Comment by latch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by latch | Hacker News Reader

My experience with Microsoft is that they still fundamentally don't understand that everything has changed around them. They believe they are right because they are Microsoft and poor sales, poor reviews and poor stock performance is really just an unfair world set against them. What else could it be? We are Microsoft!

When I tried to engage Microsoft about better supporting indie game developers on Windows Mobile phone, the sense that I got was that XBox was successful brand and that adding Xbox-like services to Windows Phone could jeopardize this brand. How could they offer a free achievement system for indie developers and still justify charging $50K for similar services on Xbox? (source: I'm the creator of mogade.com)

You really get the sense that the comical org-chart representation of MS is accurate: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1OeWV6O5BzM/TmjGWNGlO7I/AAAAAAAAAA...

How does this relate? I'm not surprised to see that the Azure team is attempting this whereas the Windows Phone team never did. It's obvious now, looking back at it, but I should have engaged the Azure team, not the Windows Phone team, for any truly progressive thoughts on mobile development.

Does everyone forget that the U.S. government brought an antitrust case against Microsoft and nearly broke them up? That experience certainly cooled them off a bit.

They've slowly aligned themselves in the background with Facebook, Yahoo, and even Apple against Google. They just inked another licensing deal with Foxconn for use of Android and Chrome OS of all things.

I can't speak to the company or your experience, but I recall MSFT doing a bunch of outreach a couple of years ago for Windows Phone - free devices, etc. Large companies often have silos with their own focus - getting one to adopt the practices of the other may be difficult.

Maybe reengaging or conversing with one of the WP dev evangelists might make additional progress - maybe not immediately, but establishing a relationship, comtinual dialogue, and persistence can sometimes help turn a large ship.

They're still doing that sort of outreach. I got a free Lumina 800 for building a Win Phone 7.5 app.

I had been an active MVP before then and already knew a lot of people within. I'd say your assessment is right though, they had specific ideas on how to make WP successful and that's what they were going to stick to (largely by spending money, ie, "buying" Nokia).

Even now, despite poor sales (presumably), calling their agility glacial would be over complementing them.

One problem I had with the WP dev evangelists is that they seems stuck in the quantity over quality kind of mentality.

I'm pretty sure today it is clear that the number of apps in the store is not important compared to say, what apps are in the store. but till today, I still see campaigns by the local WP dev evangelists putting out contest to promote people submitting as many apps as possible (e.g. giving a prize for submitting 5,10,20,50 apps, etc).

>How could they offer a free achievement system for indie developers and still justify charging $50K for similar services on Xbox?

they can't. but is offering a free achievement system for indies going to net them enough to compensate for the loss of AAA developers on xbox? probably not. microsoft's earnings came out last week - they're still beating google on both gross and net revenue. They're not entirely stupid over there. I agree with you, they definitely don't seem to be progressive or well positioned for the future, but they're making money.

I've seen this org chart comic 100 times and always assumed it was xkcd. Really surprised it isn't.

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