Summary: Microsoft's attempts to sell hardware products such as consoles, portable media players, and phones seem destined to burial

BASED on the past week's news, Microsoft's RRoD saga takes a turn for the worse. RRoD has already cost Xbox literally billions in losses and Microsoft will be cutting corners from now on by not providing customers victims with “coffins” in which to bury their dead Xbox 360s and ship them to Microsoft/repair.

These days Microsoft is no longer shipping gamers who have a dead Xbox 360 a postage-paid cardboard packing box (affectionately called the "coffin") for the return of the console. While Microsoft still pays for shipping both ways, it's up to the console owner to provide the packing materials for the trip back to the repair center.

But wait, it gets worse. Both Nintendo and Sony shower Microsoft with insults and ridicule. Nintendo says [1, 2, 3] that it "Would Be Embarrassed to Behave Like Sony and Microsoft". Here are the exact quotes:

Talking to the Kotaku blog, Reggie Fils-Aime, the president of Nintendo of America, went on the offensive, saying that “I think we would have been embarrassed to do what our competitors are currently doing,” adding that “all I can tell you is that we will innovate. We will provide something new. Something that the consumer and the industry will look at and say, 'Wow, I didn't see that coming'.”

Sony too is mocking Microsoft [1, 2], but it's probably expected. Nintendo and IBM are the only large companies that actually make a lot of money from consoles.

Looking at Microsoft's failed attempts to become relevant in phones, the latest step disappoints. To name some new articles:

1. Microsoft Doing Little to Reassure Mobile Biz Customers

There is a growing gap between what business technologists want from Windows Phone 7 and what Microsoft may actually deliver.

2. Microsoft Immediately Stumbles in Quest for Well-Designed Phone Apps

Sadly for Microsoft, when you start digging into the actual documents, you immediately realize: Microsoft might suddenly care about design in a new way. But it doesn't mean that they've actually changed as a company.

3. Does Microsoft thinking copying the 2007 iPhone is a good idea?

Check out Todd Bishop's spin (he is a longtime Microsoft booster):

4. Windows Phone manager's exit a good sign for Microsoft's strategy

Normally the departure of a key program manager does not signal positive things about a product, particularly with only a few months to go before it ships. But Mel Sampat said today that his decision to leave Microsoft's Windows Phone team to start his own app development firm was actually a vote of confidence in the company's potential to support a strong ecosystem of third-party apps.

Right. So if Mel Sampat had stayed at Microsoft, surely that would be a sign of Windows Mobile failing, according to the logic of Microsoft's spinners. If a project gets abandoned by a manager, then it means success, right? Spin, spin, spin. Check out the latest Windows Mobile spin from Microsoft Nick. They are truly getting desperate for positive news. Chips B. Malroy wrote about Nick half an hour ago: "Nicholas Kolakowski over on the old MS Watch site is putting all the commentators to sleep with his excessive MS fawning. It's like a ghost town over there." ⬆