didn't warren Buffet give all his money to his foundation , as if he didn't have enough.

Hey I'm no hater, people seem to forget the amounts of money this guys gives for charity. Ya know that "have lemons and make lemonade saying..well this guy ran with it..well he didn't exactly pick them lemons himself. business as usual.

Vista was a complete failure which is what makes this year so challenging to MS.

-edit- Jeez, seriously, who can call Vista a success? Fvcking MS fanboys, didn't even realize they existed.

I wish him the very best.

good luck to him

How can you call yourself a gamer and make such a ridiculous statement about the playstation 3? Dark Sniper is 100% Correct on his comments and you XBOTS are in denial. The 360 is a sinking ship! I own one and i can you its a sinking ship thats why Its getting traded in to my local Game Crazy or Game Stop next week.

ITS OVER FOR 360 IN 2008.......................... ..........!

The Crane Kick will happen in 08'

Ahh Billy Billy Billy, you had some funny moments during your time at Microsoft =P

Best of luck to him, glad to see/hear he's using his money for charity.

**Edit**

Aww .gifs dont animate when attached ;/

http://i14.tinypic.com/6srb...

Charity?.....WTF IS CHARITY GOOD FOR!? All this money being churned into charity...You think poverty would be over by now. All they do is take all the money and put 90% into their paychecks and the other 10% into the actual effort.
And if that's not what they do....THEN WHERE is the billions and billions ending up?

I sense a good year for PS3 and a lot more red rings for XBOX 360, especially as we move foward to a downloading era. When you leave the XBOX 360 downloading for hours. That's when you're bound to red ring, sooner or later.

Eventually people could catch on and realize the 360 is a bust.

I'm also having trouble with XBOX live right now. It's off an on and it's taking to long to do things, it just shows that circle crap around an XBOX 360 figure like it's loading, but it's taking too long.

Best of luck to you, Bill Gates.

Bill goes off to freeze while awaiting his life extension technology in 200 years. Best of luck!

I have been following his posts and just because he actually speaks out against a consoles flaws he is vilified for it.

i think he has every right to point out that the PS3 lacked good games in its first year, online service was second rate and the myriad of other flaws that it has experienced. If i dropped $1000 AU which was the insane launch price over here id be disappointed too.

Just like he can say that the 360 is unreliable,hell i own one and every single one of my early adopter friends has replaced it at least once. Lucky i waited till the falcon model came out i guess. And $200 for a hard drive is highway robbery. PS XBL should free

Just cause you call it as you see it doesn't make you a fanboy and neither console is perfect, both having glaring flaws that fanboys chooose to overlook. Sony and MS alike dont care about you they care about the almighty dollar. Fanboys cant seem to grasp that.

grudges aside fanboys,
we have to appreciate and honor every great man, and mr bill gates is one of them, a undeniable fact.
i have read some of comments, i will call some of them controversial
bill gates have created the windows operating system, that's a great deed we can argue that windows vista isn't succesful, but who can deny the supremacy of xp and it's a windows operating system, i see that some iterations of windows are just scapegoats to prepare for others, like the case with mellenium and xp, sometimes it takes more than one try or two to make it right, like in windows xp for example, the first iteration wasn't that good, sp1 not that great, but sp2 rules..
and now it is the similar case with the xbox, the first one they didn't get how to do the right software to sell the system, in the second system they focused on the software and released a pre-mature system, and i hope that they will get it right with their third iteration, anyhow they stated they are not expecting profitability out of the xbox until the fourth generation, and i respect them for that because they know their status and they are working on a way to improve things, hell they are doing good against the big guys like nintendo and sony, myself, i was tempted to get an xbox but i didn't because of the rrod alert, anyhow i strayed from the main subject, let's return to the crux of the matter
bill gates is a man that will be remembered by generations to come
but i wonder how microsoft will do without such a great man??? are those two years of preparation enough??
as always, one can speculate, but let's wait and see....

prone to game anytime anywhere

If you look at all their innovations and ideas they had in early 2000, and now that they've panned out they all were executed horribly and got whippings by competitors, especially nowadays.

Windows Vista - People downgrading, companies forcing to offer XP computers, Microsoft extending XP store shelf dates, and a bunch of insults from the Apple community make Windows Vista one of the most anticipated, but disappointing product launch of the decade.

XBOX - They never made a cent of profit on the original XBOX. 2 years later, and they are now earning money in their video games division. Sadly, that $1B used for warranty isn't helping them at all. The XBOX division is finally going somewhere, but so far has been nothing spectacular.

