Microsoft CEO candidate Stephen Elop said to consider selling Xbox business, killing Bing?

Bloomberg also suggests that Elop is willing to shut down or sell some major Microsoft businesses. Elop would reportedly considering killing off the company’s Bing search engine, while contemplating selling the Xbox business. Some investors and analysts have previously called for the software giant to split off its Xbox business and give up on search. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen appears to feel the same way. Allen’s $15 billion asset manager, Paul Ghaffari, revealed recently that Bing and Xbox have been distractions for Microsoft. "My view is there are some parts of that operation they should probably spin out, get rid of, to focus on the enterprise and focus on the cloud." Nomura analyst Rick Sherlund claims Microsoft’s financial earnings could be boosted by 40 percent in fiscal 2015 if the company sold its Bing and Xbox businesses.
Is this even possible, I seriously hope NOT!
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...andidate-elop-said-to-mull-windows-shift.html
"Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits." Mark Twain
 
Yeah cause Sony has more rupees then MS to pay for fake M $ stories! Conspiracy to hurt the xbo I tell you!
Oh wait


I see what you're saying but the news really is flakey if you really read it. Look at this:

Elop’s assumption is that Microsoft could create more value by maximizing sales of Office rather than by using it to prop up sales of Windows-based devices, said two of the people with knowledge of his thinking


It's not really Elop who has voiced anything. Instead it's two nameless individuals with knowledge of his thinking.

Besides, and I mean really, what sort of company would hurt themselves by being so insecure before launching a product that has cost them billions? Companies wouldn't do that. That kind of stuff would stay secret until sale time.

I'm not saying it's a conspiracy, but I gotta say it's a possibility that this news story is a fart in the wind - at least halfway. It doesn't have to mean that Sony is behind some evil scheme(I don't think so). It's more likely just a news story based on a rumor that would get a lot of traction.


Lastly, Microsoft just announced a two billion dollar loss. But the majority of that has been related to Surface. The RnD on that. It just doesn't make sense for Microsoft, a company with over 100,500 employees wouldn't be able to go through a strategy of maximizing office sales, while simultaneously do other things. Xbox 360 recouped a lot of the losses provided by the first xbox, and it's their most loved hardware product ever.
 
I think there's some legitimacy here. As someone who's only buying an X1 this gen, it's really my only big concern about the system. (Don't give a crap about resolutiongate.)

While the X1 system itself seems built for the long term (built toward next gen DX, online in general, the cloud), a lot of what this division has been doing recently seems focused on short term profits at the expense of long term marketshare. Like if you plan on being in this gen 10 years and the average gamer is worth 2k over the life of the console, then why would you allow your competitor to under-cut you by $100 to steal a ton of long term marketshare. If Bungie is your biggest studio, why do you take the money and allow them to buy themselves out (and favor Sony) just before the kick-off of another gen? When there's already Halo fatigue, why do you spew out another installment of your biggest franchise to capture another buck while weakening the impact the franchise would have on next gen in the process. (BTW anyone think about the fact that Halo would be further along for next gen if 343 didn't have to make Halo 4?)

My business studies show that companies want to have as few liabilities on the books and show as much profit in the short term when they're going to be sold. They'll sacrifice the long term vision for short term profits when there are plans to sell.

In one of Spencer's latest interviews, he talks about how he doesn't believe in buying studios or accumulating liabilities.

Maybe MS doesn't sell....but there have been a lot of actions and rumors that seem to mesh well together. As of now, I'm buying the legitimacy that MS is making moves in order to be prepared to sell. Doesn't mean they will. It means they've got their ducks in a row to be ready in case the new boss wants them to.
 
It seems like it really would be a stupid idea to invest time and hundreds of millions (if not over a billon) of dollars into the launch of the new Xbox just for a new guy to come in right after and say, "Nope. Shut it all down. Sell it off".

Even if they wanted to get rid of the Xbox division, I would think they would at least wait to see how Xbox One performs.

But hey, I'm no businessman or market analyst.
 
I don't think they're going to sell off XB1, either. At worst it will have a slow start until they manage to cut prices down and add more exclusive games and features. PS3 had a terrible start as well. It was super overpriced with few worthwhile exclusives, a nightmare to code for, and often worse running multiplats, but Sony eventually got their act together.
 
