Hacker News Reader

Comment by TylerE | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft's track record on convergence devices isn't exactly stellar. Zune, Windows 8, even the newer Xbox Dashboard releases.

When MS has traditionally shipped decent software is when they've tried to do one thing well, ala Visual Studio.

View on HN

Not sure I agree. Xbox is a huge driver of Netflix/Hulu traffic. There's a lot of TV/movie watching which happens inside.

Sure, people use it, but the vast majority of Xbox gamers hate the advertising-laden clustermug the dashboard has become. Guess who buys $600 consoles at launch?

I'm pretty sure there's no data to back up that assertion. MSFT takes the dashboard UX very seriously and it is very data driven. If you see content there, it is because people want to see it and use it.

I'm also not sure the Xbox One is a console as much as it is a mix of Apple TV/gaming console/bluray player.

I don't like seeing advertisements on my game console. Advertisements annoy me more than most people.

But I only see them for the (literally) two seconds it takes to launch the game.

some vocal gamers hate them, the overwhelming number of gamers who don't moan on kotaku or neogaf probably don't care at all.

Indeed- I have drifted to 80% video 20% gaming. And the ability to watch live TV from within the console is a big win for my family. On my newer Samsung series 8 changing inputs is needlessly time consuming.

But Hulu/Netflix sales don't drive Xbox sales. I can just as easily watch them from a PS3 (or a Roku box).

but why would I pay for XBOX live on top of my Netflix/Hulu subscription fees when I can use those services for free on PS3/4 or WiiU?

because the xbox one will let you switch between your tv and game (using your voice) without you having to fiddle with your tv remotes

They also have a bad track record of supporting other companies technologies which, at least for me, makes convergence impossible. If they don't support AirPlay and can't play content from an iTunes library, I'll still need an Apple TV.

Apple is the culprit in this case. DLNA is the airplay standard for Everything Else(tm)

I've had DLNA devices for years and dealt with constant failures in various ways, AirPlay just works and changed the way I used my AV setup completely. Only a personal experience but I have heard plenty of complaining from friends as well.

Synology didn't seem to have much trouble adding AirPlay server support to their NAS devices and XBMC has support as a render target so I really don't see a reason MS wouldn't/couldn't support it other than NIH syndrome.

Also visual studio (and windows itself) are very thoroughly dogfooded. Which cannot be told for some of the other products. X360 RROD should have been impossible to miss.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com