ask you to do some basic math, here.
If Bill Gates is selling 20,000,000 shares a quarter, and won't be out of shares for another four years, how many shares does Bill Gates have?
Pocket change.
Just checked Google, and Gates now owns 330m shares. So he owns 4% of the company.
This is known as the Sunk Cost Fallacy, and anyone with a background in finance knows that it is irrational. It doesn't matter how much money they have put into the Xbox in the past. That money is gone. The future is all that matters.
If Nintendo has the cash they say they do I don't get why they just don't pay the $5 billion to own Xbox.
So if Xbox were for sale wich are the tentative buyers?
nintendo didn't get their coffers full like they are by writing a bunch of $5 billion dollar checks.
I wonder how much xbox is worth. Like how much would Amazon need to shell out if they wanted to buy it. How many billions?
Nothing invisible about it.
I think part of MS replacing Ballmer was that Gates will regain a bunch of control.
Google, Amazon, maybe even Facebook seeing as they are expanding their horizons
Out of curiosity, how much shares/influence does Mr. Gates have on/in Microsoft?
I know he's a share holder, but by how much?
Yes, which is four times the combined amount of the voting bloc that was making waves by demanding that X-Box be spun off in the first place. This isn't the type of company where a family or small group of founders control 50% or more of the corporation between them. 4% is considerably diminished from his CEO days, but it still makes him one of the most powerful single voters among shareholders.
The fact that he was always presumed in the past to be against any attempts to spin off Bing or X-Box was one of the major roadblocks that groups like ValueAct Capital had to getting any sort of traction for their initiatives. Knowing going in that you need several times as many voting shares as your entire holding group has to even break even tends to put a damper on attempts to get a movement going.
Approximately 330 Million shares at around 4% ownership.
He's been reducing his shares annually since he stepped away from the CEO position.
Ballmer supposedly has more shares than he does now.
Dead right but they are backed in a corner right now no?
Dead right but they are backed in a corner right now no?
well they seem to have a plan involving QOL in the medium term and a unified console/portable architecture in the long term. how successful all that will be is any ones guess, but buying gaijin gaming platforms just doesn't seem to be the nintendo way. the people in charge seem too old and stuck in their ways for that.
hmm... Faceboxulus Rift?
its apparent many in the company see the gaming side as a distraction. given the foundation of mobile/digital media within MS, its also agreeable why they see it this way.