I’m not sure they should be… most of Microsoft’s income comes from business. O365 and oem keys on all the laptops sold to companies heavily outweigh gamers home systems.
i know more folks who are entirely disconnected from the office ecosystem than i do folks who use even a single office product. google ate office’s lunch like a decade ago, i reckon that was at least part of the reason microsoft switched over to the subscription model.
i wouldn’t be surprised if their market share of office apps has shrunk by ~50% in the past 10 years. they’re trying to pull an adobe, but in contrast adobe at least had some killer apps in their suite. office hasn’t brought anything to the table what wasn’t already there in AGES.
A lot of the reasoning for using MS products in businesses is that people are used to them from home.
So the workers run Windows computers with MS Office because that is what they know since childhood because at home there was a Windows computer with MS Office.
This wont take immediate effect. But it can erode the basis for MS in the long run. Especially as they are pulling the stunts with Win11 and price gouging on O365 licences.
I switched to linux last year. Buying a new computer without OEM Windows licencse was 200 € cheaper. And O365 doing everything as a web app also means you dont need to run Windows to run MS Office anymore.
Meanwhile Steam is pushing compatability for games and sooner or later businesses will consider switching to a linux distro and run their Windows software in a compatability environment, as well as more and more software producers will work on compatability or even native.
This will take time, but MS arrogance will be its downfall.
I remember how hype and new it was that I could buy Sea of Thieves on the Windows Store and it just worked like with Steam.
There was a time where Microsoft cared about having the PC gamer audience.
But you’re right, they really don’t care about that space anymore. I guess we’ll see if their priorities change if enough people start swapping to linux for their gaming PCs
I’m not sure they should be… most of Microsoft’s income comes from business. O365 and oem keys on all the laptops sold to companies heavily outweigh gamers home systems.
i know more folks who are entirely disconnected from the office ecosystem than i do folks who use even a single office product. google ate office’s lunch like a decade ago, i reckon that was at least part of the reason microsoft switched over to the subscription model.
i wouldn’t be surprised if their market share of office apps has shrunk by ~50% in the past 10 years. they’re trying to pull an adobe, but in contrast adobe at least had some killer apps in their suite. office hasn’t brought anything to the table what wasn’t already there in AGES.
A lot of the reasoning for using MS products in businesses is that people are used to them from home.
So the workers run Windows computers with MS Office because that is what they know since childhood because at home there was a Windows computer with MS Office.
This wont take immediate effect. But it can erode the basis for MS in the long run. Especially as they are pulling the stunts with Win11 and price gouging on O365 licences.
I switched to linux last year. Buying a new computer without OEM Windows licencse was 200 € cheaper. And O365 doing everything as a web app also means you dont need to run Windows to run MS Office anymore.
Meanwhile Steam is pushing compatability for games and sooner or later businesses will consider switching to a linux distro and run their Windows software in a compatability environment, as well as more and more software producers will work on compatability or even native.
This will take time, but MS arrogance will be its downfall.
I remember how hype and new it was that I could buy Sea of Thieves on the Windows Store and it just worked like with Steam.
There was a time where Microsoft cared about having the PC gamer audience.
But you’re right, they really don’t care about that space anymore. I guess we’ll see if their priorities change if enough people start swapping to linux for their gaming PCs