Investors Press Bill Gates To Go After Ballmer Departure

[Lightknight]

All Microsoft needs is a CEO with a customer first mentality. This crap they've been doing with their OS and hardware lately where they tell customers what they should want and what the future is and then proceed to try and force it on us (even after we complain about it) is insane. A great way to lose customers.

The first and easiest example is the loss of the start button. It should be optional but they decided to force it on anyone upgrading to win8 just so that it'd work well remotely and "that's the future!". They even added a start button that pushes people to the metro menu which does avoid the crappy hover interface to get back there but doesn't give customers back the menu they actually want. All previous OS' had skins of earlier OS's. Win7 even allows you to install a free XP VM. But win8 says "my way or the highway" and so win7 sales are still strong. Why should Microsoft care if the client wants to use the traditional start menu? I work with large firms who have literally gone to third party apps to install a start menu on Win8 and Server 2012 environments. Without it, remote management is incredibly difficult with the absence of hot keys (if you are remoted into a machine and press the windows button or ctrl+most things, it prompts something on your actual machine rather than on the machine you're remoted into).

Then you have stuff like the anti-consumer actions of the XBO just because they want to force a future on consumers we don't want. That's got to change.

They don't need Gates to step up and become a technological visionary. They need Gates to orientate MS towards consumers rather than other companies.

Exactly.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

How did that relate to anything I said?

Like... at all?

I said that, if Xbox dies, it's likely that another contender would step up to the plate before Sony got derpy.

What do you mean if sony got "derpy"?, is it like some mental disease a company can catch if it's not favoured by some?.

 

[GAunderrated]

It might induce Valve to be more aggressive, or may allow Nintendo to stick their hands in the AAA market properly. Or it might allow another company to put out a wildly popular console.

PS and Xbox are not the be-all-end-all consoles.

You mean like how a lot of fans of Valve want the new Steam machine to be the end all to be all?.

The exact same could go for the supposed "new wild popular console", besides Nintendo (who have been doing their own thing for a very long time) I can't see anyone else trying to take over everything and we shouldn't have one take everything.

At the end of the day we don't want one of them to monopolise everything just because a few want it that way.

How did that relate to anything I said?

Like... at all?

I said that, if Xbox dies, it's likely that another contender would step up to the plate before Sony got derpy.

It doesn't and that is the point. That poster is wonderful at demonstrating why the gaming community cannot have a rational discussion. Too many strawman arguments and uneducated people throwing wild accusations out to actually have a conversation.

OT: This seems like a power play. However, without a visionary at the top Microsoft will continue to die by 1000 paper cuts.

 

[lacktheknack]

How did that relate to anything I said?

Like... at all?

I said that, if Xbox dies, it's likely that another contender would step up to the plate before Sony got derpy.

What do you mean if sony got "derpy"?, is it like some mental disease a company can catch if it's not favoured by some?.

Good question-dodge!

Derpy is a context sensitive word. As most people can gather, in this case it means "stagnates and starts charging more than it should because of lack of competition".

 

[Talvrae]

I might be mistaken, but i'm pretty sure Bill Gate already quitted the company, sure he still the biggest shareholder, but he isint calling the shot anymore right?

 

[cerebus23]

Alot of MSs success under gates, was back in the days when he was still copying apples os, to be fair apple was copying microsoft features also, but also anti strong arm business tactics, alot of which have been beat down by courts and law suits.

bill never played nice with others, he wanted to gut them all like slaughtered pigs.

not sure more of bill is what microsoft needs, putting someone in that is more pro consumer, open source, would be a good step, recommitting to the pc side of things more, develop direct x but hey now graphics card makers are doing an end around you there. streamlining windows, cut the bloat, make it simplier, make it more secure, we really need a pure gaming os, or a real gaming mode for windows the shuts down all those unnecessary processes, stops updates, prioritizes 3d applications, and so on, pcs are 100x more powerful than the ps4 and xbone even now on the high end side.

With steam making its own linux based gaming os, what is the point of windows if that steam os actually ends up running games better? will that game in linux support my pc mods? will the mp work properly cross os?

sure the steam os has alot of unknowns about it but it being open sourced will make it extremely customizable eventually.

How about getting back to really making the leanest meanest os out there, get back to what you built your company on before it is too late. steam, AMD, and Nvidia are all making moves to cut out microsoft and windows.

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

"Gates is far more focused on his philanthropy these days than the company he co-founded"

So he's become too good a person to be a business man anymore? Sounds about right. And apparently MS shareholders don't want their money going to help anyone but themselves.

 

[TomWiley]

Not to suggest Bill Gates isn't objectively the best person in the world who has ever lived and will live, but I doubt he's up for running the company. Philanthropy seems to be taking up most of his time as it is. It's not just a hobby he can temporarily put aside to focus on Microsoft.

 

[TomWiley]

Alot of MSs success under gates, was back in the days when he was still copying apples os, to be fair apple was copying microsoft features also, but also anti strong arm business tactics, alot of which have been beat down by courts and law suits.

bill never played nice with others, he wanted to gut them all like slaughtered pigs.

not sure more of bill is what microsoft needs, putting someone in that is more pro consumer, open source, would be a good step, recommitting to the pc side of things more, develop direct x but hey now graphics card makers are doing an end around you there. streamlining windows, cut the bloat, make it simplier, make it more secure, we really need a pure gaming os, or a real gaming mode for windows the shuts down all those unnecessary processes, stops updates, prioritizes 3d applications, and so on, pcs are 100x more powerful than the ps4 and xbone even now on the high end side.

With steam making its own linux based gaming os, what is the point of windows if that steam os actually ends up running games better? will that game in linux support my pc mods? will the mp work properly cross os?

sure the steam os has alot of unknowns about it but it being open sourced will make it extremely customizable eventually.

How about getting back to really making the leanest meanest os out there, get back to what you built your company on before it is too late. steam, AMD, and Nvidia are all making moves to cut out microsoft and windows.

It's funny how so many people seem to view Microsoft's success or demise from a very "gamer centric" perspective. Microsoft's hardware department stands for maybe 6 percent of their revenue. And with hardware, I included Surface tablets, not only Xbox.

With other words, even if Xbox One doesn't ship one single unit, the company wouldn't even risk losing more than maybe a percentage of it's revenue. It wouldn't kill the company.

As to the SteamOS thing. Even if every single Steam-user decides to promptly leave Windows behind completely to use SteamOS (which would be weird seeing as SteamOS is not a general purpose OS so these gamers would still have to use Windows for work or school), the amount of Windows users who actually are dedicated gamers probably is so relatively small that it wouldn't cause any substantial loss of their userbase. Windows gamers is not one of their main customer segments.

 

[BrownGaijin]

As much as Microsoft needs to be more customer friendly, I don't ever recall Gates talking about being customer friendly to begin with.

 

[Forobryt]

Ok i'm not a stock person but I assume that each share gives a certain amount of power in regards to the running of the company divided by the total number of shares.

If Bill wants to make the xbone out of solid Ivory because its flashier he would have 4.5% voting power. These shareholders dont like ivory becuase they all love elephants so they all vote against for a total of somewhere greater than 5%.

Now lets do some maths is 4.5% a higher percentage than over 5%, no. So unless other investors are also wanting to make ivory xbones you havent got anything to worry about.


N.B This post in no way aims to say Bill Gates is evil ivory hunter, nor that the investors are Elephant loving hippies, its was a fictional story i pulled out my arse to illustrate a point.