Tag Archives: Microsoft Office

June 13, 2025 · 03:51

The changing of games

There is the thought that games are changing and the first question becomes ‘What games?’ And that would be a correct way of thinking. Whether you decide to kill the bullies and their connections, whether you stand up for yourself or if you become a lot less visible. The latter part is my preferred way, what doesn’t see you, will not hurt you. But in the 80’s I learned the hard way that always on the defense tends to be pointless, as such I would be inclined to scurry over to the kill side. It has the benefit that the the magicians of this world get plenty scared when the bunny bites them. They aren’t used to the sight of their own blood. They tend to cry and wonder why they can’t be bullies anymore. You see, at some point people have had enough. Some like me tend to weigh the consequences of being bullied or to eradicate them and live the fallout. At some point accepting the fact to be bullied no longer weighs high enough and when the Sydney Metropolitan police departments tend to do nothing, even as they have Brodies Law at hand, they prefer not to act. It only works so far.

This story is important to the real deal, it is a story that ZDNet gives us (at https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-denmark-is-dumping-microsoft-office-and-windows-for-libreoffice-and-linux/) where we see that Denmark is now apparently ‘Why Denmark is dumping Microsoft Office and Windows for LibreOffice and Linux’ and in that setting I wonder if Danish voices might also float towards WPS Office (by Kingsoft), you see, ZDNet gives us “Denmark wants to claim “digital sovereignty.” In the States, you probably haven’t heard that phrase, but in the European Union, digital sovereignty is a big deal and getting bigger.” I see that this is one avenue I never considered. Oh, I’ve heard the term. Yet the larger setting is not what I have heard, but what is behind it. Denmark is likely furious by some bully that wants of annex Greenland (an island West of Denmark a mere 2.166 million km²) and they are decently angry and this was the first setting. After being fed up with the Trump stage, they decided to take Microsoft out of the equation. At that point a lot of settings that ‘drip’ into American data settings and in this the first stone is cast. You see, President Trump might seem to think that business will adjust towards American standards, but that is a little delusional. You see, Microsoft is seen as a 3.56 trillion company, but behind that is a towering amount of debts as well. The totality of debts is according to some A$93.09 Billion. This might not seem as much, but what ‘victories’ have Microsoft made? What spin actually represents revenue? Microsoft is all about revenue and net profit, yet the larger setting becomes “In Q3 2025, Xbox gaming revenue decreased by 7% year-on-year, but content and service sales increased by 8%.” So Microsoft sets a plus to diminish the minus, yet the larger station is that they lose a lot more than they gain, for what is the depending value of the 8% rise? It is not the same as based amount of the 7% drop. Microsoft is losing against Sony 3:1 and now that the Nintendo Switch 2 is out, these losses will merely increase overall. Whatever Microsoft has as a tablet doesn’t even dent the setting Apple has and as some see, their Azure state seemingly doesn’t hold a candle to the system some book dealer has (yes, it is AWS). Then we get the setting that their ‘edge’ yes, their browser only has a 5% market share against Google having 67%, Apple follows with 17%. Now how many failures can such a company hold? And now consider Huawei entering the field with HarmonyOS. Taking market share from both Android and iOS. That was the setting before today and now Denmark is seemingly the first to drop Microsoft for other paths in IT. So how long until Denmark convinces one of the other EU nations to follow suit? What losses will Microsoft endure before they sink some of their badly conceived projects? I don’t know, I am merely asking.

As such Microsoft is speeding to get a lot of the HarmonyOS population, but as Kingsoft grows Microsoft diminishes and the that population never had much love for Microsoft and America to begin with. And we see part of this with “EU leaders are seeking to reduce Europe’s dependence on foreign technology providers, primarily those from the United States, and to assert greater control over its digital infrastructure, data, and technological future.” And another part is that they’re concerned about who controls European data, who sets the rules, and who can potentially cut off access to essential services in times of geopolitical tension. And the tariff war doesn’t help. That setting instigated by President Trump is likely to ht Microsoft faster than they realise and what happens when these debts will rise as revenue decreases.

