Will Microsoft Will Sell Off XBox?

[dlevere]

Posted by samzenpus on Monday January 21, 12:13 P.M.

An anonymous reader writes

"Forbes analyst Adam Hartung has predicted that Microsoft will sell off its entertainment division, which includes XBox, in the coming years. He even goes so far as to list Sony or Barnes & Noble as potential buyers.

Let's forget how crazy this sounds for a moment, and focus on the reasons why Hartung believes such a sale will happen.

It basically comes down to Windows 8, and how poorly it is selling. Combine that with falling sales of PC's, the Surface RT tablet not doing so great, the era of more than one PC in the home disappearing, and Microsoft has a big problem.

The problem not only stems from the PC market not growing, but because Microsoft relies so heavily on Windows and Office for revenue.

With that in mind, Hartung believes Steve Ballmer will do anything and everything to save Windows, including ditching entertainment and therefore XBox."

[Minion]

It sounds like Microsoft is just trying to do some trolling.

[bungholio]

As I see it: "An anonymous writer points out a Forbes analyst made a prediction that Microsoft will sell off Xbox because Windows 8 and Microsoft Office aren't selling good enough."

What is up with all of the Sony and Microsoft rumors in the past few months? Seems like I see new supposed leaks and whatever else all over the place since last E3. This stuff is just getting annoying to read, and how much truth is there in all of it? Who can sort through the bullcrap and get the facts? "An inside source says this, some person says that, somebody from something unrelated to this says this about this, an anonymous leak blah blah blah." I know nothing of Forbes, but this is what I first see:

Forbes is a leading source for reliable business news and financial information. Read news, politics, economics, business & finance on Forbes.com.

Nice image to give themselves, I always ignore all images people go for because they cannot be trusted unless you actually verify it yourself. Is this info supposed to help people that are into buying and selling stocks or something? I really don't know who this is supposed to concern or why I'd care about some anaylist's predictions.

[dlevere]

I don't really give a damn about Microsoft or Sony, since I don't have an XBox or PS3. I made up my mind a long time ago that if I can't cheat on a consoles games, I won't buy it. I learned that lesson with the GameCube. It wasn't until Parasyte created GCNcrypt that I was able to hack codes for the GameCube and cheat on it.

[bungholio]

I feel the same way. I definitely won't be on any consoles beyond this current generation. I lucked out enough that PS3 games could be hacked since those few hackers released the LV0 keys leading to all of the firmware keys. The Xbox 360 could be hacked too, but the only consoles that can do the JTag thing all have the problem that the little hack was fixed before the red ring of death. There's also the reset glitch hack for the 360, but I truly haven't bothered with trying to figure that stuff out because I don't want to open the thing up and do soldering, that's far too dangerous for somebody as shaky as me. I don't know much about the Wii being still hackable, but I do know the gamecube action replay was working at first, then there was the Zelda Twilight Princess thing, and more stuff I didn't read about since I didn't own one. The next generations are already dead to me considering this current generation does updates to no end to block all forms of cheating, which makes me think it will only become harder.

[Helder]

I only buy any game system if there are mods or hacks for it because I'm a cheap ass and don't want to pay for my games lol, unless its a really good game worth my cash. Plus I love to hack anything I play so if it has hacks of some kind its possible at some point or another, oh and the xbox360 is very hackable with the glitch hack. I have done jtags and glitch hacks for myself and others and the new hacked dashboards allow cheats to be used and made with ease.

[PEOPLECANFLY]

I only buy any game system if there are mods or hacks for it because I'm a cheap ass and don't want to pay for my games lol, unless its a really good game worth my cash. Plus I love to hack anything I play so if it has hacks of some kind its possible at some point or another, oh and the xbox360 is very hackable with the glitch hack. I have done jtags and glitch hacks for myself and others and the new hacked dashboards allow cheats to be used and made with ease.

If I was you I will do the same. xD

[dlevere]

I just hate dying over and over again. It's one of the reasons that I started to hack codes in the first place.

[bungholio]

I just hate dying over and over again. It's one of the reasons that I started to hack codes in the first place.

Same here for some games. Some games were made far too hard. Devil May Cry's Dante Must Die difficulty, the normal Devil May Cry 3 on normal difficulty, Battletoads on NES and SNES, Stuntman on the PS2, Super Ghosts and Goblins, Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine if you want to get things done completely, and a mountain of other games. Some games make you wonder what the makers were doing. Some RPGs also require too much grinding like Disgaea or hunting for that 1 pokemon or whatever. Either something is too hard, or something takes unrealistically long. Many games I like coasting through without too much effort just to get the story, and getting slaughtered and restarting at some far away checkpoint or entirely restarting long levels is something I refuse to deal with.

