If Surface is a success what is success for Microsoft

Microsoft Surface.

It's considered one of the most known brands in technology. The brand launched in 2012, it had stumbling blocks and resulted in the 900 million write down of Surface RT. surface Pro was too thick and had little battery life. By the time Surface Pro 3 arrives, where Microsoft marketed the device more clearly, it became a success and resulted in Surface becoming a 1 billion dollar business. It's impressive how we got from a unknown brand to one of the most known brands in tech, up there with Apple's Mac and iPad brands. Along with Macs, you often see Microsoft Surfaces around cities and universities.

Why is Scorpio's standard of success different from Surface? Despite only selling 1 million per quarter.

Discuss..

It's clear that Microsoft may be going down the Third party route in the future. It's inevitable.

All Microsoft needs is Create a PC console like Steam Machines, with an Xbox dashboard to load and play UWP games, and sell to people as hardware and as a Update.

The principles of developing games is how it is today developing for PC despite being a PC console. Developers instead of Win32 use UWP to optimise their games to run on minimum specs. Developers just support controller and mouse and keyboard.

Scorpio will be its own thing due to the OS difference

Assuming Microsoft goes third party. What is success? Selling multiple units from the one hardware company, or is success influencing PC OEMs to create an army of clones running your software.

I've never seen a Surface in my life. It's an overpriced ripoff if you ask me.

It's actually great device, I have one from work, but yeh it is pricey(think my i7 model starts from like 1600€ here) which is why it doesn't really gain mass market either

OMG people

Yeah, they are nice, but their pricing is out of whack. I think it was MS's solution to keep IPAD from taking over the business/enterprise - and in that sense, it sort of worked. But it is probably the one device that makes IPAD seem like a bargain.

do we care about surface?

Surface Pro 4 is amazing. I love it. My iPad is my nephews touch game device now.

Good for you, sport!

I like the idea of the Surface, it's just too expensive. But I don't see why down the line we can't play Xbox UWP games portably, that would be pretty great.

Ho-hum.

Yup, I've been eyeing up a Surface Pro 4 lately since my laptop is old as dirt lol but the window shopping would end and I'll bite if/when the Surface can be used on the go with games currently being played on X1/Scorpio. Not that I'm much of a mobile gamer but it would be an added incentive to ditch my old laptop and go Surface.

Can't Win10 laptops already run UWP games? That would be pretty cool already if you ask me. But the only reason I wouldn't get a surface is the price/performance ratio for what is essentially a laptop without a keyboard attached.

Laptops =\= Consoles. The purpose of a laptop is far broader and essential than a games machine. It is not a proper or valid comparison.

Sure with Win10, buy once play anywhere but again, my laptop that I rarely even turn on in the last 5 years is I think still running Windows XP lol. Like I said, If Surface becomes part of that for good games, it will kind of seal the deal for me and I'd go Surface as my new tech purchase, of course, along with Mighty Scorpio and sweet new big screen 4k TV this holiday as well. :D

Yeah I might budge if UWP works on Surface. Gears 4 on a portable, Jesus.

@bobrossperm: you can run UWP games on Surface, it's a full fledged desktop win 10, not saying it will run well but you can, it's possible to use keyboard and mouse as well. I play civ and some other games on my surface

That's crazy stuff. But how does it perform? But I suppose my Steam account should work as well also making it worth it.

Yeh Steam runs fine on surface, on most games that are even to a some degree demanding you are going to have to drop the resolution quite a bit, the native 2736 x 1824 is way too much for the gpu to handle.

some results you can see: https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceGaming/

and this from one reddit thread:

Did some snooping and found some gaming tests of the SP4 i5 8GB model, as far as I can tell the pro 4 seems like a fairly capable gaming device.

Counter Strike GO: 30fps low-medium settings at Native Res (2736x1864)

Dota 2: runs fluently at Native Resolution

Grand Theft Auto V: 20-30fps at 960p

League of Legends: 70fps medium/high settings at 2736x1824

StarCraft 2: 25-30fps high settings at 1680x1050

Left 4 Dead 2: 40fps at 1680x1050

Guild Wars 2: 40fps low settings at 1920x1080

Battlefield 4: 40fps low settings at 1440x900, seems to have texture problems.

The Witcher 3: 10fps low settings at 1336x768

Smite: 40fps medium settings at 1920x1080

Dying Light: 25fps low settings at 1280x720

That's all there is for now, but I'd just like to thank YouTube user /u/josher14 for taking the time to make these videos!