The next part is alleged settings and I have seen no evidence of this from other sources “President Donald Trump issued ICC sanctions. This order allegedly prompted Microsoft to lock the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan, out of his email accounts, according to reports. This came after Microsoft chairman and general counsel, Brad Smith, had promised that the company would stand behind its EU customers against political pressure. Recently, however, Smith stated that Microsoft had not been “in any way [involved in] the cessation of services to the ICC,” according to Politico. When pressed, Microsoft failed to further explain how the email disconnection occurred.” That might (or not) be a complete answer. I have to add that the entire builder.ai fiasco is on the hands of Microsoft. They backed this and they never saw the 700 engineers programming what on existent AI was supposed to do. So where are these 700 systems, their OS and their Azure licenses? Wouldn’t that be firmly on the eyes of Satya Nadella? And as such, how was this worth a billion dollars? If Microsoft was entirely unaware they could be seen as incompetent (or at lease some people on the VP and higher list). If they did know there is a larger failing at Microsoft going on and as Denmark is allegedly dropping Microsoft, it is the start of a lot more bad news. But they can rely on spin to keep the eyes of others somewhere else.

And we see that (allegedly) see that in part with “Whether or not Microsoft cut services to an organization in response to Trump’s order, the fear that it could do so in the future remains. Before the Danish government announced its move, Denmark’s largest cities, Copenhagen and Aarhus, had already announced plans to phase out Microsoft software and cloud services.” So why allegedly? The setting is fear, not data and whilst we see the results we might see the wrong facts leading to this. As I personally see it “plans to phase out Microsoft software and cloud services” might be du to the fact that AWS is as I see it vastly superior (vastly might be overstating it) and fear could weasel in at any point, almost anywhere. Yet the likely accusation that Microsoft is the ‘bitch’ of President Trump or any American administration will be much harder to counter. It could set the tides against Microsoft in Denmark (for starters), Canada and McDonald islands (both users). So there is space to maneuver, yet Microsoft doesn’t do that and we are left with the accusation. And the larger setting that “In particular, the Danes are worried about Trump’s policies and that US political decisions could put public IT services at risk.” Is a decent fear to have in these days, as such Microsoft will be left holding the political bag. And Denmark is not alone here “Bart Groothuis, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, recently said, the EU “should go for a European cloud” since “Europe has a ‘problem’ with American cloud.”” I am not sure how this ‘computes’ in a downside for Microsoft, but the spin masters will have their hands full because that increases the Danish setting by 100% and there is no way telling what else is at risk and who else is to follow suit.

I saw a different variation of the ‘downfall’ of Microsoft, for the most their lack of actual innovation, their dependency on marketing spin (or whatever Microsoft calls it) and their failure to deliver in several fields. And their enemies are at the gates. After Microsoft failed the mobile markets (it is near zero) and as Huawei is gaining massive levels and Microsoft is losing market share after market share and Denmark clearly showed that they see Microsoft not as a partner but as a threat. As such I have to wonder, in what field will Microsoft fail next?

Have a great day.

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Tagged as AI, Amazon, AWS, Azure, Bart Groothuis, builder.ai, Canada, Cloud, Denmark, gaming, Greenland, HarmonyOS, Huawei, ICC, Karim Khan, Linus, McDonald Islands, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Netherlands, News, Satya Nadella, technology, ZDNet

