Microsoft predicts another cruel quarter for PCs

[A Guy]

Microsoft last week prepped Wall Street for a 2% slip in Windows revenue for the third quarter, but warned that PC shipments will continue their double-digit tumble.

"In Windows, we expect revenues to continue to be negatively impacted by the decline in the consumer x86 PC market," said Microsoft CFO Amy Hood during an earnings call on Thursday with financial analysts. "Excluding the impact of the Windows upgrade offer in the prior year, OEM revenue should account for approximately 65% of the division's revenue and should decline mid-teens."

Source

A Guy

 

[bobafetthotmail]

If only they could come out and say "Ok, Ok, It's our fault, look now we give free upgrade to windows 7 to anyone with a windows 8 license", this decrease would have been less of a free fall.

But no, they claim that chinese people that pirate their OS are hurting their OEM revenue and that Surface revenues will fix that. That's a fairy world the one they are living in.

 

[Britton30]

Their figures don't include those of us who build our own PCs I don't think.
Of course appliance PC sales are dropping, they all come with Win 8 as far as I know.

 

[ThrashZone]

I might have to buy another win-7 disk for my future built machine while supply lasts ?

 

[Britton30]

I might have to buy another win-7 disk for my future built machine while supply lasts ?

Sounds like a very good idea, before they drop out of sight.

 

[ThrashZone]

Done,
101.98 win-7 64 bit home premium,
5-7 days,
I do prefer 64 bit I believe it to be much faster than my 32 bit machine,
The last two disks I've bought had both 32 and 64 bit disks in it though,
Cheers.

 

[Britton30]

The full retail version do have both 32 and 64 bit but only one can be activated with the included key.

 

[NoN]

bought last year the full retail version that came with SP1 included...next year the upgraded pc components will just fit in it again

 

[Layback Bear]

I wonder if anybody is pirating Windows 8.

 

[ThrashZone]

I wonder if anybody is pirating Windows 8.

LOL I wouldn't think so at 39.99,
I suppose free is free but even Pirates need revenue,
Possibly @ .99 store

 

[ThrashZone]

The full retail version do have both 32 and 64 bit but only one can be activated with the included key.

The last two I bought did come with both,
Oddly TigerDirect showed two separate listing64 bit being 1.00 less lol ?
GFC-02050

Windows 7, Windows 7 Home, Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate at TigerDirect.com

 

[Britton30]

Yup. OEM versions are separate.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

I wonder if anybody is pirating Windows 8.

Yes, it's being pirated. Although mostly for kicks or to try it, not being necessary to play latest games means the bulk of userbase won't waste time on it and just reinstalls/repirates their Ultimate 64-bit if needed.

LOL I wouldn't think so at 39.99,
I suppose free is free but even Pirates need revenue,

Crackers (people designing workarounds and cracks and removing restrictions) do it for fun, distribution-oriented sites like say the infamous PirateBay get their revenue from ads. Tons of ads.

And there are pirated OSX isos around too. (OSX disks and genuine licenses cost around 30$)

It's more like a habit.

 

[Diosoth]

Part of the reason the PC market is slowing is because PC gaming is a joke. Everyone's switching to consoles because used games still matter on consoles. PC games, unless you get them from gog.com or something, are loaded with DRM, require you to be online to play offline games, have limited installs and your retail disc copy is no more worth having than a digital download.

And piracy hasn't been curbed one bit by all that. Pirates aren't hurt one bit but the paying customers are, so they moved to the consoles, and if PCs didn't have more uses than gaming we'd have seen real protests because we all saw what happened over the Xbox One plans. PC gaming is sort of junk now, and the only real reason the PC still competes with the Mac is price, and Linux by being easier to use.

I like buying from gog.com because there's no DRM, no silly requirements and I can burn my installer to disc and use it as I please. I'll burn my cash before I buy a game through Steam.

 

[MouseGolf]

Absolutely a good idea to buy a Windows 7 64 Bit Home Premium full version disk. I purchased my W7HP64Bit from Microsoft Store, the ISO is in my account and will be available for download for years to come. Plus I have it burned on two DVD installation disks.

Unless Windows 9 and/or 10 are something realistic for us PC users (keyboard/mouse) Windows 7 will be installed on my next build.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

Part of the reason the PC market is slowing is because PC gaming is a joke. Everyone's switching to consoles because used games still matter on consoles.

I strongly disagree.

Afaik Steam is the main reason (legit) PC gaming hasn't been killed by idiotic DRM. It's still idiotic mind me, but less than buying a physical game. Apart from some specific titles, you can go in offline mode for a while (up to one month I think), you can do backups (useful to move games to another PC you have a client on), and being Steam, a lot of games have less DRMs than their non-steam counterpart.
It has all that "community" thing that a lot of people like.

Still, my main point is that console games are too damn dumb (some even insultingly so) on average for a significant amount of userbase and for a lot of titles they would be so friggin buggy and unfinished to be barely playable (Fallout 3 and NeW Vegas, the X2-X3R-X3TC series, the Gothic series, Supreme Commander) while still having a significant potential that with a good modding community is fulfilled well beyond what any game (let alone console games) could realistically do without unlimited dev budget.

So yeah, consoles willl always outnumber PC gaming, but I really really doubt that it will ever die (different userbase), barring stupid things done by MS (why Steam is investing in its Linux client and porting games there).

I like buying from gog.com because there's no DRM, no silly requirements and I can burn my installer to disc and use it as I please.

Yeah but at least admit that game selection on gog.com is a bit crappy. I have most of those games (the ones I care about anyway) in physical copies already.

Absolutely a good idea to buy a Windows 7 64 Bit Home Premium full version disk.

The most important part is the activation key. Fetching a genuine windows 7 iso for free is trivial, but not an activation key.

 

[MouseGolf]

Fetching a genuine windows 7 iso for free is trivial, but not an activation key.

Did you not read that I bought my ISO from Microsoft? Errr, the key is in my account as well as on a hard copy and a file at home.

 

[MouseGolf]

 

[bobafetthotmail]

I said it mainly because I don't trust them to keep the activation key safe in the account. Y'know, shutting down technet subscriptions... halt the sale of win7 licenses to try to convince people to get W8... I would not be surprised if they suddenly "forgot" your non-windows-8 purchases.

Your work bob?

That CG animation wins the spooky medal for sure.
What makes you think it is? I'm italian, my spoken english sucks.

On a tangent, for a moment I thought you found one of the "funny" videos I made about Harry Potter, ("funny" is a subjective term, I have since changed my mind). Thankfully they were all removed ages ago due to alleged copyright infringement by youtube.

 

[MouseGolf]

I said it mainly because I don't trust them to keep the activation key safe in the account. Y'know, shutting down technet subscriptions... halt the sale of win7 licenses to try to convince people to get W8... I would not be surprised if they suddenly "forgot" your non-windows-8 purchases.

Your work bob?

That CG animation wins the spooky medal for sure.
What makes you think it is? I'm italian, my spoken english sucks.

On a tangent, for a moment I thought you found one of the "funny" videos I made about Harry Potter, ("funny" is a subjective term, I have since changed my mind). Thankfully they were all removed ages ago due to alleged copyright infringement by youtube.

Just a joke Bob.