It’s Time to Kill Surface

2014-05-22 作者: Ben Thompson 原文 #Stratechery 的其它文章

It’s Time to Kill Surface

“The question that needs to be asked and answered is why hardware.”

To Satya Nadella’s credit, he provided not just the answer, but the question as well. And, looked at narrowly, there were good things seen – and not seen – at Microsoft’s Surface event. Having clearly failed as a mass market device, it makes sense to focus Surface and more clearly define its use case. And, if that use case is productivity, then it also makes sense to kill Surface mini . That Nadella allegedly did just that is a great sign. Now he just needs to kill the whole line.


I actually think a useful way to understand the Surface problem is to think about the Xbox.

It is by focusing on the console world that one arrives at the conclusion that the Xbox, all things considered, is a success and something Microsoft can hang its hat on. In fact, that’s exactly what nearly all Microsoft employees, from executives to rank-and-file, do whenever questioned if Microsoft is innovative. “Look at the Xbox! Look at Kinect!” is their refrain.

The problem is that winning at consoles is a small goal, one wholly different from the reason Xbox was created in the first place. For many years now Microsoft has been focused on “Three Screens and a Cloud,” the idea that they as a platform provider ought to have a presence on your desk, in your pocket, and in your living room, all tied together by the cloud. While that specific formulation arrived somewhere around 2009, that vein of thinking was central to Xbox’s creation; the console aspects were meant to be a trojan horse, giving people a reason-to-buy the Xbox (and not a Playstation); the more computer-type aspects would then be added over time until an Xbox was to living rooms what PCs were to every desk in every office and every home (running Microsoft software).

It was this original goal that contributed to the current Xbox One disaster; Microsoft’s newest console is not only underpowered relative to the PS4, it’s also $100 more expensive (due to the mandatory Kinect), and launched with a terrible wave of publicity surrounding its always-on nature. The Kinect and connectedness were both included to help the Xbox One fulfill its goal of being the primary box in your entertainment system, controlling not just games but also live TV with your voice. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that well for entertainment, even as it has hurt Microsoft’s ability to compete for console buyers. Thus, Microsoft has spent the last year walking back many of the main features of the console, including its DRM system, its connectedness, and, last week, offering the console without the supposedly essential Kinect to make it $100 cheaper. Now it’s the same price as a PS4, but still less powerful and with the same dark cloud.

Here’s the bigger problem though: even if the Xbox One worked perfectly as an entertainment center, it would still cost $499. 1 For those not good at math, that’s $400 more than an AppleTV, and completely unapproachable for anyone who does not care about gaming. In short, it is not enough to consider how the Xbox is doing relative to consoles; the Xbox must be evaluated based on how it is aligning with and contributing to Microsoft’s overall strategy, and in that light, it is an unmitigated disaster. 2


So what about Surface?

What the Xbox example illustrates is it is not enough to consider whether or not Surface in isolation is a successful (i.e. profitable) product (although, like the Xbox for much of its existence, it’s not). Rather, we need to consider the overall goals for Surface. As best I can tell there are three: 3

  1. Surface was the physical manifestation of Windows 8. Back when I was a category manager for the Windows 8 app store, trying to explain Windows 8 to developers, 4 Surface was incredibly useful for explaining Microsoft’s vision of moving seamlessly between work and play with one device – and why you might want two operating systems on one device. 5 Not that Surface was made for my personal benefit, of course; rather I believe it was intended to help sell Windows 8 to all of Microsoft’s stakeholders, including OEMs, developers, enterprises, and end customers.

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