June 7, 2022 · 20:22

The presentation will begin in one line

Yes, here we are one line further. In the recent past I gave rise to an innovation in presentation software that could bring a whole lot of trouble to Microsoft. They will be in denial, making all kinds of claims. Yet the foundation of worry (for Microsoft) remains. Even as I wanted to keep it exclusively for Adobe, I am not in contact with them and then it hit me. The solution could work with Google Slides as well. They are not yet as sophisticated as anything Adobe has, but to outstrip Microsoft might be a nice alternative. The idea that a free program could be enhanced so that Microsoft could lose up to 24% of their foundational corner is appealing (to me). If I get to pull it off, the station of Google Slides and optionally Apple Keynote could see a much larger pull and people will move away from Microsoft. We see Unionisation issues. We are given ‘Microsoft Issues Emergency Windows 10, 11 & Server Security Update’, as well as “Since March, however, if you run the RDgateway broker service on Server 2022 (and only that version), the monthly cumulative updates have removed that service. This behaviour is not normal; this is a bug.” Yes, we get it, Microsoft has bugs and it is having too many of those, all whilst other settings are equally problematic and that is where Microsoft finds itself. Losing with software and hardware to Sony and Apple. Losing web and cloud settings to Amazon and what do you think will happen when the foundational use of Microsoft Office loses the Powerpoint population to Google Slides? Yes, we know it, PowerPoint has so much to offer, but it merely added iterative settings over the last 10 years. You see between THEIR claim of what innovation is and what real innovation is comes with a gap and in the case of Microsoft it is the size of the Gran Canyon. So if I offer this one part, this one innovative part to Google and it shows to change the game, what will YOU do? Keep on believing that Microsoft will fix it? It was less than a week ago when we were given “Security researchers have identified a new MS Office vulnerability that could seriously affect Microsoft Word users”, and the Verge reported ‘China-linked hackers are exploiting a new vulnerability in Microsoft Office’ (at https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/1/23150318/microsoft-office-china-hackers-exploiting-follina-vulnerability-tibet), so how much longer will you take chances? I get it, there is very little that can compete with Microsoft Excel, but when I can create something so innovative, something that Microsoft should have fixed a DECADE AGO and I give it to Google (sell it, I meant). I could add it to my IP bundle 1. When I can pull that off, do you think that the 17%-29% that does not rely on Microsoft Excel will stay in that dangerous spot? I admire loyalty, but that does require the software firm to be entitled to that loyalty and they dropped the ball way too often.

As such the game is on and this all started less than 2 months ago when I saw something in a presentation that made me shiver. In two decades Microsoft had not come up with a solution and I saw it in minutes, I adjusted that simple view, added a few elements and It could easily be added to the Google suite. Changing the game is easy when you know where to look. A setting that could cost up to 29% of a core business. I wonder what happens to the Microsoft stock when I pull this off. Perhaps someone in that company will finally figure out that what they market is not representative of the truth. I just wonder if they even realise how far of course they have gone through the presentation of spin. The fact that I can pose that much of a danger is enabling in so many ways.

I preferred to have handed it to Adobe, nothing bad about Google, but it coincides with a weird dream, one I described in ‘The hardware perimeter’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/02/25/the-hardware-perimeter/) and ‘Pristine and weird’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/02/24/pristine-and-weird/) on the 24th and 25th of February 2022. There I saw an Adobe future becoming the larger player of high end office solutions. And even as I was a dream, I saw things and applications that I have never seen before, The application of blockchain to documents and data projects. Adobe had solved certain parts that could set a Lifestage to any document, who made it, who changed it, where it was changed and so on and the legal industry as well as large corporations were going gaga (not the singer) for that solution. As such giving them the presentation edge made sense, but in this Google is just as much a player as Adobe, not as refined, but for the bulk of the users good enough.

A simple presentation that shows where the big boys are and where they could end up if they do not fix their game. #Justsaying

Deadlock removed

Forbes gave us news in several ways. It merely flared my nostrils for 0.337 seconds (roughly) and after that I saw opportunity knock. In all this Microsoft has been short-sighted for the longest of times and initially that case could be made in this instance too. Yet, I acknowledge that there is a business case to be made. The news on Forbes with the title ‘Why Microsoft ‘Confirmed’ Windows 7 New Monthly Charges‘ (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2018/09/15/microsoft-windows-7-monthly-charge-windows-10-free-upgrade-cost-2) gives us a few parts. First there is “Using Windows 7 was meant to be free, but shortly after announcing new monthly charges for Windows 10, Microsoft confirmed it would also be introducing monthly fees for Windows 7 and “the price will increase each year”. Understandably, there has been a lot of anger“. There is also “News of the monthly fees was quietly announced near the bottom of a September 6th Microsoft blog post called “Helping customers shift to a modern desktop”“, so it is done in the hush hush style, quietly, like thieves in the night so to say. In addition there is “Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Office and Windows Marketing, explained: “Today we are announcing that we will offer paid Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU) through January 2023. The Windows 7 ESU will be sold on a per-device basis and the price will increase each year.” No pricing details were revealed“. This is not meant for the home users, it is the professional versions and enterprise editions, that is meant for volumes and large businesses. So they now get a new setting. Leaving pricing in the middle, in the air and unspoken will only add stress to all kinds of places, but not to fret.

