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Comment by jussij | Hacker News Reader

> MS doesn't really make money off C# or .Net directly, they make money off the windows licenses you need to run the resulting code.

On this page: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/02/microsoft-updates-visual-st...

There is this quote:

Microsoft also today announced that Visual Studio 2013 has sold over 3.7 million copies since its release less than five months ago. That makes it the fastest-selling release of Visual Studio to date.

Based on those numbers and the fact that Visual Studio prices range from about $1,000.00 for VS Professional up to $13,000.00 for VS Ultimate, I'd say they make quite a bit of money of C#, .Net (and of course C++ as well).

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I payed $99 for VS2013 Professional, as did many others. Which is probably a key factor in why it is the fastest selling release.

$499 is pretty good value over a year as well I found!

How did you get it so cheap? Is it an educational one that has restrictions on releasing applications produced with it?

Looks like there was an MSDN deal for upgrades from VS 2012 (expired on Jan 31, 2014 though).

http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/The-99-VS2012-Pr...

At $100.00 a pop those sales numbers would still indicate VS generated sales revenue of $370.00 million.

My guess is the actual revenue figures are probably in the $1B to $2B (B = billion) range, which isn't too bad for a product that I'm sure Microsoft doesn't consider one of their big money makers and a product line that I'm sure they also subsidise with income from sales of their other products.

I too suspect Microsoft looks at VS as an essential, break even product, but with sales numbers like that I can't believe they aren't also making a nice little profit from VS.

Well, that's not making money off C# and .NET directly - it's IDE sales. Btw, I worked on VS Express (in a commercial environment) for a long time.

Those sales also include MSDN You can buy VS 2013 right now, without MSDN for around $400.00. Still pricey IMHO. But no where near the 1k price-point you referenced.

Impressive numbers.

VS2012 was shockingly bad. VS2010 users who dodged it were now 2 releases behind.

I am still using VS2010 at work. What was bad about VS2012?

VS2010 does keep me from using C++11 features, but that isn't a massive problem.

Curious, what was so bad about 2012? I could barely even tell the difference when upgrading to 2013, aside from the addition of the nifty Peek Definition feature.

I wouldn't call 2012 terrible, but 2013 seemed a marked improvement to me. Little features and enhancements were sprinkled all over the place. Better Blend functionality is one enhancement I've noticed.

We are using VS2012 at work and it works like a wonder. Am I missing something?

VS has been around a lot longer than C# and although anecdotal I would hazard a guess to say the majority of those sales were at massive discount to schools and universities not to mention there is no way they would get 13k a pop in other countries.

Like I said they dont make money off the language or the framework directly it being open source will certainly not hinder or hurt their vs sales. It will most likely increase them.

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