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. ⬆