Comments on: Microsoft’s Virtual World?

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:40:17 +0000

And — if they really want to key-in and disrupt Microsoft from having any capacity for doing this… Then they’ll know not to bundle, and come at it from a different angle. MS is in the position where it appears nearly necessary for them to bundle. On the other hand, and the way that the other companies are set-up and mutually aligned, MS would be hitting a brick wall if they acted toward understand this about MS.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:37:17 +0000

I guess if you pay your lobbyists enough money to influence the powers-that-be, and then whine about other companies coming into sectors where you’re actively pursuing their initiatives — and crying and whining foul — then you understand more about how the game they’re playing has been played.

It’s fairly simple, actually. MS can’t make a move to fully bundle everything together — without another company doing the same. In that sense, companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft are all happily skipping down the yellow brick road to Oz — brick my brick.

By: avi

avi — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 09:10:01 +0000

Agreed, for the most part.But MS has a bigger edge over Google in that they have a gaming console and a captive audience. It’s unlikely that XBox users could use a Google World even if they wanted to.

I always wondered how console manufacturers got away with that, in terms of the laws against bundling. I guess it’s only because there are several choices of console and anti-trust may only kick in when one is highly dominant.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:42:15 +0000

MS was in talks with MindArk a couple years back, from what I heard, but that never amounted to anything. MS has a history of getting into talks with various entities — then, turn around with their own research product. (Shock, surprise.)

So will it surprise me if they launch into this area? Not really, as they’ve been actively ‘researching’ for a long time. The main thing with them, is that they take a while to seek-out their entry-point strategy — and once they have a lock on it, they roll with it and keep throwing money at it.

It wouldn’t make logical sense for them to not have Xbox, Live/VE, as well as web-apps, integrating through an overall VR platform. At some point, and based on the search and ad-space characteristics that they seem to be more interested in [due to revenues they seek] — they’ll bite the bullet on how that integration will be deployed, and what it means to them in the long-run… Which is where I think I speculate the most in regards to what their form of VR integration will come to be — based not entirely on the technologies that could be integrated, but what they’re looking at in the model to generate revenue.

So far, it looks like the most logical path — and in many ways, I see it as a necessity at this point for those segments to survive. Once they cross that threshold, however, I think those will be the most vulnerable times for them, because they could find themselves struggling with flexibility.

Google’s also in a very similar position, I think. The one edge that MS has over Google at this time, however — is that MS is more in tune with the ‘home network’. The ‘home network’ would actually scale nicely into a VR environment, as long as tools are provided to the end-user to map their location, and keep that data and layout completely secure.

By: Zim

Zim — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 02:12:21 +0000

-Hey Joe, want to hang out next weekend?
-Yeah, what can we do?
-Let’s do something like second life!

Why everybody pursues the same idea? Instead of developing their very own, and being original…

(sorry about my english)