Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

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And more importantly, are any of these areas Sony threatened actual cash cow businesses like Windows or Office?

Yes. Microsoft thought that Windows in the consumer marketplace was threatened.

Here was the theory that both companies had then (and maybe still have). A digital convergence between media and computers is inevitable. Whoever controls that platform will see a large growth in business. Whichever gets replaced will see a large drop in business. One of the keys to winding up in control of that platform was to get richer content for your platform. The key to that was to deliver a DRM system that Hollywood liked.

With that in mind take another look at Sony's WebTV, Microsoft's Media Center, the Blu-ray vs HD DVD war, and moves towards DRM from both companies over the last decade. The battle so far has been a draw. WebTV failed to dent the PC market place. Blu-ray won. Consumers don't like DRM, but a certain amount of it has been shoved down our throats anyways.

Incidentally I believe that Sony still thinks this could happen, and this is one reason that they are involved in the Google TV platform.

It is not obvious to me that spending billions on Xbox to suck the wind out of Sony's sails is superior to investing in Windows itself as a means of protecting Windows in the consumer marketplace.

You're describing spending billions of dollars to become the dominant player in an uncertain business in the hope that someday down the road you will be able to recoup all your billions by enjoying a monopoly position. But (a) they have spent years on this and are only fighting to a draw, and (b) it's not clear that by the time one of them "wins" that the business will work the same way for media that it did for PC software or operating systems.

They are trying to replicate the business model for Windows, and failing, while meanwhile companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google are bringing entirely new business models to the marketplace.

As Mitch Hedberg would put it, that's a double-whammy.

In business the right course is often not obvious, and the merits of different approaches can be heavily debated.

In the case of the Xbox, Microsoft did both. It spent money developing the Xbox. It spent money investing in Windows. It also took lessons from the Xbox to make Windows itself a better gaming platform. And finally the cost of the Xbox approach was not as much as you'd think, because the division stood to recoup much of its costs.

How much did this cost Microsoft in the end? Less than you'd think, given the article. While it is true that costs were measured in billions and profits in millions, those costs were fixed development costs in the low billions, and profits recently have been quarterly profits in the hundreds of millions. I believe that at this point, over all generations of the Xbox, Microsoft is in the black. (But if they had invested their money differently, they could be further in the black.)

So what was the result in the end? I think they sliced something like a quarter off of Sony's profit margin. Almost for free. And Sony failed to execute on their strategy of having TVs replace PCs in the home.

Whatever you think of the merits of the strategy, Microsoft clearly thinks it works. They have used it repeatedly. For example look at Bing. And I wonder whether Google TV is an attempt to return the favor.

In business the right course is often not obvious, and the merits of different approaches can be heavily debated.

At the time many things are obscured by "the fog of war," however, in publicly traded businesses the wrong course is perfectly obvious after the fact by examining the result as measured by the return on investment in the stock.

If you wish to laud Microsoft's choices, carry on without me.

There is a lot more that feeds into the return on investment in the stock than specific decisions due to one business conflict.

Microsoft's fundamental business problem is that they are on the wrong side of some disruptive innovations. And that is a very difficult business problem to face. No matter how competent the management, if a company is caught in that trap it is normal to see poor returns in the stock market. Read _The Innovator's Dilemma_ and _The Innovator's Solution_ for more on that.

Microsoft's problems are made more difficult by the fact that Bill Gates stepped down and left Steve Ballmer in charge. They went from having one of the most effective CEOs out there to someone who I think is a liability.

However, despite those factors, it is still possible to look at specific decisions and have opinions on how good or bad they were. And I think that Bill Gates' decision to start the Xbox was good.

However, despite those factors, it is still possible to look at specific decisions and have opinions on how good or bad they were. And I think that Bill Gates' decision to start the Xbox was good.

I think it is possible and laudable to make up your own mind about specific business decisions. However, it isn't really possible for us to argue the point unless we can agree on a metric for measuring their efficacy.

From an empirical perspective, a theory ("XBox is a good decision") is only meaningful if it is falsifiable. I only have two metrics in my toolbox for starting a new line of business: The ROI of the specific business and the ROI on the stock overall.

However, not all discussions neatly map to empirical methods, and even then there are other metrics besides those two ROIs. If you are saying that there is some validity to this discussion that can't be measured quite so neatly, if there are these "strategic" considerations that require a leap of faith to appreciate, well I can't argue with you.

I'm not trying deflate your argument by suggesting it's faith-based. Most corporations make a lot of decisions that aren't falsifiable. Executives stand up all the time and say, "it looks bad but it could have been worse," and it's very difficult to naysay them because we can't run A/B testing and find out whether Microsoft-Xbox does better or worse than Microsoft+Xbox.

So... In the spirit of Christmas I will wish you well and thank you for sharing your opinions in a reasoned tone.

I'm glad you elaborated on your original comment, but you're showing the fallacy of a zero-sum game perspective between Microsoft and Sony. I'd consider both companies to have lost, and lost greatly, to Apple. The battle over media formats and the console market share opened the door to disruptive products and services from Apple. Both Microsoft and Sony gave up an early lead in the mobile device market to Apple, as well. If they aren't sweating yet about those little $99 iOS boxes from Apple, then they still aren't paying attention.

You're right about Apple, as I indicated in my initial post when I said that Microsoft's mobile strategy has been a disaster. However it is important to keep in mind that a company always has to deal with problems on multiple fronts. The fact that I think they made a good decision on one issue doesn't mean that they didn't make bad ones elsewhere.

I think it is also important to pay attention to the timeline. The Xbox decision was made under Bill Gates. The Apple missteps were made under Steve Ballmer. There may be a reason for that...

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