Zune - A decent attempt to overtake Apple failed by the fact that they did everything other companies did, and failed just like other companies did. They didn't offer consumers a reason to buy a Zune over iPod except a few minor features which were quickly overlooked by the iPods easy to use interface and massive brand appeal. 2nd they didn't build a brand and personality around Zune. Everytime you see white earbuds, you know its an iPod. But, you don't know when someone has a Zune just by looking at their ear. It's a small, but very effective thing. And lastly, they didn't go beyond what iPod offered. Zune 80 is comparable to iPod Classic, but then the storage junky will look at the 160gb classic, and the average consumer will be blown away by the iPod Touch. Why get a Zune?

So, finally, good luck to Bill and Microsoft. You guys need to bring back the innovative, hard working Microsoft and stop with the lazy and arrogant mindset.

They'll live.

Hardly a smart creator, developer or inventor though. Most of what he did was bought, remade, or done by a team of developers other than him (Xbox). Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, John Carmack (to name a developer among dozens of), Sergei Bryn... they're all better than him. Intelligence is not measured by money, BTW.

Anyway, I used to want to be like this guy when I was young and Windows 95 had hit the stride, until I realized he wasn't really all that. In fact, he's a greedy mofo that only cared about his wealth, and not the consumer. All his donated wealth was either just with the purpose of deducting taxes, or because he doesn't really know what to do with all his money.

I would consider him a philantropist if he actually became a struggling middle class man after giving most of what he has, but he's still stinking rich. Hardly a philantropist. Hell, he never even cared for his clients and consumers in general, why would he care for someone else? Had it not been for him, the HD war would have never taken place.

Anyway, I hope this is good news for Microsoft, that this means a change in their philosophy, that their R&D (Research and Development) department is not the same as their M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions), and that they somehow realize that business have a job in the world other than making money, which is serving a human purpose, namely bring quality products to the market, i.e. business ethics.

BTW, I can't wait for another one of Zhuk's stupid comments. What will he say now? That Bill Gates is "undoubtedly" the man of the millenium? lol

I think lots of people who commented on this topic haven't actually read thee article. Bill gates is not quiting, he is going to stay chairman and stay responsible for some parts of the company, I guess OS department is one of them.. He will transfer many of the duties to others..

One of the greatest men alive.

While I won´t jump into the "he will donate 99.8% of his fortune and only give two bucks to his kids" hype (let´s face it, he is one of the richest men alive. First, he will continue to make money, and so will his sons, and his grandsons, and generations to come, because of icenses, and copyrights and because he is a major share holder in many software and hardware companies, and his sons will inherit those shares, and the properties, and the money) I do believe he is a great man, not only for what he has achieved, but also because of the life he chooses to live from now on.

If only he does half as good as he did in the software business with philanthropy... It would be GREAT for all human kind.

Following generations will read about this man in history books, that´s for sure :)

What gay boy all i said that Kutaragi and Bill are genusises.

Why do i get 3 disagrees and SPAM

What piece of dog craps

I guess he feels he has accomplished everything he wants to do in the business world and he will take his well deserved vacation. Good for you bill.

Don't forget Paul Allen, without him MS would have been nothing.

Here's to the coming apocalypse...cheers!

changed the way people think and work. we would have probably never had destops and laptop computers with such an accessible Os like windows... all the video game hate of consoles and fankid shinanigans aside. bill gates a Job well done. just make sure you you help build a few churches.

double post

Tell me again how the multiplatform strategy was supposed to fix everything. Look at your results and compare them to Nintendo, which keeps thriving with exclusives. Your loyal fans are gone. And let’s not forget the pile of IPs you purchased only to let them rot.

The worst thing is this is down from last years numbers/expectations which was down from the previous years numbers/expectations. You think about how long “down” has been a consistent part of the communication and you realize those subscriptions are what’s holding that boat together. The price cut of gamespass is still a price raise in a string of price raises. They are trying to use players to offset the missing revenue. Now call of duty is out of gamespass, which is literally WHY they bought the company. To draw people to the subscription. They realized they missed a boatload of money and that wasn’t sustainable. Now you pay for it like you would have if they never bought the company… so why buy the company? Mind you those billions still need to be paid back. Yeah it gives you a chance to say we make the biggest FPS… but the internal conversations must be brutal at high level on topics that really matter. Like revenue. Profitability. And ROI for the shopping spree.

Is this like the 10th quarter in a row they're down 33% on hardware how is that even mathematically possible. You would think their mediocrity would Plateau