#Industrial PC Market

[trendingreportz]

Industrial PC Market - Forecast(2024 - 2030)

The Market for Industrial PC is forecast to reach $5.8 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 5.36% from 2020 to 2025. The significant adoption of the digital technologies, industrial automation and other advanced technologies is contributing to market growth rate. The increasing demand for the increasing process flexibility, enhanced efficiency in various industries is set to contribute to the growth of the market. 

Report Coverage

The report: “Industrial PC Market – Forecast (2020-2025)”, by IndustryARC covers an in-depth analysis of the following segments of the Industrial PC Market. 

By Product Type: Panel, rack mount, box, embedded panel, embedded box, Din rail PC with I/O

By End use industries: Chemical, Energy and power, Oil & gas, Food and beverage, pharmaceutical, automotive, aerospace and defence, semiconductor and electronics, and others.

By Geography: North America, South America, Europe, APAC, and RoW

Request Sample

Key Takeaways

DIN rail PC are analysed to grow at highest rate during the forecast period majorly attributed to the high performing computing solutions offered.

APAC is analysed to dominate the market owing to the growing investments in R&D of the industrial PCs alongside the increasing adoption of the advanced technologies.

The rising demand for the efficient manufacturing process is set to be a key driving factor for the Industrial PC Market.

By Product type- Segment Analysis

DIN rail PC with I/O is analysed to grow at highest rate during the forecast period. The Din rail PCs are significantly deployed in the connected factories for efficient manufacturing processes thereby contributing to the high growth rate. In addition to these, these PCs have high durability and can be handled in harsh environments as they have high temperature threshold, which translates to reduced downtime and increased productivity. The installation of industrial PCs is easy and they are compact. They can withstand severe conditions and can absorb any stationary shocks or falls. Owing these benefits, there has been increasing adoption of industrial PCs thereby driving the market growth.

Inquiry Before Buying

By Enduser- Segment Analysis 

The industries such as automotive manufacturing, aerospace and defence, semiconductor and electronics are analysed to grow at higher rate during the forecast period. This is majorly attributed to the adoption of automation in these industries. Growing funding activities for IoT technology set to increase the adoption of industrial PCs, thereby driving the market growth. Automotive is analysed hold significantly higher share in the market, owing to the high adoption of industrial-grade computing solutions in the manufacturing process. Adding to this, the growing developments in the expansion of these plants is further contributing to the market growth rate. In December 2019, Morris Garages, a British automobile brand has announced its plans to invest $ 429.25 million. 

Geography - Segment Analysis

APAC is the dominant region in 2019 with a market owing to the high production base in the region, followed by North America and Europe. The large market share is majorly attributed to the presence of large production bases in China and India. In March 2020, China Association of Automobile Manufactures has announced that vehicle production and sales volume reached 3.47 million and 3.67 million units. Adoption of robots assists the industries in reducing labor cost there by providing opportunities for industrial PCs during forecast period. Adding to this, In U.S., Many manufacturing companies have started implementing robots to increase productivity and improve efficiency. Monitoring of robots require high quality industrial PCs which set to drive the market growth.

Schedule a Call

Drivers – Industrial PC market 

Growing demand for automation and technological advancements in industries set to drive the Industrial PC Market

There has been significant growth in Industrial PC Market owing to the increased adoption for automation and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in industries. Industrial PCs assist in providing the platform to run automation software for monitoring and controlling the processes in real time applications. Many companies and startups are focusing on adoption of IoT technology. For instance, in June 2019, Indian IoT startup SwitchOn had raised $1 million seed funding from Pi Ventures. In April 2019, Altizon Systems Pvt. Ltd had raised $7 million in series A funding from investors TVS Motor Company Ltd.

Rising demand for energy efficient manufacturing operations

The manufacturing companies are majorly focusing on increasing their production capacities in order to reduce costs and strengthen their competitive position by increasing their production efficiency through adoption of industrial PC, thereby driving the market. In industries such as metals and mining, oil and gas, and others where the profit margins are comparatively lower than other industries such as automotive and food and beverages, among others, it is critical to optimize their resources and reduce waste. This is a flaw in the production process which result in huge losses, causing manufacturers in compensating the flawed product with a new one.  Owing to this, the manufacturing companies are actively increasing their focus towards adoption of industrial PCs in order to automate their manufacturing processes to enhance productivity. These PCs also assist the companies in improving accuracy, and minimizing operation costs, thereby achieving superior quality, uniformity, and safety. Therefore, increasing demand for energy-efficient manufacturing operations is anticipated to drive the demand for industrial PCs market.

