Poll: Do you like Microsoft?

[Scrustle]

I've never really "liked" them. Only ever been apathetic towards them. There have been some great games from their studios, but as an entity in and of themselves (in terms of gaming) they've never really had anything to make me excited.

But in recent times they've done a lot to gain my ire. In this console generation for example, they've always had really stupid restrictions on their hardware, meaning overpriced proprietary accessories, no wireless 3rd party controllers, and almost zero steering wheels to choose from. The ones that we were given have come under a lot of criticism too. Then there's all the shit you hear about how they treat indies and all the charges and stuff they demand. All the needless complications to the dashboard and the arrival of ads. And now we have all this crap with the Durango that sounds like a complete disaster, and makes MS look like they have utter contempt for their customers.

 

[Denamic]

Eh...
It's hit or miss with them. I don't dislike them, but I don't particularly like them either.
XP
Vista
7
8
360
720 or whatever
I don't want them destroyed, at least.

 

[braincore02]

On the other hand, they have contributed much to the world of gaming, what with their evolution of combat and whatnot.

Are you making a reference to Halo? Bungie developed Halo, and originally it was going to be a Mac game (and I'm assuming, PC as well). Microsoft had nothing to do with Halo, except to buy exclusivity rights to it, and make the series largely exclusive to the Xbox. So we can't play it on a proper FPS platform like PC. I'd say that is actually a detriment to gaming, a devolution more than anything.

MS sucks. Every now and then they make some cool things, but usually their schemes and actions are very antagonizing to the customers who support their business.

 

[magikfingaz]

Let's see...abused their monopoly a couple times in the past...360 hardware failures...their Surface Pro is a joke...Windows is incredibly bloated, yet there are now alternatives that do everything without compromises, so I'm stuck with it.

honestly the only reason i even use windows is because game developers only seem to develop for DirectX. Thats not going to change anytime soon until a new option becomes available that can work on all OSs

 

[itsthesheppy]

I really don't mind them. the online thing for the xbox is a joke, but that's why I don't bother paying for it. Windows is okay. GFWL is awful but isn't in many games I play so whatever.

 

[James Monk-Steel]

I voted 'No' because Microsoft has stymied as many developments as it has produced. Most egregiously, Microsoft has contributed to the decline in importance of the PC platform for games developers by making it more complicated to develop a game for PC than for console, i.e their bloated and unfairly ubiquitous OS. To hell with Microsoft, I hope the company collapses to make room for smaller and more forward looking companies.

 

[Assassin Xaero]

Mighty snip of justice

YMMV is all I can say. I for one adore 2007 Office and MSDN is fine for me, though I just started my programming journey. Still, VS is pretty amazing

I will admit, after my office just got "upgrade" to Office 2013, I miss whatever was before this. It, and VS2012, have the worst design I've ever seen. It is pretty much just a white block (VS can be turned into a "dark" block, while Office can go to "tiny bit more gray" and "slightly more gray than that" blocks). Not to mention that File, Edit, etc. on some (maybe all) of the applications is in all caps now.

 

[Woodsey]

Now that they finally seem to have fucked off with GfWL, I don't really come into contact with them that much. Windows 8 is meant to be shit but since it's apparently tanking, they'll hopefully continue the general rule of every other iteration of Windows being good.

So, meh.

 

[unlimitedwin]

They're a solid company. Windows 8 is excellent as is their other stellar software.

 

[zehydra]

No, but they make a decent Operating system.

They're terrible when it comes to gaming. Or really anything other than Windows.

 

[Stryc9]

I don't particularly dislike Microsoft, I remember a time when they were better and wish they could be that again and hope that someday they will get better. I've owned several of their hardware products over the years and I've used every version of Windows up to 7 at some point. I've never owned an Xbox of any sort but I've played on them a time or several. I've gone through a couple of Zunes which were\are excellent media players that were just horribly marketed.

Most of all I realize that they are not first and foremost a game company, they are an operating system and productivity software company and the other stuff is just things they do as basically sidelines to make more money.

 

[direkiller]

games for windows live can burn in a fire
but I don't particularly hate them