“Following the departure of corporate VP Enrico Rodriguez, the company is merging Windows Media Center and Zune software groups into the same Interactive Entertainment Business group that handles the Xbox as well as all gaming,” Electronista reports. “The Mediaroom service for IPTV is also becoming a separate group within the Entertainment and Devices section.”
Electronista reports, “Microsoft has acknowledged that it plans to integrate Zune elements into Windows Mobile in the long term, but the most recent rumors would have it merge Xbox and Zune into Windows Mobile 7 and finally unify all its media efforts into a single platform.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Because merging a failed brand that has been a laughingstock since day one with a highly failure-prone (“Red Ring of Death” to the tune of billions of dollars) game console and cramming elements of each into a phone running Windows Mobile is a sure path to success.
Microsoft had better be very careful with Windows Mobile 7:
• We’ve been pushing the state-of-the-art in every facet of design… We’ve been innovating like crazy for the last few years on this and we’ve filed for over 200 patents for all of the inventions in iPhone. And we intend to protect them. – Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiling iPhone, January 9, 2007
• We like competition as long as they don’t rip off our IP, in which case we will go after them. We will not stand for having our IP ripped-off and we will use any weapons at our disposal [to stop it]. – Apple COO Tim Cook, January 21, 2009
@ ghostcop2000,
The Xbox 360 has a horrendous failure rate. It is also saddled with a HD-DVD. Do they make a Blu-Ray Xbox 360 yet? Strike 3 is the plethora of Shitty games for every good game. If you want a strike four, look at the new game prices.
Strike five, if you’re still interested, is Microsoft is losing Billions making the X Box. Only a company with 2 monopolies could afford a hobby like the X Box.
Anyway you look at it the Xbox 360 is a colossal failure.
does two fails make a win?
It never ceases to amaze me how misinformed MDN “Takes” are when it involves Microsoft (As well as most of the posters). The Xbox 360 is the most popular gaming machine now available. The merger of the Xbox, Zune and Windows Media Center teams into one makes a lot of sense. None of this is meant to disparage Apple (I am, after all a user of both Windows and OSX). But why does MDN and many of its readers feel the need to malign MSFT instead of trumpeting the virtues of Apple hardware/software. Do we have an inferiority complex?
Yeah, this does make a lot of sense, except look at the calendar! It’s 2010! How can they possibly justify not having done this in 2005?
This makes perfect sense for Microsoft. Combining the teams will leverage synergies allowing them to bring out a revolutionary mobile device. It will have powerful 3D graphics and support apps (including games). The retail cost will be low since MS will subsidize the hardware making it back on $79.99 audio tracks, it will be just large enough so it won’t fit in your pocket, it will require anti-virus software and will need to be updated every time you turn of on, it will require a wizzard to help you place a phone call since the keypad is buried 8 levels deep, and will randomly overheat and burn out.,
Wannabe is correct this should have been the way it was done 10 years ago . apple stopped doing this in the nineties, indeed it was one of Apples rejects in the early nineties that Microsoft bought and used as the basis for their mobile OS in the first place. That is why when Steve Jobs returned he did not want Newton being detached in a similar manner. This scatter gun approach has been a disaster for Microsoft and it seems to me that being rather more enlightened than Steve Ballmer to have noticed this fact is a rather intelligent critique on our part. Indeed if Stevie listened to us rather than his own brown nosing cronies perhaps he would have made this decision and others earlier.
Thankfully he is a law unto himself and again pointing this out is rather less misinformed than the bulk of the public comment on his less than stelar performance as head of a dominant yet stagnant corporation. I am sure that IBM wished they had seen the light some years before they stopped being the IT wonderkid.
In the end this is about killing zune without having to admit it rather like Apple killed pink and said they were incorporating its technologies into OS9. A branding exercise is what one would expect from a salesman so expect the zune name to be attached to anything and everything in the hope something will prove successful.
I have to agree that this might be a pretty good move at Microsoft. They are the two best teams at that company right now probably. The people in the OS unit aren’t that bad either, obviously.
The problem is that everybody is trying to catch up to Apple at the moment, and Apple is a moving target. Also, does anyone realize that Apple has possibly the largest cash reserves of any company in the world? At least 34 billion dollars in CASH. The only company that comes close to that is maybe Exxon-Mobil (check?). So even though there are (admittedly very strong) companies like Google out there, Apple has a lot of time to recoup and retool in case some amazing competition comes along.
The thing that Apple does not do very well right now is the cloud services stuff. But basically everybody is getting their ass kicked by Google right now. Specifically search, email and mapping. Would Apple ever decide to make their own mapping technology? Or free email service that rocks the house? Search engine?
