Microsoft's Plan to Be King of All Media

An anonymous reader writes "Saul Hansell from the New York Times spoke with Microsoft's J. Allard, formerly of the Xbox games division and now in charge of their push on Apple's captive audience with the Zune. Allard lays out Microsoft's media battle plan, highlighting their longterm goals for expanding beyond games and software. 'This service will at some point add more options for video and mobile phones, Mr. Allard said, without offering details. Actually, Microsoft has been quite successful selling video downloads and online movie rentals through the Xbox Live service already. This seems a bit too much like the initial plan for MSN. This new network would be the switchboard through which all entertainment content and communication flows. Pretty much everything else in the technology world now is revolving around open systems where the Internet, and some simple standards, are in the middle.'"

All media?

[Uusilehto]

longterm goals for expanding beyond games and software.

How about focusing on being the king of software before going for the whole pie? And since when have games not been software anyway?

Wrong.

[Square Snow Man]

Xbox was and is a total failure so is Zune and everything else microsoft tries to force into peoples face. Xbox 360 is a huge risk, the 33% (or more) failure rate is not helping them either with World Domination(tm) in the living room. Not to mention, they make people pay _monthly_ to play games online.

not legal and not their style..

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has already been declared to have an illegal monopoly in Software. The more they increase this, the more pressure for them to be broken up. It may not be likely in the current political climate, but you can never tell when things change. E.g. if Microsoft is blamed when the first serious and destructive trojan attack takes place, there could be real pressure on politicians who failed to act beforehand. It's better for them to focus elsewhere.

The second thing is that MS has always had a style of partnering then crushing. They need stupid partners to learn from then they replace crucial parts of those partner's value chain; finally they take over. This process has bee seen time and time again (IBM / Novell / Oracle (who fought back and so survived) / Borland (who didn't) / Lotus (who couldn't) etc.). In this case the media companies have bee so blinded by their fear of piracy that they forgot to be afraid of competitors. That is just perfect for Microsoft's style.

Prediction: in 10 years time the only media companies that will still exist will be those who start seriously fighting Microsoft within a year of now.

Re:All media?

[bigstrat2003]

First of all, "king of software" goes to the company with the most sales, not whoever has the best software. For that matter, I happen to think Microsoft makes the best software, but that's not what makes them king, it's their indisputable dominance with how much their software is used. Also:

And Microsoft Office X on the Mac was one of the best-reviewed versions of Office ever.

WTF is so wrong with that? If anything, that's a good thing, because it means Microsoft isn't deliberately fucking up their Mac version. Are you sure you aren't just letting MS-hate get in the way of logic here?

This Is Not The Future You Are Looking For...

[His Shadow]

Any world where Microsoft achieves these goals is not a world you want to live in. But thankfully we have Apple. Quicktime crushed Microsoft's aspirations for locking users into their what-will-we-call-it-this-year video format. The iPod and iTunes maintained the supremacy of MP3s over Microsoft's you'll-play-it-when-and-where-and-how-we-tell-you WMA hopes. And now the iPhone exposes WinCE on mobile phones as the miserable also ran it always was.

Neither of the DRMed to death replacements for the DVD are especially compelling. But if one has to win, it has to be anything but HDDVD.

Yes. The clear message is when it comes to digital content and control thereof, anything Microsoft is pushing is bad for consumers. But I would hope by now we wouldn't have to keep explaining why.

Re:This Is Not The Future You Are Looking For...

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither of the DRMed to death replacements for the DVD are especially compelling. But if one has to win, it has to be anything but HDDVD.

Riiiiight. Just because Microsoft backs HD DVD, let's all just ignore the fact that Blu-ray:

1) *Requires* the use of AACS DRM on all pressed discs, thereby increasing the already-hefty license fees indie filmmakers need to pay to produce BDs, hampering (for example) Creative Commons-licensed video delivery via BD, etc. Oh, and also let's ignore the fact that "burned" BDs won't work either... few players support them properly, and that number is *decreasing* with time as formerly-working players remove that functionality in a misguided attempt to halt piracy of commercial BDs. (Google 'PowerDVD 3319f', for just one example). Ever wonder why Amazon's CreateSpace site says that custom Blu-Ray production will be available "as soon as key technology issues are resolved" ? Those are some of the key issues. And they likely won't be resolved any time soon because they appear to be deliberate.

2) Has a region coding system working and restricting legitimate disc imports *today*, whereas HD DVD is region free with only abstract plans that it *might* support RPC in the future.

3) Is the only format to deploy the experimental BD+ DRM which requires running studio-provided executable code on your player before you're allowed to watch the movie.

To say nothing of the fact that Blu-ray is backed primarily by Sony (who are certainly no better than Microsoft regarding DRM and consumer rights issues). Ever hear of cutting off your nose to spite your face?

Any world where Microsoft achieves these goals is not a world you want to live in. But thankfully we have Apple.

Oh never mind. I get it. You're just anti-Microsoft because you're pro-Apple. The rest of your comment is spot-on too: the iPod/iPhone/iTunes system is *clearly* the very model of an open platform and doesn't in any way, shape, or form try to profit from the same lock-in you're accusing Microsoft of. I mean that's why the iPhone has had officially-sanctioned third-party apps since day one, not just vague promises of an official SDK next year that only came after months of hackers breaking the device wide open. Right? /sarcasm

Wake up and smell the coffee. Microsoft isn't the only threat. *Any* single company controlling too much of the media delivery landscape is bad news. People need to stop being "Consumers" and start being "Customers", demanding more for their hard-earned dollars/euros/etc., and above all ensuring that *no* company is free from competition.