It is a good thing (perhaps not for Microsoft). You see, just like the ‘always online’ folly that Microsoft pushed for with the Xbox, we now see that in the home sphere a push for change will be made and that is a good thing. We all still have laptops and we all still have our Windows editions, but we forgot that we had been lulled to sleep for many years and it is time to wake up. This is a time for praise, glory, joy and all kinds of positive parts. You see, Google had the solution well over 5 years ago, and as we are pushed for change, we get to have a new place for it all.

Introducing Google Chromebook

You might have seen it, you might have ignored it, but in the cast of it all. Why did you not consider it? Now, off the bat, it is clear if you have a specific program need, you might not have that option. In my case, I have no need for a lot of it on my laptop, yes to the desktop, but that is a different setting altogether.

So with a Chromebook, I get to directly work with Docs (Word), Sheets (Excel) and Slides (PowerPoint) and they read and export to the Microsoft formats (as well as PDF). There is Photos, Gmail, Contacts and Calendar, taking care of the Outlook part, even Keep (Notes), Video Calling and a host of other parts that Microsoft does not offer within the foundation of their Office range. More important, there is more than just the Google option. Asus has one with a card reader allowing you to keep your files on a SD card, and a battery that offers 7-10 hours, which in light of the Surface Go that in one test merely gave 5 hours a lot better and the Chromebook is there for $399, a lot cheaper as well. In this it was EndGadet that labelled it: ‘It’s not perfect, but it’s very close.‘

Asus has several models, so a little more expensive, but comes with added features. In the bare minimum version it does over 90% of whatever a student needs to do under normal conditions. It is a market that Microsoft could lose and in that setting lose a lot more than merely some users. These will be users looking for alternatives in the workplace, the optional setting for loss that Microsoft was unable to cope with; it will now be on the forefront of their settings. In my view the direct consequence of iterative thinking.

And in this it is not merely Asus in the race, HP has a competitive Chromebook, almost the same price, they do have a slightly larger option 14″ (instead of 11.9″) for a mere $100 more, which also comes with a stronger battery, and there is also Acer. So the market is there. I get it, for many people those with stronger database needs, those with accounting software needs, for them it is not an option and we need to recognise that too. Yet the fact that in a mobile environment I have had no need for anything Microsoft Specific and that there Surface Go is twice the price of a Chromebook, yet not offering anything I would need makes me rethink my entire Microsoft needs. In addition, I can get a much better performance out of my old laptop by switching to Linux, who has a whole range of software options. So whilst it has been my view that Microsoft merely pushed a technological armistice race for the longest time, I merely ignored them as my windows 7 did what it needed to do and did it well, getting bullied into another path was never my thing, hence I am vacating to another user realm, a book with a heart of Chrome. So whilst we look at one vendor, we also see the added ‘Microsoft Office 365 Home 1 Year Subscription‘ at $128, so what happens after that year? Another $128, that whilst Google offers it for free? You do remember that Students have really tight budgets, do you not? And after that, students, unless business related changes happen, prefer a free solution as well. So whilst Microsoft is changing its premise, it seems to have found the setting of ‘free software’ offensive. You see, I get it when we never paid for it, but I bought almost every office version since Office 95. For the longest times issues were not resolved and the amount of security patches still indicates that Windows NT version 4 was the best they ever got to. I get that security patches are needed, yet the fact that some users have gone through thousands of patches only to get charge extra now feels more like treason then customer care and that is where they will lose the war and lose a lot.

So when you see subscription, you also need to consider the dark side of Microsoft. You partially see that with: “If you choose to let your subscription expire, the Office software applications enter read-only mode, which means that you can view or print documents, but you can’t create new documents or edit existing documents.” Now we agree that they clearly stated ‘subscription’, yet they cannot give any assurances that it will still be $128 next year, it could be $199, or even $249. I do not know and they shall not tell, just like in Forbes, where we saw ‘News of the monthly fees was quietly announced‘.

