Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5 billion, will support Xbox and Kinect

@50 “Would be nice if we could keep from derailing this thing into another mega thread about Sony and its downed PSN.”

Shame you didn’t say that after @12. Odd how you perpetuate the derailing chat in @22. Odder still that you only seek to stem it after anti-Sony misinformation gets corrected.

Your hypocrisy is growing very tiresome.

Both 12 and 22 were dealing with the topic at hand: MS buying Skype.

@52 Quite right, the detailing post was at #23, open trolling at #33… Erz you bad boy!!

Anyhoo, baaack on topic. Does this mean Live will be getting a free phone service in effect? Between consoles & pc’s?

@kerplunk

Or maybe you arrogant, vile little turd, you could just stop trolling the fuck out of OG on every. single. fucking. topic that he posts on and comment on these threads like a normal human being. Jesus, you talk about OG being tiresome regarding his so called hypocrisy, but do you really think that people want to see you in your sly and nasty fashion tearing it out of the same guy each and every time? Dont kid yourself you’re not on any kind of crusade to ‘expose’ him or anything like that; let US make our own minds up about people without you spewing your cock stroking venom in every thread that he posts in.

wow for second i thought i was on eurogamer…

Hark! I think I may hear the swish of the ban hammer!

/awaits “sickening thud”

Awesome, another free service included in the Gold-subscription

Thnx Moxi.

@56 I think I can smell ol’ Mjolnir warming up

@54 Hmmm having trouble with the “no personal insults” decree, eh? Let me help you out.

*cough*

Kerplunk dear boy, go easy on OG please. Your upsetting the children

@54 When your red mist clears you’ll notice that my contribution to this topic was to address incorrect information. The topic had already been derailed into platform wars starting with the mention of competing platforms in @12 and continued without objection in @22.

It is hypocritical to perpetuate the behaviour you’re telling others to stop (@50).

The only people that seem to lash out, swearing and pointing fingers are the ones that seem most offended by having misinformation corrected.

Here’s a wild and crazy thought: if less lies hypocrisy and FUD were posted there would be fewer comments in response to them.

Woah. Using rationality and logic there. Might be a bit of a radical concept to some people!

@58 And we see that OG doesn’t actually care at all about rule-breaking behaviour such as insulting, off topic, troll posts. Not when it suits his particular view. He is happy to endorse rule-breaking it when it suits him. On the other hand, if you merely correct information that conflicts with his view he wastes no time in attempting to silence it (textbook hypocrisy and double-standards).

@60

Does that mean Moxi gets a tiny Fisher-Price hammer?

We need a new rule for Orbit Monkey: abusing the sarcasm button

@55 Why do you say that? Oh yeah, I suppose this does look like a comments reply thread to a Rob Fahey article after all

@57. Surely a *free* service such a Skype, should be available on silver which is *free*.

^ It should. But as it says, MS have brought it, they own it. Logic in terms of price and availability go out the window.

Thats it I am throwing away my bottle of ACME Musk: Untamed Wild. I don’t care the advert says “Troll for love with a sweet scent” and all that. I am tired of Kerplunk chasing after me.

Besides it doesn’t smell sweet, more like urine really.

Thats the last order I place with them.

Yeah, it should be free, but there’s bugger all chance of that actually happening.

Do you think this acquisition will see some sort of integration with Windows mobile phones too?

@67 Stop trying to make this look personal when it’s not. (Not the first time you’ve tried to put words in my mouth to that effect in the last 24 hours). My comment in 42 was correcting misinformation. I followed it up by providing a link when I was asked. You immediately followed my post with a remark attempting to govern what should or shouldn’t be said.

So, no, nobody is hounding you (unless you genuinely believe 50 comes before 49). You’re not a victim. You’re just continuing to twist things. Stop perpetuating this, stop spreading fud and stop being such a hypocrite.

Kotaku’s story says it’s already confirmed for Windows Phone.

Probably, though i assume “non-Microsoft platforms” means i’ll be able to keep my Android version.

@69

It would make sense I think; I can’t see a good reason why not.

why do you still call them ‘Windows mobile’? it’s Windows Phone 7 now.

@73 I couldn’t recall the official/formal name of the brand.

As an interesting point and not at all related to any trolling above (since I’d like to get away from that), I wonder how this will effect Steam? Valve recently pretty much bought rights to the entire voice chat protocol, the best part of Skype (the rest of it is just UI) – SILK. And they’re now using that in Steam. You could tell the difference immediately after the update, too.

The interesting thing is that the Steam version doesn’t suck bandwidth to hell like the Skype client itself does, and I’m not sure why that is, but it might be something to do with the cluttered, bloatware nature of Skype.

What I’m getting at here is that this bodes well. The SILK part of Skype is actually really good, and that’s probably what Microsoft will be looking to work into Live and Messenger, just the protocol and nothing else. That’ll be great because it really is an amazing quality leap and you 360 owners will notice it.

I wonder how many Billions it would take for MS to buy Valve? Steam on Xbox Next would be … beyond words.

I know not gonna happen, but would be amazing if it did.

@76

It’s not about money, it’s about Newell wanting to ensure that Valve remains privately owned. He’s passionate not just about making money, but doing awesome things with his company. They started off as a small developer after all and grew from there.

