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Ballmer baulks at Oz Xbox chippers charter (Register)
The Register reports on
Microsoft president Steve Ballmer's recent trip to Australia, and what he
thinks of Xbox hackers. "Linux? No, no matter how heroic the team
from the Xbox Linux Project is, Microsoft is not going to lose huge swathes
of revenue because all the purchasers run Linux instead and don't buy any
games. Its Xbox software licensing regime will be disrupted (as is the case
already for many players in the entertainment business) if it becomes less
possible or impossible to divvy up licences by territory and police it via
regionalisation, but one does wonder why the law should have to shore up
something as daft and artificial as regionalisation."
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Ballmer baulks at Oz Xbox chippers charter (Register) Posted Oct 22, 2002 19:34 UTC (Tue) by josh_stern (guest, #4868) [Link] John Lettice, the writer for the Register article, has a model for the XBox market. In his model, an XBox Linux user would buy the XBox to use as a cheap workstation and never buy any Microsoft games. That's possible, but it's also possible that having the extra ability to do some Linux stuff would add more value to the platform and make them more likely to buy it at all. In other words, there is another plausible model in which XBox Linux increases the expected game sales for MSFT.
Ballmer baulks at Oz Xbox chippers charter (Register) Posted Oct 22, 2002 20:25 UTC (Tue) by whitleych (guest, #6866) [Link] All M.S. customers should sit up and take notice of this. There was a similar story on news.cnet.com which indicated that M.S. would consider stopping the sale of xbox in australia until such time as the laws were what M.S. desired. Just as in the registers story, this should make all users wary. Replace "xbox" with "office" or "os" and you have a very large stick being held by a single company. If they will threaten to do it with one product, there is good reason to suspect they will do it with all others given motivation. It is time for U.S. lawmakers to sit up and take notice.
Ballmer baulks at Oz Xbox chippers charter (Register) Posted Oct 22, 2002 20:38 UTC (Tue) by tcranbrook (guest, #6869) [Link] They did take notice, when MS bought the DOJ deal.
Ballmer baulks at Oz Xbox chippers charter (Register) Posted Oct 23, 2002 12:36 UTC (Wed) by iceT (guest, #6913) [Link] It's an interesting hypothesis, but if MS decided not to sell Office or Windows in the U.S., they would certainly go out of business. Between the lawsuits from corporations that had decided to rely on those products and the lack of revenue, Microsoft could not afford to stay in business.I will suggest this, though: If they ever DO threaten to stop selling their stuff here, I'd hurry up and buy stock in things like Crossover office, Lindows, and etc., because people will be CLAMMERING to get on board with those products, because all of the OTHER Software companies will do ANYTHING to survive.
Ballmer baulks at Oz Xbox chippers charter (Register) Posted Oct 23, 2002 13:42 UTC (Wed) by whitleych (guest, #6866) [Link] I agree it's unlikely for the U.S. and probably everywhere else, but I would say the same about xbox sales both here and abroad. How many suits have been filed as a result of licensing 6? "forcing" your customer base to a subscription model from an "ownership" model seems to be a fairly drastic shift, yet as far as I know, noone has questioned the legality of it. The real point of course is that MS still has the attitude that it's their way or the highway. Several states, the DOJ and a judge should pay particular attention.CHW
M.S. consider withholding software until they get the laws they want? Posted Oct 24, 2002 12:47 UTC (Thu) by cpm (guest, #3554) [Link] Hallelujah! If *ONLY* this would come to pass.
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