On October 1, CNET's Ina Fried and Molly Wood interviewed Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. This is a transcript of their conversation.
CNET (Wood): Well, let's end with a very specific user question. I think a lot of people basically had the same question, and that is generally what's the plan? You've got all these great products, there's the Zune, Windows Mobile, Bing, Xbox 360, MSN, Online Office, and they're wondering, you know, when can we see these products be really integrated in a very seamless way so that people can live the M life, the Microsoft life?
Ballmer: Yeah, I'm not really sure what question you're asking. I mean, the products work in some cases quite well together. There's always seams that can be taken away. I'm not sure if it's a brand statement so people can say they can lead the M life or whether it's, you know, real issues. There are things. We need to have Zune across all the devices.
We're working to get that done. We need to make sure that the store works in a consistent way across the important devices. That's important. So, there's a set of things I think we need to get done and we're hard at work against.
I don't expect massive brand convergence anytime soon, because I think there are--you know, people do buy things for different reasons, and we're trying to support that. I mean, if we had called the Xbox the Windows gaming machine, it would have worked better for your question, but it might not have worked better in the marketing.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Spiders: "We're going to cut straight to the chase so you're not left wondering: After a long period without clear answers, we have received confirmation that Spiders is being liquidated.
What does it mean? This means the company as a whole no longer exists. We'll cease our functions immediately. The planned DLC will release via Nacon, and then-- well, that's it.
We're sorry that it's come to this and would like to thank each and every one of you for your support over the years.
If you have any questions or run into issues with your games, please contact Nacon directly as we'll no longer be able to reply."