When we dig deeper and see: ‘Predicting the success of premium Chromebooks‘, LapTopMag treats us to: “The million-dollar question is whether these new, more expensive Chrome OS laptops can find a foothold in a market dominated by Windows 10 and Mac OS devices. Analysts are bullish about Chromebook’s potential to make a dent in the laptop market share“, which was given to us yesterday. Yet in this, the missing element is that Windows will now come with subscriptions to some and to more down the track, or lose the security of windows, now that picture takes a larger leap and the more expensive Google Pixelbooks (much higher specs then the others mentioned) will suddenly become a very interesting option. One review stated on the Pixelbook: “the Pixelbook is an insanely overpowered machine. And, lest we forget, overpriced“, which might be true, yet the little lower Atlas Chromebook was $439. So yes, the big one might not be for all and let’s face it. A 4K screen is for some overkill. That’s like needing to watch homemade porn in an IMAX theatre. The true need for 4K is gaming and high end photography/film editing, two elements that was never really for the Chromebook. At that point a powerful MacBook or MacBook pro will be essential setting you back $2900-$11400. So, loads of options and variations, at a price mind you. As I see it, the Microsoft market is now close to officially dissolving. There is a whole host of people that cannot live without it, and that is fine. I am officially still happy with my Windows 7, always have been. Yet when I see the future and my non-gaming life, Linux will be a great replacement and when being mobile a Chromebook will allow me to do what I need to do. It is only in spreadsheets that I will miss out a little at time, I acknowledge that too, but in all this there is no comparison with the subscription form and as it comes from my own pocket is see no issues with the full on and complete switch to Google and its apps in the immediate future. I feel close to certain that my loss will minimal at the most. A path that not all will have, I see that too, but when thinking the hundreds of thousands of students that are about to start University, they for the most can make that switch with equal ease and there we see the first crux. It was the setting that Microsoft in a position of strength had for the longest time, enabling students so that they are ready for the workplace changes. They will now grow up with the Chromebooks being able to do what they need and they will transfer that to the workplace too. Giving us that the workplace will be scattered with Chromebooks and with all kinds of SaaS solutions that can connect to the Chromebook too. The Chromebook now becomes some terminal to server apps enabling more and more users towards a cloud server software solution. As these solutions are deployed, more and more niche markets will move in nibbling on the Market share that Microsoft had, diminishing that once great company to a history, to being pushed beyond that towards being forgotten and at some point being a myth, one that is no longer in the game. It is also the first step that IBM now has to bank in on that setting and push for the old mainframe settings, yet they will not call it a mainframe, they will call it the Watson cloud, performing, processing and storing, available data on any Chromebook at the mere completion of a login. It is not all there yet, but SPSS created their Client server edition a decade ago, so as the client becomes slimmer, the Chromebook could easily deal with it and become even more powerful, that is beside the optional dashboard evolutions in the SaaS market, the same could be stated for IBM Cloud and databases. That is the one part that should be embraced by third party designers. As SaaS grows the need to look in Chromebook, Android and IOS solutions will grow exponentially. All this, with the most beautiful of starting signals ever given: ‘Windows 7 New Monthly Charges‘, the one step that Microsoft did not consider in any other direction and with G5 growing in 2021-2023 that push will only increase. If only they had not stuffed up their mobile market to the degree they had (my personal view). I see the Windows Mobile as a security risk, plain and simple. I could be wrong here, but there is too much chaff on Windows and as I cannot see what the wheat is (or if there is any at all), and as Microsoft has been often enough in the ‘quietly announcing‘ stage and that is not a good thing either.

Should you doubt my vision (always a valid consideration), consider that Veolia Environnement S.A. is already on this path. Announced less than two weeks ago we see “So we propose a global migration program to Chromebooks and we propose to give [our employees] a collaborative workplace. “We want to enable new, modern ways of working”“, linked to the article: ‘Veolia to be ‘data centre-less’ within two years‘ (at https://www.itnews.com.au/news/veolia-to-be-data-centre-less-within-two-years-499453), merely one of the first of many to follow. As the SaaS for Chromebooks increases, they will end up with a powerful workforce, more secure data and a better management of resources. Add to this the Google ID-Key solution and the range of secure connections will go up by a lot, diminishing a whole host of security issues (or security patches for that matter). All options available now and have been for a few years now. So when we see the Chromebook market push forward, we should thank Microsoft for enabling exponential growth; it is my personal believe that the absence of a monthly fee would have slowed that process considerably in a whole range of markets.