I don't think they're going to sell off XB1, either. At worst it will have a slow start until they manage to cut prices down and add more exclusive games and features. PS3 had a terrible start as well. It was super overpriced with few worthwhile exclusives, a nightmare to code for, and often worse running multiplats, but Sony eventually got their act together.
Yeah, I tend to agree. Microsoft seems to be able to pull it off when their back is against the wall, hopefully their eff up this year will be put past them and they can move on and benefit gaming as a whole
 
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I don't think you guys understand though. This isn't about selling off Xbox because it's a failure. This is more about MS focusing it's resources on it's core business. MS has some of the smartest people and best resources in the world. Some investors believe that they spread those resources too thin when they should focus all of them on their core business. Like it or not, the Xbox is not considered to be their core business. By either selling the division or just breaking it off, those top resources in the company stay focused on MS's bread and butter.

Also, if you are going to sell off a division, it's best to do so when it's turning profits and has potential for the future rather than when it's draining money. (Nobody rushed in to buy Sega for anything significant when the Dreamcast died).

Even if MS doesn't sell the Xbox and simply splits them off, that's a major blow to the division. One of the Xbox divisions biggest strengths is having access to all of MS's resources...from it's smartest people in other areas of the company to it's deep pockets. If Xbox has to sustain itself and can no longer rely on having easy access to the rest of the companies resources at a whim, it's neutered and would lose major firepower to contend long term.
 
This all stems from an investor with a 1%/2 billion dollar share of the company, ValueAct, basically wanting Ballmer out and the Xbox business sold earlier in the year. I can only see Xbox being chopped if it has a disaster of a generation or two.

The biggest drain on Microsoft is not the Xbox but the Online Services Divsion. This part of the of the company has lost $10.9 billion in 8 years.
 
I don't think you guys understand though. This isn't about selling off Xbox because it's a failure. This is more about MS focusing it's resources on it's core business. MS has some of the smartest people and best resources in the world. Some investors believe that they spread those resources too thin when they should focus all of them on their core business. Like it or not, the Xbox is not considered to be their core business. By either selling the division or just breaking it off, those top resources in the company stay focused on MS's bread and butter.

Also, if you are going to sell off a division, it's best to do so when it's turning profits and has potential for the future rather than when it's draining money. (Nobody rushed in to buy Sega for anything significant when the Dreamcast died).

Even if MS doesn't sell the Xbox and simply splits them off, that's a major blow to the division. One of the Xbox divisions biggest strengths is having access to all of MS's resources...from it's smartest people in other areas of the company to it's deep pockets. If Xbox has to sustain itself and can no longer rely on having easy access to the rest of the companies resources at a whim, it's neutered and would lose major firepower to contend long term.

Who the hell would you sell the Xbox division to though? Maintaining a console business is expensive and challenging as s*** man. If MS wants to sell it off there is a reason and how many companies out there are big enough to give it a go and why would they want to?

If MS ever chooses to shut down Xbox than it will simply be done. Samsung, LG, HP, Acer, etc. aren't going to come along and buy the brand.

People say competition is good but with the similarities in hardware between the X1 and PS4 I don't think we would notice any kind of sacrifices if one was no longer on the market. Game devs would just compete with each other as they do now and we would still have quality games.

Even though MS and Sony are competition did that result in uber powerful systems? No, it didn't. I'm not saying the new consoles are super weak but they aren't exactly cutting edge either. Sony and MS didn't push the other to design beefy hardware. They both went the safe route and their internal designs are pretty damn close.

When all 3 consoles on the market use AMD hardware it's hard for me to accept that they are truly "pushing" each other to give us better products. To add to that, so many of the biggest games are multiplatform....and the ports between PS3/360 were negligible as they will be on X1/PS4.

At the end of the day if Xbox was no more than 343i would simply make Halo on PS4 and...that's about it. XBL and Kinect would be gone but after a little while people would simply be like whatevs.
 
He was at one time the front runner for the seat. But his visions are necessarily wrapped around Microsofts best interests.
His visions are probably wrapped around whatever Balmer's visions were, they are pretty tight. Whether those visions are in MS's best interests is a whole other story.