Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Can't Do Hardware

Microhard



Summary: The hardware business is proving too hard for Microsoft, still

THE XBOX 360 is a story of how to burn money because consoles are sold (and repaired) at a loss. Xbox 360 hardware was a technical disaster and Microsoft is still paying for it. Microsoft's KINect seems like yet another case of bad hardware for reasons we named before [1, 2, 3]. Sony's attempt to emulate the Wii's controller is already leaping ahead of Microsoft's:



Gamescom: Move beats Kinect to major award



An expert panel at Gamescom - the German trade show that brought us all sorts of juicy announcements this week - has crowned Sony's Move controller as the best hardware accessory at the show.

The jury, which consisted of celebrated German video games industry experts, overlooked Microsoft's Kinect for the prize.


"Kinect lost out to Sony's move at the CVG awards," Tim said last night.

Chips B Malroy contributed some more news last night, as well. According to this, for example, "Kinect [is] Truly Dumb at Launch" as "the voice chat feature touted at the E3 unveil alongside voice control won't be ready for November 14th."

"Kinect is really becoming dumbed down and a product of bait and switch," Malroy explains. "Lower graphics video camera, no sign language, on now no voice control. Perhaps the 'Kin' name is appropriate."

Another news item says that "Video chat will also be missing on launch, presumably to be turned on "in due course" as well."

“Kinect is really becoming dumbed down and a product of bait and switch [...] Perhaps the 'Kin' name is appropriate.”
      --Chips B Malroy
"At the top of the list of issues that Microsoft's Kinect controller for the Xbox 360 faces is the problem of interference from people not in the virtual driver's seat of the console," says another new report. "That's a very bad sign, especially with Kinect due out in about three months. The fact that he couldn't tell me what Microsoft would be doing to resolve the issue was an even worse sign" (thanks Malroy for the link).

This article says that "MICROSOFT is selling advertising on the home screen of its Xbox 360 gaming console for the first time." It also says that "The ads, which can be seen on the Xbox Live platform on consoles that are connected to the internet, will be displayed as tiles that open up full-screen video or link to a branded destination page featuring downloadable content."

"So it uses up your bandwidth as well," says Malroy.

Microsoft has failed in hardware every time it tried, the exceptions being mice and keyboards perhaps. "Microsoft Windows glider crashes," says another new article:

Those of you who've been following our Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) programme are invited to spare a thought today for Microsoft's Phoenix glider, which failed to demonstrate the Right Stuff over the weekend at Red Bull's Flugtag competition in Long Beach, California.


Microsoft is not a hardware company. At the moment it just tries taking credit for a new microchip from IBM, falsely claiming it to be its own 'innovation'. Don't be easily misled by articles about it. That's just PR.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
 
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
The OSI is compromised
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Richard Stallman (RMS) Was Right About "Sideloading" in 1996
We now have computers that treat booting GNU/Linux like an act of "Sideloading"
Panama: Windows Down From 97% "Market Share" to Less Than 30%
In 2009, Windows was measured at 97.24% (compared to 62.32% right now or less than 30% if one also counts Android)
The UEFI 9/11 - Part I - Introduction to Impending Catastrophe (Microsoft Preventing People From Booting Non-Windows Systems)
eight-part series
Why Techrights is Slow Today (Bot Floods)
We don't know if those bots are connected to LLMs (we have not checked), but that is a possibility
Slopwatch: DDoS Slop, LinuxBSDos.com Spam, and Slopfarms in Google News, Including webpronews.com
Among the news we also found fakes, albeit not so much today
Links 26/08/2025: "Ballooning Debt" in France and "Transnational Repression in the UK"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/08/2025: Listening to Alcest and Google Doing Evil (Users Installing Software is "Sideloading" and Prohibited)
Links for the day
Links 26/08/2025: DNS Tampering and TikTok Layoffs
Links for the day
Microsoft's Windows "Market Share" Overestimated
Microsoft's income sources are shrinking
We Shall See...
My wife and I are hardly the first victims of Brett Wilson LLP
This New Determination on a Case Echoes the Modus Operandi of Microsoft's Serial Strangler vs Techrights (Its Online Decision/Judgment Says Truth and Public Interest Defend the Publisher)
Noel Anthony Clarke hopefully has enough money left to pay his victims, which include the publishers
Going Offline
There was life before the Net
The Register MS Has Apparently Shut Down Its Office
It is basically a fake address on the face of it
There Are Also Expectations of IBM Layoffs Very Soon With "Narrative Control."
Some of them mention Red Hat and how IBM failed to achieve anything substantial with that acquisition
After at Least Two Rounds of Mass Layoffs in August Microsoft Said to Have "September Layoff Confirmed - Performance Based"
Those "M5 level meetings" sound plausible
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 25, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 25, 2025