So thanks Microsoft! You alienated gamers for years, and now we see that you are repeating that same silly path with both starting students and businesses that are trying to grow.

I’ll ask Sundar Pichai to send you a fruit basket, it’s the least I can do (OK, the least I can do is nothing, but that seems so mean).

Questioning Assurance

A positive approach intended to question confidence. That is at the heart of the matter today. I have been involved in such tracks before, but in a slipping age of technology, where we see greed driven (or bonus driven) changes where some executives hide behind the excuse of giving new young Turks a start in the business, we need to wonder whether they were looking at the world through chartreuse glasses.

I have seen the stupidity (for the lack of a better word) of software firms pushing out software, some to make sure they kept some deadline, whilst the product was nowhere near ready. In a few cases they thought the product was truly ready and the QA department messed up in a royal kind of way. There is of course the third option, where a product was tested, was deemed good and things pop up. These are the three parts of QA the user faces, I have seen them all!

The third one is the clearest one. Development does its work, the QA department did all the test and then some and when released things go a little awry. Weirdly enough, this tends to happen to parts of the program that people seldom use, like that weird, off the wall setting that only 0.000001% of all Microsoft Word users tend to use. Microsoft had no idea, and at some point it gets fixed. This is just a flaw. You name a product, like anything in the range of Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Oracle, SPSS, Sybase or SAS Miner, they all have them. These programs are just too large to get 100% tested, and even when that happens, there is the interaction with another program, or with an operating system update that will then throw a spanner in the cogs. You only need to search for issues with Windows 8.2 or IOS 8.2 to see that things just happen. In the zero layer, we see the hardware, in layer one we get the operating software, in layer two we see the application, in layer three we get the peripherals (printer, keyboard, mouse and joystick), one massive sandwich to check! In any of these interactions things can go wrong and a QA department needs to sift through it all. Of course even if all of that did work correctly we see the fourth layer which is the user him/herself, who then decides to dunk that layered sandwich in tea. Boy oh boy can they mess up their own system! No software can truly prepare for that!

Yet in all this QA needs to have high standards, which are proven when we see the third option in all this. Options one and two are an entirely different mess! It is for the outsider often impossible to tell what on earth happened. I had the inside scoop on an event where something was marketed ready, yet the program was nowhere near that. Deadlines for stakeholders had to be met and some figured that a patch afterwards via the BBS systems would do the trick. So basically a flawed product went to the shops. I remember those days, that was long before any level of fast internet, I was a trendsetter in those days by owning a 64Kb modem, yes I was a speed demon in those days! LOL!

You see, legally the consumer is in a messy situation, product liability laws are not that strong, unless health and lives are placed in peril, beyond that, you would think that these consumers are protected when it involved fraud, yet, when we consider that part of fraud is ‘deception intended to result in financial or personal gain’, we see any case go south really fast when the defence becomes, ‘the consumer was offered a refund’ and ‘Your honour, our costs are massive! We are doing everything to aid the consumers, offering them a refund immediately’ and we see any fraud case go south. Consider part of this with the ruling ‘intentional perversion of truth’, the keyword ‘intentional’ can usually be swayed too easily, faltering the case of fraud. But in the core, getting people to sign on in the first weeks, getting that revenue on their boards can mean the survival of such a company, so some accept the costs for what happens to remain on the game board.