The only way they’d be able to buy out Valve is to assassinate Newell first. And good grief man, could you imagine what would happen to the UI? It would become like Games for Windows Live. The end times would be signalled, and ragnarok would certainly soon follow.

Soooo… let’s not speculate about such a terrifying concept. >_>

@76
Not really used Steam much – what would it add which Live doesn’t already cover?

#77 O.G to tell you the truth i rather prefer that not to happen, please not clouds, not cumulos humilis, not cumulus congestus or skies for that matter on my consoles, please only discs format games, a true and tested formula.

lol @ Wulf

@Doc, long story short Steam is about the best online service and Digital Distribution place going. High quality all the way around. And my fav part is the sales they always do. Weekend deal. Midweek madness. Heck they just did EA week. Games like ME where up to 75% off, I think it was. DeadSpace as well. Sales all of the time.

I can run the same games on Mulitple laptops. I can redownload them as much as I need. Thier DRM is fair. I can play my games offline if I can’t grab an internet connection.

They have cloud saves for settings/perferences and game saves.

Great match making, profile, and comunity services.

To me Steam IS like Live, but better and of course just PC.

My far out there guess would be that someday when there is no more hardware platforms to worry about, there will still be Steam. Prolly streaming games via Netflix style, and it will prolly run on your Cell Phone to your TV(built in).

Just all around good stuff.

fucking hell!
I don’t believe it! Nice move Microsoft, I never thought they could pull this kind of move. Its good and shows an advantage because Sony are fusing with Google all the time.

Skype will be on xbox next

as usual..the comment sections…full of constant arguing spanning over 50+ comments full of garbage!

This is a surprising move. But a good one. Interesting to see what will come of this.

that money could of been used to invest into first party studios

The thing that impress me the most is the insane amount of money involve, how much money does microsoft have in reality? o_O , i just hope the skype creators will recieve a hughe amount of money out of this, at least the amount of money to live their lifes careless without any concerns at all.

@84 Honestly, considering the service in question, I’m surprised it didn’t cost more.

As for how much Microsoft is worth, their current revenue is about 65 billion, so this is a surprisingly large chunk of change.

Oh jeez, someone thought of a platform wars when i mentioned sony and Microsoft together? Give me a break.

I mentioned Sony because they need to start doing their job. F A S T!

#85 65 billion wooowww, thats too much money for sure, anyway i know the service is top notch, i didnt said it because of that, what i did tried to said, and the thing that impressed me was the hughe amount of money microsoft have available to do the transaction. o_O

@80
Ok fair enough – a lot of those are design decisions by MS though – rather than features they just don’t have. They do sales, just not as good value ones. The DRM situation is a choice too. It’s more MS don’t want to do these things than they don’t have the capability – so buying Steam wouldn’t necessarily bring those things to the next Xbox.

Cloud type functionality is something I’d like to see more of on consoles for saves and settings. With more interaction across devices. Xbox to WM7, PS3 to NGP for example.

“that money could of been used to invest into first party studios”

I doubt the Entertainment and Devices division is going to be getting funding like that again any time soon. They’re nearly $6bn in the hole since the release of the original xbox and it’s all about profits now. You just can’t keep throwing money at a problem like they did in the original xbox days, eventually you have to try and make some money.

yep you’re right

@86 Good to see you acknowledged how poor your information was and aren’t trying to distract people away from your FUD spreading.

It’s funny. It’s always the people that insist they’re so goddamn right about everything that turn out the be the least trustworthy and reliable.

–

Something that has occurred to me in the wording of the information is that there can be quite a difference between “Skype supporting XXXXX” and “XXXX supporting Skype”. The former can just be a grouping of accounts under a unified banner (skype acct, xbl acct, ms live acct etc) with the latter being to introduce key Skype VOIP functionality to a platform that previously lacked it.

THIS IS AWSOME NEWS!!!!

Microsoft is now the clear leader in online communications.

#80: I so much agree with you! But Steam will never come to xbox, since Microsoft thinks Xbox Live is so much better.

“I wonder how many Billions it would take for MS to buy Valve? Steam on Xbox Next would be … beyond words.

I know not gonna happen, but would be amazing if it did.”

Why? What good would Steam do on an Xbox? Xbox Live does almost everything Steam does (plus a bunch of other things). And Microsoft are free to emulate the sales and stuff that Steam is doing so well. They just need some imagination. Oh, yeah, of course. They’re Microsoft. They don’t have that.

The only thing that would happen if Microsoft bought Steam is that they’d ruin it for everybody who are using it on the PC.

this is not good for microsoft.though micro call it “non-Microsoft platforms”,but i’m sure a lot of companies will likely draw back from skype,specially if google introduce a new service like skype!
microsoft is rival of many companies in platforms!,web services,mobiles OS.
when valve can use some other services on their steam,why microsoft(with it’s Live).
when mobilephone companies can use other services on their android phones why contribute to micro(with its windows phone)by using skype.
when sony and nintendo can use other services on their platforms WHY microsoft(with its xbox).
i’m sure companies feel much better to work with google and anyone else who’s not involved in their business.using skype for them is like to help an enemy surpass themselves!
look at android,everyone use it without question,cuz google obviously is not a competitor to them!
google can use this chance and beat micro badly