Author: Slater Wold
Date: 14:19:24 11/15/01
Go up one level in this thread
On November 15, 2001 at 16:34:29, Christophe Theron wrote: >On November 15, 2001 at 14:26:38, Peter Berger wrote: > >>On November 15, 2001 at 14:18:11, Dann Corbit wrote: >> >>> >>>[1] OK, it's already a world-class program. But the 'become' refers to Ferret >>>--> *becoming* MS-Chess. >> >>Well,let's dream a little longer :). Ferret is already ready and competitive and >>probably WinBoard-compatible. >> >>And whatever you can say about the MS guys they definitely are able to create >>_decent_ GUIs . So a MS-Chess with Ferret as major engine and the option to >>import all the WB engines ; GUI built by Microsoft? >> >>I don't believe this will happen but it would definitely be a program I'd buy >>right away. >> >>Cheers, >>pete > > > >That's why they don't need any talents. Many people would buy their crap right >away (and actually many people do). > >That leaves two solutions: >1) they want to have a very strong chess program => they buy an existing strong >engine and write their own GUI above. >2) they don't need a strong engine and they just have to clone a free source >code and stuff their own GUI. > >In both cases, if they wanted to do it they would have done it since a long >time. > >I don't buy the idea of a MS team working on a chess program. That makes no >sense. > > > > Christophe Over 40% of MS money comes from consumer software. That is NOT including operating systems. That's just the games, Office, Flight Simulator, etc., etc. Their smallest operation is expedia.com which makes almost nothing year. (Nothing compared to any of their other operations.) Yet they continue to keep it open. Sometimes, it's the hold on the market, rather than the profit which equals good business. Let's take this example: MS pays 6 programmers $100,000 a year for one year to develop a chess program. So roughly, their investment would be $600,000. They would need to sell 20k copies at $30 to break even. And it would more than likely outsell Chessmaster. Perhaps they will buy someone's program. Perhaps they won't. I just know what I heard, and that is due to the response of Kaspy vs the web, they were interested in the prospect. There was a rather huge turnout for that event. If MS takes Chessbase, Chessmaser, Rebel, and Chess Assistance's share of the market, it would be *very* worthwhile.
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