11.16.08
More Microsoft Jack Revisionism
WE wrote about Microsoft Jack on numerous occasions in the past [1, 2]. We make special efforts to identify people in the press who spend their career promoting Microsoft and also mocking Microsoft’s competitors, so this new gem from Jack stood out. This article is about Xbox360.
I remember the original Xbox as a bit of a flop…
Well, that’s not necessarily true, according to Microsoft Jack himself.
“[T]he PlayStation 3 is already the biggest console ever — even bigger than the original Xbox,” said Jack in June 2006.
“[U]sers Microsoft now wants to reach with its Windows Live and Office Live websites, named and modelled after the successful Xbox Live online gaming service,” said Jack in November 2005.
“Hundreds of computer games fans queued for hours last night to become the first in Europe to own Microsoft’s first games console offering, Xbox,” said the Guardian in March 2002. There’s no telling if Jack wrote it too, but it’s possible.
Our polite guess is that several years later, since XBox is no more, Jack is trying to make the predecessor look like a loser compared to the current product. A familiar pitch from Microsoft is that Windows XP was as hated as Vista when it was first introduced and therefore Vista is bound to (already) be loved as much as XP. Of course it’s a lie.
It’s also similar to the “Vista 7 will fix Vista’s mistakes” pitch.
In reality, XBox360 is a disaster to Microsoft and it’s losing the company billions of dollar. Steve Ballmer recently called it a “funny product” because Microsoft is unable to make it profitable. He said the same thing about Zune. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
Needs Sunlight said,
November 16, 2008 at 10:22 am
You have a link somewhere about MS’ DRM testbed placing 6 out of 6 in the console market. You also have some links about the incendiary power supply causing property damage. There was also the replacement fiasco where people reporting faulty power supplies were given only replacement power cords.
Wii is at the top this year. PS3 is doing well, but being outstripped by Wii. Fixstars recently bought out Terrasoft, but for now, it’s still possible to order PS3 with Linux pre-installed:
http://us.fixstars.com/products/sony/ps3.shtml
David Gerard said,
November 17, 2008 at 5:26 am
The annoying thing about the XBox 360 is that it’s a very nice gaming console, and it *should* have been profitable. But they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting too many corners in manufacturing, and its image is forever blighted by the famous manufacturing defects.
Similarly, the Zune has decent hardware at a reasonable price. But they tied it to horrible firmware and horrible Windows software.
Jack did say he’d start using my image. Hasn’t yet. I can but hope. I’ll send him the Gimp XCF if he wants to remove my watermark.