6.18.04
How Microsoft shapes your world
There have been several "root" blog articles lately pointing fingers at Microsoft entities as being brain dead and losing their core development audience due to seeming lack of improvements and/or direction. While both articles, and subsequent trackbacks, are indeed excellent reads, both seem to focus too narrow of a scope on a much bigger picture.
While discussing the two earlier articles with a co-worker, he made a very unobvious point. Microsoft doesn't want people to use PC's for gaming. After initial shock at such an allegation, conspiracy theories really started to hold water. MS made renouned controllers. The press realease as to why they stopped may have sounded plausable at the time, but why would they jump right back into a cousin industry with the Xbox?
The Xbox was initially received with the usual share of critical sneer, but has truly revolutionalized the home gaming/multiplayer market. PC's didn't do it, well at least on the common place scale as console gaming did. MS has also already stated that the Xbox was intended to be an extention to centralized entertainment, along with the Media Center OS.
So, where am I going with this? Why did I mention the two articles at the outset? Both of those look at flaws in what MS is doing because it seems counter productive. Wrong, dead wrong. What MS is doing is grooming people away from looking at their PC's as the multi-functional equipment that its seen as now, and making them see PC's/Windows OS as specific operation tools. MS's developmental focus isn't on improving Internet Explorer...on the PC. There isn't any reason that a new versions of the Xbox can't be used like an improved WebTV interface, complete with a top notch brower capable of all the tricks. MS already more than justified its inclusion of an Ethernet interface on it.
MS's new OS (Longhorn) plans to exploit "the full power of your computer." Nowadays, the main driving force for upgrading a PC is to play the new demanding games being produced. So, what if you're not a gamer? Well, there's a new reason to update your PC...if you want to stay up to date, OS wise. I'm almost willing to bet that once that OS drops, it will be nearly impossible to run games enjoyably on. Fortunately, MS will be there to offer the next generation Xbox to pacify the weary.
Is this speculation? Of course, but it seems to make sense. Why would MS devote a whole OS just to being a media recording center? What is stopping them from making an "office center" or "multimedia production center?" They already seen that with a simple OS update, they could convience people that they needed the latest and greatest hardware just to have the best XPerience from it. And remember, gaming is already burned into the psyche as solved by the Xbox.
What ever the future holds, Microsoft's dominance within the "home user's" is there to stay, in one form or another.
9:38 pm in geekness | 1 person viewing0 ramblings so far