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| Valve’s Gabe Newell: Windows 8 will be catastrophe for PC space |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-07-26 00:28:40 |
| Valve's Gabe Newall on Linux and Windows 8: "We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It's a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we'll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that's true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality." |
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| RE[2]: Comment by Wafflez |
| By lucas_maximus on 2012-07-26 07:28:01 |
| You know that Steam sells GFWL ... works fine btw. |
 - Score: 1 |
| RE: Comment by Wafflez |
| By bassbeast on 2012-07-26 07:37:11 |
|
Why did he get modded down? Its a fact. Sure we all know GFWL sucks the big wet titty, that the PC isn't an oversized Xbox so what works in one space doesn't mean it'll translate to another, that MSFT makes about the most user UNfriendly UIs of late and have been treating PC gaming as the red headed stepchild, but that don't change the fact that Gabe has a horse in the race folks. Of course he may have gotten modded down on account of being hit with a case of the crazies, seeing as how he actually thinks Live is better than Steam, has to be an Xbox guy that doesn't actually play PC games as I've had nothing but trouble out of Live and I can't think of a single gamer I know that has a nice thing to say about the service. In the end though I think the whole thing? tempest in a teacup. I mean think about it logically folks....Both Intel and AMD have already come out with figures saying their sales are DOWN thanks to a global recession that has belts being tightened, so the answer is....to RAISE prices on PCs and laptops by giving them touchscreens? Really? Look at the price of touchscreens folks, even with economies of scale they sure ain't free and the good capacitive ones are still pretty high. we ALL know that Win 8 is lousy without touch and the OEMs are hurting, so MSFT expects them to raise prices? Win 8? The new MS Bob. It bombs HARD, I've had one sitting in my little PC shop for customers to play with and so far NOBODY has liked the thing, the OEMs will either demand (and get) the right to do the same trick they did when Vista bombed, where they call it a "Win 8 PC" while shipping win 7 and a Win 8 DVD nobody will use, or they will get together and pick a version of Linux they can control and give MSFT the finger. I'm sure Google will be happy to give them a PC version of Android. More likely the WinVista trick lets MSFT pretend they didn't have a flop and old Gabe has nothing to worry about as Win 7 will be the new XP. I only hope this billion dollar failure finally gets the board to stand up and fire Ballmer, I mean how many billions has he flushed now? 20? 30? You could literally take a monkey and let 'em throw poo at the stock page and would see a better ROI by buying the stocks that get covered by caca than what MSFT has seen under more than a decade of Ballmer. Forbes is right, worst CEO by a mile. |
| - Score: 6 |
| They are doing it wrong |
| By sukru on 2012-07-26 07:45:00 |
|
Normally, I would expect a monopoly to use their existing established product (Windows 7) to force themselves into a new market (real tablets, not old stuff). They they seem to be doing it in the other way around. Windows 8 is effectively pushing their unfinished tablet interface into existing stable desktop monopoly. Nobody would complain if Metro was tablet only. But they force it so much into the desktop that they even disabled hacks that brought back regular desktop and start menu in the latest releases. Good going, whoever is in charge of decisions at Microsoft! |
| - Score: 9 |
| RE[3]: Interesting but wrong |
| By bassbeast on 2012-07-26 07:53:36 |
|
But both you and MSFT seem to be ignoring that big fat elephant in the room friend. PCs? Is a mature market because both AMD and Intel went past "good enough" and into "insanely overpowered" years ago and the average person? Can't even stress a 5 year old chip. Its a mature market where people don't replace until they die which with Ballmer flushing billions on his harebrained schemes simply won't cut it which is why they've posted their first loss in history. Lets use my dad as an example, because while i could use one of my customers frankly my dad is the perfect example of the "typical PC user". He has 3 PCs, a desktop at work, at home, and a laptop, and his use cases are about as bog standard as they come. He runs quickbooks at work and on both the work and home units as well as the lap he surfs, watches YouTube, chats, reads his webmail, bog standard stuff everyone does. About 3 and a half years ago I replaced his aging desktop with one of those "ZOMG $199 quad!" Tiger kits, its a 2.1 Phenom I quad with now 4Gb of RAM, about the lowest end quad you can possibly get, what have I found? he has YET to hit 45% CPU usage! I monitored him for over a month recently to see how it was doing and frankly he just can't come up with enough useful work to stress what is now a 5 year old chip. I found the same when I checked his Core 2 based Pentium dual at the shop, he's just not able to come up with enough useful work to slam that chip, highest he got was 60% when a tab hung. So MSFT needs to accept they are the new IBM, a company with a mature market that while it won't go away will never be the big seller it was in the days of the MHz wars, or they need to spin off mobile, call it MetroOS or whatever, and let them innovate without being tied into the legacy of the desktop. . |
| - Score: 6 |
| RE: Comment by Wafflez |
| By franko on 2012-07-26 07:57:26 |
| I am just happy that it is coming to Ubuntu. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Xbox is the way to go for Ms. |
| By bassbeast on 2012-07-26 08:03:48 |
|
Someone should mod you +100, because anyone that has used that abortion known as Games For Windows Live knows what a terrible POS it is. Its buggy, easily screwed up by an update, its just not good software and certainly not something I'd trust my CC to. If it comes down to Linux and Steam, or Windows and GFWL? I'll dual boot Linux as THAT is how much I can't stand GFWL. If I wanted a fricking Xbox I'd buy a fricking Xbox, quit trying to sell me XBox games in Games For Windows Live MSFT! |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE[3]: Interesting but wrong |
| By phoudoin on 2012-07-26 09:10:29 |
|
> They (Microsoft) have a self-perpetuating monopoly on general-purpose desktop computing; they will become obsolete when software itself becomes obsolete. Broken logic: they will become obsolete when *desktop* software itself becomes obsolete. While I don't see happened anytime soon in office rooms, I see a trend replacing desktop computing with mobile computing in house rooms. Which will lead to a situation where people will not be anymore fluent in office desktop computing as they are today because they have a desktop computer at home running on the same set of softwares. This could change a lot for Microsoft on the long term. There is a reason why they want to push the squared Metro framework in the rounded Windows ecosystem, and it's not for the office customers, which are locked-down since long. The main stream customer, on the other side, seems to move away... |
| - Score: 5 |
| RE: They are doing it wrong |
| By ThomasFuhringer on 2012-07-26 09:27:03 |
| Same with the 'Ribbon'. They have to force it upon us because if users were given an option they might vote with their feet. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[4]: Interesting but wrong |
| By lucas_maximus on 2012-07-26 09:36:23 |
| The loss was from writing off an acquisition ... it is technical loss not a real one. |
| - Score: 5 |
| RE[3]: Xbox is the way to go for Ms. |
| By henderson101 on 2012-07-26 10:25:57 |
|
I dunno, my hacked PSP does a far better job of running games and emulated consoles than my touch screen phone. It has hardware buttons and an analogue stick - something a phone can only dream of. The only games I tend to play and enjoy on my phone are those designed for touch. Edited 2012-07-26 10:26 UTC |
| - Score: 7 |
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