Shun,
Google only kicks ass in free email if you never need service or have a problem, and don’t mind a huge monolithic company spying on you.
Their search results have major problems with highly ranked results from other search engines. Search could be done better tho I doubt Microsoft could be the ones to do it, and few others have the resources to even try.
Mapping is hardly owned by Google and there are many solid offerings out there. Google only benefits from a tie-in to their search.
As far as the X Box being the most popular platform out there? Try Wii, have you heard of it, tbsteph? Might want to Google up on it. Even the PS2 sold more units than the 360.
And please don’t dismiss the major problem of the enormous failure rates of the 360. So poorly designed it is well known for it’s Red Ring of Death problem. No other console system in the over thirty years of video game consoles has ever had this sort of cataclysmic failure rate. Leave it to Microsoft for being pioneers at new forms of sucking.
As to why many Mac fans hate Microsoft it’s pretty simple: they are tasteless bullies who have ripped off Apples ideas and replaced them with ugly crippled barely functioning virus ridden abominations that exist everywhere; including sadly in schools with children.
Microsoft has in 9 years overtaken Sony, who was the dominate console manufacturer and sold 60 million xboxes. In the process they’ve make a huge amount of money from software sales.
Games consoles are the media hub for the living room. Steve Jobs should have realised that the battle was lost before he released the AppleTV.
Could someone please explain why the Zune still exists?
Isn’t the Zune already one of the greatest of Microsoft’s several monumental failures?
Is this another dancing, sweating, raving Monkey Boy obsession? So Ballmer is still CEO because WHY?
I know Zune Tang® can explain it to us. There is something good, wonderful, sane and beneficial to mankind about the Zune and we just haven’t figured it out yet. Right?
The merger of the year is yet to come. Future headline:
MICROSOFT MERGES WITH SPRINT!
What a loss leader team that would make.
Wow, flipped out poster here:
Generic ‘me’ thing sez: “Microsoft has in 9 years overtaken Sony…”
Let’s be clear here. Sony EARNED their market share. Microsoft BOUGHT their market share.
Let’s also comprehend that Sony PlayStations are well made and actually WORK. Meanwhile, over 50% of XBoxes are DEFECTIVE and are returned to Microsoft for repair or junked.
“Games consoles are the media hub for the living room. Steve Jobs should have realised that the battle was lost before he released the AppleTV.
Total non sequitur. Typical troll turd.
– Question: What does the Apple TV have to do with game consoles?
– Answer: Nothing.
Wow Derek, three posts in a row. Go fanboy rage!
“Let’s also comprehend that Sony PlayStations are well made and actually WORK. Meanwhile, over 50% of XBoxes are DEFECTIVE and are returned to Microsoft for repair or junked.”
Ok Derek I’ve got some homework for you. Google “PS3 failure rate”. Also try to find a credible source for “50% of XBoxes are DEFECTIVE” and yes, defective has to be in all caps.
@me
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/101/1014486p1.html
Wow. First result. That was tough. Sorry no caps.
Like I said:
‘me’ is one flipped out dude.
Hey MDN:
DEMAND REGISTRATION!!!
I = bored to death with hit-&-run trolls.
@TheMacAdvocate
“The magazine surveyed nearly 5000 readers, asking them about their experience dealing with broken consoles. “
Credible is the key word, maybe I should have used caps.
Try to be honest with yourself; would you accept a failure rate figure based on a magazine survey for an Apple product? My guess is “TheMacAdvocate” would say no.
Zune Tang,
You are most welcome! We missed your acid humor.
Welcome back!
“Microsoft merges Zune software, Xbox teams”
And the horrifying screams and pleas for mercy from the requisite acid baths, stitching, stapling and cyanoacrylate sprays elicited this
” rel=”nofollow”> response.
Great post Ampar!
Thanks me, um, I mean you.
Remember, Ballmer masturbates to “The Thing.”
Farking shape shifters.
“Microsoft merges Zune software, Xbox teams”
Only in the world of Mathematics, the product of two negatives is positive. In real life, the product is an even greater stinker.
Once again, da Zune redundantly presents
Blah blah blah Mac users fear.
Blah blah blah life, the universe and everything rightfully belong to Microsoft.
Blah blah blah, just you wait, everything will soon be perfect, you’ll see, the dark ages, viruses, and taxes will end blah blah blah. Who knows Steve Balmer might invite me skating to his best friends house once his place freezes over blah blah blah.
Buh-bye MAC, we make the bull for da Windoze.
Blah blah blah blah.
And the fan club goes:
For those of you who are new here Zune Thang writes satire. Well that’s what we say, so it better be true even though Zune Thang has never said he writes satire, he actually never has too because we do it for him blah blah blah.