The other situation is where the Quality Assurance (QA) department messed up. Here is the kicker, for the outsider to tell which scenario played is impossible, without working at a place, it is an impossible task to tell, one can make estimated guesses, but that is as good as it goes. For example, Ubisoft had a net profit on -66 million in 2013, they fell from grace in 2008 from $32 to $3.80 per share, that’s a not too healthy drop of 90%. The interesting part here is that when we look at their games, we see over those terms Prince of Persia, the language coaches on DS, which was novel (especially Japanese), Assassin’s Creed II, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction and a few more. This is the interesting part, here we see a few excellent games, a Prince of Persia that would bring back to life a forgotten franchise, Assassin’s Creed II, which was so far above the original that it mesmerised a massive player population, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, which upped the ante of Prince of Persia by a lot and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, which gave us even more challenges. Yet, these good games could not hinder the fact that Ubisoft had produced so many games over that time, many of them far below great that it impacted their stock. Is their value back to $16 because of their games? So what about Assassins Creed: Unity? Is stock the reason for the lacking game. I personally would state no! I think lacking games drop the stock. Yet, this is an emotional response, because stock is driven by demands and rejections, as great games are made, people want a shae of that rabid bunny, if the games are nowhere near, the stock gets rejected. In this case it is about the games, because Ubisoft is gaming! This is also why the E3 is such a big deal and even though I was not impressed with their E3, ‘For Honor’ clearly shows that Ubisoft has some gems in their arsenal, or should that be ‘had’? For Honor is a new and likely high in demand game, the presentation was extremely well received. I am not much for those types of games, but I also looked with anticipation of a lovely challenge. The issue here remains, it is online, so timing and decent players are required to make this a good experience. Yet beyond that new title, I would see it as a collection of predictable that have become indistinguishable from their other titles. Sequels sharing bits from other sequels with an interchangeable codebase. With too many triggered scripts. We remain with a blurred sense of gaming. I stated it a few years ago, by adding too many prince of Persia moments into Assassins Creed, we end up not playing Assassins Creed, if I wanted that, I would have bought Prince of Persia! So why these games?

Well, there is of course method to my madness (and my madness is purely methodical). You see, Assassins Creed 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction were amazing achievements. I can still play these two today and have loads of fun. They had set a standard, even though Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood was a step up, certain flaws were never dealt with, flaws that became part of the engine for 5 iterations of the game. You see that in the second premise, I went from new game to iteration? That part matters too! With the Splinter Cell series we went from Conviction to Blacklist. Again, it was a step forwards, but now we get the issue that QA messed up buy not properly testing the re-playability part of the game, leaving players in a lurch, making the game a mess if I wanted to play a ‘NewGame+’, it is a little thing, with a far reaching consequences. What was great became good, a step forward, hindered by one and a half steps back., which is the faltering part. Ubisoft needed a QA department with teeth, as I see it, they did not have one, or Marketing got involved. There is in all honesty no way to tell how that came to pass.

Yet, this is not about Ubisoft, because Rocksteady Studios outdid it all with Batman: Arkham Knight, making Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment extremely unhappy as I see it. A game that should be heralded as a new legendary release got a 50% rating by Steam and 70% by Gamespot, these are not good numbers, they are ratings that resemble coffin nails. Not a good thing at all. In my view, this is a massive fail by their QA department. However, when we accept the statement from Kotaku.com, we get “The moment I’m inside the batmobile, it’s not surprising to see it dip to 15 frames-per-second“, did QA really not see that? So is it Marketing or is it QA? No matter what answer I give here, it is pure speculation, I have no facts, just personal insight from 30 years of gaming. No matter where it lies, QA should not have signed off on it, not at such drops of quality. Which gets us back to the non-liability of these firms. ‘Res Ipsa Loquitur’, or in slightly more English “the thing speaks for itself“, The plaintiff can create a presumption of negligence by the defendant by proving that the harm would not ordinarily have occurred without negligence. Yet, what harm? The only harm the game has is spending funds which are refundable, the only harm there is for the maker of the game. So, there is no case, what is the case is that until these firms properly invest into QA, we get to go through buying and returning a lot more. Yet, these companies realise and they take a chance that the gamers (which tends to be a loyal lot) in that they hold on to the game and just download the patch. So basically, the first hour gamers become the sponsors for the development of an unfinished game. That is how I personally see it.

In my view, the game suffered, what could have been great will soon be forgotten. Yet, what happens when it is not a videogame? What happens when it is not a game, what happens when it is business software? you see the Donoghue v Stevenson case gives us that a maker can be held responsible for personal injury or damage to property, yet, what happens when neither is the case?

It is a very old UK case in Torts, where a Mrs Donoghue was drinking a bottle of ginger beer in a café in Paisley. A dead snail was in the bottle and because of that she fell ill, and she sued the ginger beer manufacturer, Mr Stevenson. The House of Lords held that the manufacturer owed a duty of care to her, which was breached, because it was reasonably foreseeable that failure to ensure the product’s safety would lead to harm of consumers. This is a 1932 case that is still the key case of torts and personal harm involving negligence. Yet, with video games there is no visible harm, there is only indirect harm, but the victims there have little say in this as the direct victim is offered a refund, the competitor missing out on revenue has no case. So as revenue is neither injury nor damage to property. Now we get the issue that if the buyer buys goods which are defective, he or she can only have a claim under contract of sale against the retailer. If the retailer is insolvent, no further claims will be possible. So, with Arkham Knight, when 2500 copies are returned, a large shop will not go insolvent, you get the idea, when the shop needs to close the doors, you are left out of money.

