Q
Shared on Wed, 08/16/2006 - 08:01You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have...
No, not the facts of life but rather the perfectly evil entity that is Microsoft (hereafter to be referred to M$). There is no other company in the world that I have such a love/hate relationship with. I am a huge fan of the Xbox and the 360 and consider M$ to be an extremely good game company. The XBLA is a wonderful idea that is really starting to blossom and is going to get even better over the next few months.
On the flip side I hate M$ from a business standpoint because the are so damn overpowering. I'm a network admin and I have a very hard time trying to convince the management regime here that there are products out there other than M$ that will do the job just as well for a lot less money. There are some things that I think M$ does very well (like Exchange 2003) but it is not the end all be all of the software world by any means and I get frustrated when I have to try and explain that people.
The thing I hate most about M$, though, is their undying need to turn everything into money. M$ doesn't give anything to you for free. The latest example of this is the new XNA Game Studio Express. This is the latest idea by M$ to get the basement-dwelling, wannabe game developers into actually making games. Teamxbox.com has an excellent article on this that you should go read if you are interested because from here on in I'm only going to summarize and bitch.
Esentially M$ is giving you a free downloadable toolkit that will enable you to make "rudimentary" games (according to Peter Moore) and the only thing you will need is a copy of Windows XP, and a free version of Visual Studio Express. Then you can set about making little games to your heart's content. Unfortunately, if you want to share your new bundle of pixelated joy with anyone it is going to cost you $99 a year. That's right $99 a year (why the fuck don't they just make it a hundred, do they really think we're that stupid?) will buy you a membership in the "Creators Club" and let you share your games with other members. This sounds like a cool, original idea at first until you realize that M$ has just taken the PC modding scene, bastardized it for the console, and added a yearly membership fee!
The PC modding scene has been running strong for many years and has managed to produced some huge hits (like Counter-Strike) and gotten garage devs noticed by the big devs. In fact, over the more recent years devs have been embracing the mod community and actually encouraging them to make content. They go as far as to put together excellent toolkits, community modding forums, and (in some cases) help and support; and guess what, they do it for FREE! Abso-fucking-lutely free! They do it because they know that it will keep interest alive in their product and extend it's life without them having to put anymore direct manpower or money into it. They also realize that a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters may eventually come up with programming gold (like the aforementioned Counter-Strike).
So then why does M$ want to change this dev-community dynamic? Because they see it as an opportunity to turn a profit. Break down the numbers. Right now there are 3,000,000 Live subscribers. Lets be ultraconservative and say that 1% of those download the XNA toolkit and pay the $99 annual fee. That's 30,000 people paying $99 a piece for a total of $2,970,000! That's right, M$ will make almost 3 million dollars for doing nothing more than giving people free software and access to a community. And remember, that's annually! Like with the Live service they are trying to create a steady annual revenue flow.
How can M$ justify this? The XNA toolkit can't be much more complicated than the toolkits devs personally craft and give out for free with their games. They aren't providing you with a support model. They aren't giving you direct access to the publishers so you can showcase you games. I just can't see the reasoning behind it other than they want to sqeeze every last penny out of us that they possibly can.
It's like ol' Bill is doing his President Clinton impression and we're his Monica Lewinsky. Before you know it we're going to be staring at a load of joy juice forming a milky white silhouette of a dollar sign on our collective dress. The only problem is that our stain is never going to get us on the nightly news.
Any feedback, thoughts, or counterpoints are always welcome.
No, not the facts of life but rather the perfectly evil entity that is Microsoft (hereafter to be referred to M$). There is no other company in the world that I have such a love/hate relationship with. I am a huge fan of the Xbox and the 360 and consider M$ to be an extremely good game company. The XBLA is a wonderful idea that is really starting to blossom and is going to get even better over the next few months.
On the flip side I hate M$ from a business standpoint because the are so damn overpowering. I'm a network admin and I have a very hard time trying to convince the management regime here that there are products out there other than M$ that will do the job just as well for a lot less money. There are some things that I think M$ does very well (like Exchange 2003) but it is not the end all be all of the software world by any means and I get frustrated when I have to try and explain that people.
The thing I hate most about M$, though, is their undying need to turn everything into money. M$ doesn't give anything to you for free. The latest example of this is the new XNA Game Studio Express. This is the latest idea by M$ to get the basement-dwelling, wannabe game developers into actually making games. Teamxbox.com has an excellent article on this that you should go read if you are interested because from here on in I'm only going to summarize and bitch.
Esentially M$ is giving you a free downloadable toolkit that will enable you to make "rudimentary" games (according to Peter Moore) and the only thing you will need is a copy of Windows XP, and a free version of Visual Studio Express. Then you can set about making little games to your heart's content. Unfortunately, if you want to share your new bundle of pixelated joy with anyone it is going to cost you $99 a year. That's right $99 a year (why the fuck don't they just make it a hundred, do they really think we're that stupid?) will buy you a membership in the "Creators Club" and let you share your games with other members. This sounds like a cool, original idea at first until you realize that M$ has just taken the PC modding scene, bastardized it for the console, and added a yearly membership fee!
The PC modding scene has been running strong for many years and has managed to produced some huge hits (like Counter-Strike) and gotten garage devs noticed by the big devs. In fact, over the more recent years devs have been embracing the mod community and actually encouraging them to make content. They go as far as to put together excellent toolkits, community modding forums, and (in some cases) help and support; and guess what, they do it for FREE! Abso-fucking-lutely free! They do it because they know that it will keep interest alive in their product and extend it's life without them having to put anymore direct manpower or money into it. They also realize that a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters may eventually come up with programming gold (like the aforementioned Counter-Strike).
So then why does M$ want to change this dev-community dynamic? Because they see it as an opportunity to turn a profit. Break down the numbers. Right now there are 3,000,000 Live subscribers. Lets be ultraconservative and say that 1% of those download the XNA toolkit and pay the $99 annual fee. That's 30,000 people paying $99 a piece for a total of $2,970,000! That's right, M$ will make almost 3 million dollars for doing nothing more than giving people free software and access to a community. And remember, that's annually! Like with the Live service they are trying to create a steady annual revenue flow.
How can M$ justify this? The XNA toolkit can't be much more complicated than the toolkits devs personally craft and give out for free with their games. They aren't providing you with a support model. They aren't giving you direct access to the publishers so you can showcase you games. I just can't see the reasoning behind it other than they want to sqeeze every last penny out of us that they possibly can.
It's like ol' Bill is doing his President Clinton impression and we're his Monica Lewinsky. Before you know it we're going to be staring at a load of joy juice forming a milky white silhouette of a dollar sign on our collective dress. The only problem is that our stain is never going to get us on the nightly news.
Any feedback, thoughts, or counterpoints are always welcome.
Comments
Submitted by Whamolla on Wed, 08/16/2006 - 08:14
Submitted by Q on Wed, 08/16/2006 - 08:37