[dlevere]

Add some more to that list - all of the God Of War games, all of the Tekken games, and all of the Ninja Gaiden games.

[PEOPLECANFLY]

Add some more to that list - all of the God Of War games, all of the Tekken games, and all of the Ninja Gaiden games.

All Tekken games? They are easy as pie.

[bungholio]

I managed fine with the God Of War games, even though some of the puzzles in the 2nd one were infuriatingly confusing and the trial of the gods thing they had were far too hard. Tekken wasn't so bad, except for high difficulties, and trying to beat everything in the story or whatever mode on the 6th game. I've heard of the Ninja Gaiden games being infamously hard. Tekken on hard reminds me of 2 fighting games that were far worse for intentionally having horrible AI.

The Mortal Kombat games were horrible about AI fighting ever since the first one. The 2D ones made the AI wait about 10 seconds before unleashing fury on you that you couldn't reciprocate. You block, they hit low or grab. You jump, they jump after you and hit you which was absurd. You uppercut, they duck and counter with an uppercut. The 3D ones of the current generation were rotten on AI too on harder diffculties. At low difficulties they were brainless punching bags, on hard you were the punching bag. You block, they grab. You swing, they always dodge and counter, which is bull because you can't dodge, only they could. They never stopped swinging for even an instant.

I also remember Dragon Ball Z for the PS2 taking the cheap AI route. The instant you block, they grab. You swing, they counter. That and the later Mortal Kombat games had the AI instantly look at what you did and instantly countered it every time. That's some of the most unfairly hard AI there is, because there's no way around other than mashing buttons like mad and about every 1 in 20 times you barely won.

I also remember the AI from Burnout 3. You could tell it was unfair from the start when you do 2 players and the game randomly picks cars from the same class yet is always faster than both of you without boosting while you were both boosting when 1 player picked the slowest car and the other picked the fastest. The instant a race starts, all cars pass you like a Nascar racer flying past a snail. You slowly catch up to other cars 1 by 1 and pass them, and it takes forever. They do that to make things challenging, but it's very unfair when you move too fast to actually see things in front of you so you can easily crash into another vehicle or wall while the AI is made to never crash, and they literally never crash. Unless you ram them into something, they don't crash.

There's too many games designed to be unfair because the makers couldn't think of a better idea. You'd think it would be better to make things a little too easy rather than impossibly hard if they can't think of a nice balanced difficulty, but I guess not. It wouldn't bother me so much but I can't return a game to where I bought it with a note stating the game is impossibly hard for the creators. Without codes to fix difficulty problems, I wouldn't even buy games because that would be a major ripoff to me. Every game needs a coaster mode. Coast on through a game with very little effort and get the story at least. Don't do like Devil May Cry on Dante Must Die mode where beating it gets you unlimited devil trigger, but it's insanely hard. It takes over 4 hours of nonstop perfect timing to kill a boss, yet that boss can hit you 3 times and you die and go way back to whatever checkpoints since the boss never stops attacking for even an instant while also having moments of invincibility and many projectiles that are like homing missiles. Overly easy is always better than overly hard.

[Helder]

My favorite bullshit moment from MK1 was when I kept running away from the enemy and then swept his ass then out of nowhere I was thrown from across the screen (we were on opposite sides) and being constantly thrown till I died since a throw is unblockable, hell my guy didnt even get up before being thrown again.

[bungholio]

My favorite bullshit moment from MK1 was when I kept running away from the enemy and then swept his ass then out of nowhere I was thrown from across the screen (we were on opposite sides) and being constantly thrown till I died since a throw is unblockable, hell my guy didnt even get up before being thrown again.

It was a glitch that people found by losing a bunch of times on the easiest difficulty, I remember trying it and thought it was a joke or something. You would get thrown, and instantly teleport back into their arms and get throw again before you even hit the ground. They also had a glitch about the last attack used to kill an opponent being a special attack like a fireball, and then the next round you only had to press the button instead of the directions and then the button. It was kind of nice to exploit if you are lazy about things like Liu Kang's fireball.

[dlevere]

I have an article on my board that talks about how The Game CHEATS!