I personally play Civ 5 on 900p and it feels smooth enough, the i7 runs it surprisingly well as the game gets rather cpu hungry

Yeah it will bve a while before current gen is feasible on a portable of that size. But it's impressive so far, especially seeing it has a laptop grade I7 in there.

Surface is awesome

I have a surface pro its awesome. Its kinda pricey but worth it. Its still cheaper than a macbook and has more functionality.

Not as long as you think. The new surface pro 5 is being built with ryzen so it have even better performance.
http://www.mobipicker.com/microsoft-surface-pro-5-release-date-specs-amd-ryzen-windows-10-creators/

That's amazing. I can't wait to see what ryzen does for technology and pricing. I see PS5 and Xbox 2 having sufficient CPU power this time around since AMD got off their bums and started innovating again. Unfortunately AMD were still shit in 2013.

If the Scorpio is the console version of the Surface then things can really look up for MS.

@charizard1605: I've got a decent MacBook now, but I think a Surface Pro would do what I need it to. Might be my next device, quite honestly.

Few years back, when i was looking for a laptop, a BestBuy employee tried to sell me one they had on sale. I told him he can keep his Surface, i don't want. Very edgy.

Eh, I hate Windows 10 (and adore OSX) is the problem. I'd probably stick with Macbooks just for that reason.

How do you expect a fanboy to respond. This guy has never seen or touched a surface, but he responds with another alternative fact that it is a ripoff. How the hell can you say that when you have not seen, touched, or even used the device?

It is the same shit with Xbox games. He thinks they are trashed but he has never played them, but will spout his agenda as they are all terrible games. This is the issue with fanboys giving out any information about a product they just don't like, just because.

I'm typing this on an i5 SP4 now. I mainly use mine for Photoshop, Muse and of course general use and its better than my similar spec Dell work laptop. I think what you have to remember is that the Surface Pro is a premium device, as much as the MacBook is and this is why they are more expensive than the competition. You can't compare an iPad, not even the pro model as the adobe apps are nowhere close to the full x86 apps and those w10 tablets with Intel atoms, with 1gb/2gb are only good for web browsing, hence why they are cheaper.

When someone speaks out of their ass what else can be expected besides shit.

What is the thesis of this thread? Are you preemptively arguing that if the Scorpio only sells a million units a quarter it is a success because the Surface is one for the same sales? What's the other stuff about UWP arguing? Serious questions, because I think I am misreading the OP

That's a stretch, my friend

But I'd buy one if I had a wee bit more disposable income. Very cool device.

The Surface is a success because Apple copied from it. ;)

I probably wouldn't buy one just for personal use, but I had a 10" surface pro 2 for my previous job, where I was constantly on the road, going to customer meetings, airports, etc, and I freaking loved that thing. It truly was a tablet sized device with all the jam of a full sized laptop. I had a dock with 2 monitors/keyboard/mouse at home, and at the office to just drop it into.

I was so sad when I changed jobs and surface wasn't an "IT approved device".

I have no need for a Surface. I have a Windows 10 Gaming PC at home and another at work. I also have Windows 10 on my Lumia 950 XL smartphone. It comes with a display dock that turns into a PC if I want. I don't really have a need for a tablet/laptop or a Scorpio.

Lol. "Billion dollar business" "Up there with iPads" Sell 20 billion a year for many, many years and you can tallk about "up there with iPad"!

Surface is huge in enterprise. We have a lot of them at our work (cloud based security company).

I'm a mac guy myself, but the Surface Studio is amazing. Tried one out in the Microsoft store by me, might pick it up.

i wish i got surface book they got disgustingly great keyboards and look slim

Hmm.. Maybe we'll even see Scorpio do Windows 10 near EOL.

Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if the next gen "xbox" is basically a 1st party MS PC in a relatively small box.

Surface Pro is an industry trendsetter like the iPhone; now iPad Pro? I wonder what's the next big thing other than bezeless for these mobile devices.

@xantufrog: I'm saying what is success. Is it selling multiple units as possible or is it the Surface model and have an army of clones everywhere running Microsoft's software.

I'm guessing more profit is priority than just being a trendsetter alone by itself as a corporation even though trendsetting is an important indication as well for whatever they may do in the future.

It'll run well. But it depends on the game. It'll probably run Indie games very well. TBH I won't be surprised if Microsoft made a Switch competitor by simply making a tablet with controllers and using an OS like Windows 10 Cloud as the OS and advertise the Xbox Live creators programme. Maybe they'll use the Xbox brand. They have a much better infrastructure in place to create one than Sony. As for Sony it will involve getting X86 PS4 games in a small and thin form factor while being fanless, something X86 sucks at and ARM excels at.

Also it'll be cool if Microsoft didn't have Xbox live gold on this.