Here we get the crux, a maker of a game/program has pushed an inferior product to market. It will offer compensation, yet if the shop closes (that is a massively big if), the buyer is out in the cold. Now, the chance of this ever happening is too unrealistically small, but the need to set rules of quality, setting the need of standards is now becoming increasingly important. With games they are the most visible, but consider a corporation now pushing a day one product to get enough revenue to tailor a patch which the customer needs to download. An intentional path to stay afloat, to buy time. Where do you stand, when you got pushed to solution 2 as solution 1 is a month away, only to discover the flaw in the program, which gets freely adjusted in Week 23, so 22 weeks without a solution, this situation also hindering the sale of solution 1, which was fine from day one onwards.

Not only is a much better QA required, the consumer should be receiving much stronger protection against these events. That could just be me.

Now to the real issue connected to this. Assassins Creed: Unity became a really bad joke last year,

It went so far as Ubisoft offering a free game because (source: Express) “UBISOFT have confirmed some Xbox One fans who have previously applied patch 3 for Assassin’s Creed: Unity are now being hit by a 40GB download when trying to use the latest title update”. 40GB is massive, that comes down to 10 DVD Movies, it is well over 10% of the entire hard drive space, this gives us the image that one game has clear impact on the total space of the console. Also be mindful of the term ‘patch 3’, which implies that patch one and two had been applied, so is there clarity on the reasonable assumption that there is an issue with both release and QA here? In my view, delayed in addition or not, the game should never have been released to begin with.

Don’t get me wrong, with the new AAA games, the chance of a patch becomes larger and larger. You see QA can only get us to a certain distance and an issue on a console is a lot less likely than an issue on your PC (with all kinds of hardware combinations), yet the amount of fixes as shown here is way off the wall. Now we see a similar thing happening to the PC edition of Arkham knight. Warner Brothers have decided to call back the game, all sales have stopped at present. However, the issues we see on gottabemobile.com are “Warner Brothers’ forums are filled with complaints about the game including Error CE-34878-0 issues on the PS4, various issues with the Batmobile including this one on Xbox One, issues with cut scenes, Harley Quinn DLC problems on the PS4, Batman season pass problems, problems launching the game, problems with the game’s well-known Detective Mode, missing Flashpoint skin, problems with missions, problems saving the game, and more”.

Now we get the question, was this properly QA-ed? Was a proper quality test made, because the size and nature of the issues, as reported give out a negative testing vibe, which I consider to be extremely negligent! As such we must wonder, should such levels of non-functionality be allowed. Can the law allow the release of a product that causes, as alleged ‘no harm has been caused’, an industry, hoping on the users to wait quietly as a game gets finished on the consumers costs.

Now that the Nextgen consoles are all set out to be downloaded in the night, how long until games start tasking the game of ‘customer expectations’ and release a 90% game? How long until corporations will work on a business model that relies on consumer sponsoring whilst they contract even better profits. We also need to be careful, patches will always be a factor, I have no issue with that, and the list of games that needing massive patches keeps on growing, AC: Unity, GTA-V, Arkham Knight, Destiny, and the list goes on a little longer. I am only mentioning the patches over 3GB (one is well over 6Gb) and in this light Destiny gets a small pass as that game is all about multiplayer, which is a dimension of errors all on its own. The Elder Scrolls Online wins this year with a 16Gb patch, again, all about online play, but overall the gaming industry seems to adapt the bad traits of Microsoft, which is definitely not a good idea.

For now we seem to accept it, especially as the Nextgen systems are relatively new, but that feeling will change sooner rather than later and at that point someone official needs to step in, which might end up being a lot more official that the game makers bargained for, especially as games outside of the US can be up to 70% more expensive, at that point we are entitled to some proper consumer protection, against these levels of negligence, levels that currently only exist on a limited scope.