FC: Charles Arthur's unaccustomed defense of Microsoft (re: Xbox)

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

---

Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 11:21:17 +0000
To: declan () well com, Eric Cordian <emc () artifact psychedelic net>
From: "Charles Arthur, The Independent" <carthur () independent co uk>
Subject: Re: FC: Why did the Neo Project halt work on hacking Microsoft's
 Xbox?

Hi ...

A point needing clarification about Microsoft, whose side I rarely find
myself on.

At 6:49 pm -0500 on 9/1/2003, Eric Cordian <emc () artifact psychedelic net>
wrote:

>The Microsoft Xbox is internally an Windows 2000 box, with a 733 mhz 0.18
>micron Coppermine Mobile Celeron, 64 MB of DDR RAM on two high speed
>channels, a 10 GB disk, custom nVidia GPU, Ethernet, 4 USB ports, a 5x
>DVD-ROM drive, and a Dolby capable audio processor, all at a lovely price
>point of $199.
>
>It is said that Microsoft loses money on every one sold,

You can't really believe that it doesn't lose money on them, can you? At
that spec, pretty much any two of the components costs that much on the
street.

>You can of course run anything on your Xbox if you modchip it, but this
>requires taking it apart, voiding the warranty, getting permanently
>blacklisted for Microsoft's online gaming services, and other bad things.

Depends how badly you want a Web server/new PC for Linux.

>Microsoft, an illegal monopoly in the area of computer operating systems,
>is attempting to garner a share of the gaming market.

Whoa there. Microsoft's monopoly of desktop operating systems is *not*
illegal. It is perfectly entitled to it, else the courts would be trying to
stop it. What was (is) illegal was its use of that monopoly on desktop
operating systems to muscle in to areas such as (specifically) browsers,
where it was found guilty of breaking the law by Judge Penfield Jackson,
whose findings of fact were not overturned by the Appeals Court.

There's no evidence that Microsoft is using anything but its vast cash pile
garnered from years of not paying dividends to its shareholders to fund the
Xbox. It's not using its Windows monopoly to sell the Xbox. You could even
argue that it's taking business away - games sales for PCs dropped last
year, and since many people buy a new PC partly for games, you could argue
that MS is seeing fewer PC sales (where it rakes it in on Windows and
Office etc) through its Xbox effort, for which all it gets is mounting
losses.

        best
        Charles

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