Challenges – Industrial PC market

High Initial Investment

Implementation of industrial PCs in factories is a part of automation process. Adoption of automation machines can be one of the most cost intensive process for an industry. It involves millions of dollars. In addition to the initial costs, there are several unpredictable costs which may exceed the real cost saved by the accomplishing automation in the company. Some of these costs involve research and development costs of automating a process, anticipatory repairs, and maintenance costs. Additionally, there is also training cost associated with industrial PCs operation that further restraints the market growth. Most of the industrial PCs also occupy larger space which is a major challenge in small sized industries.

Buy Now

Market Landscape

Technology launches, acquisitions, and R&D activities are key strategies adopted by players in the Industrial PC Market. Industrial PC driver market is expected to be dominated by major companies such as Advantech, Beckhoff International, Siemens, IEI Integration Corporation, Kontron S&T, ABB, Nexcom International, among others.

Acquisitions/Technology Launches/Partnerships

In 2019, Advantech had launched palm size embedded industrial PC. The product includes features such as intelligent software integrated for remote system monitoring and management.

In 2019, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation had launched MI3000 model industrial computers and extended its MELIPC series of industrial PCs for edge computing and control applications in factory automation.

[strangemusictriumph]

Industrial PC Market - Forecast (2022 - 2027)

The Market for Industrial PC is forecast to reach $5.8 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 5.36% from 2020 to 2025. The significant adoption of the digital technologies, industrial automation and other advanced technologies is contributing to market growth rate. The increasing demand for the increasing process flexibility, enhanced efficiency in various industries is set to contribute to the growth of the market. 

Report Coverage

The report: “Industrial PC Market – Forecast (2020-2025)”, by IndustryARC covers an in-depth analysis of the following segments of the Industrial PC Market. 

By Product Type: Panel, rack mount, box, embedded panel, embedded box, Din rail PC with I/O

By End use industries: Chemical, Energy and power, Oil & gas, Food and beverage, pharmaceutical, automotive, aerospace and defence, semiconductor and electronics, and others.

By Geography: North America, South America, Europe, APAC, and RoW

Request Sample

Key Takeaways

DIN rail PC are analysed to grow at highest rate during the forecast period majorly attributed to the high performing computing solutions offered.

APAC is analysed to dominate the market owing to the growing investments in R&D of the industrial PCs alongside the increasing adoption of the advanced technologies.

The rising demand for the efficient manufacturing process is set to be a key driving factor for the Industrial PC Market.

By Product type- Segment Analysis

DIN rail PC with I/O is analysed to grow at highest rate during the forecast period. The Din rail PCs are significantly deployed in the connected factories for efficient manufacturing processes thereby contributing to the high growth rate. In addition to these, these PCs have high durability and can be handled in harsh environments as they have high temperature threshold, which translates to reduced downtime and increased productivity. The installation of industrial PCs is easy and they are compact. They can withstand severe conditions and can absorb any stationary shocks or falls. Owing these benefits, there has been increasing adoption of industrial PCs thereby driving the market growth.

Inquiry Before Buying

By Enduser- Segment Analysis 

The industries such as automotive manufacturing, aerospace and defence, semiconductor and electronics are analysed to grow at higher rate during the forecast period. This is majorly attributed to the adoption of automation in these industries. Growing funding activities for IoT technology set to increase the adoption of industrial PCs, thereby driving the market growth. Automotive is analysed hold significantly higher share in the market, owing to the high adoption of industrial-grade computing solutions in the manufacturing process. Adding to this, the growing developments in the expansion of these plants is further contributing to the market growth rate. In December 2019, Morris Garages, a British automobile brand has announced its plans to invest $ 429.25 million. 

Geography - Segment Analysis

APAC is the dominant region in 2019 with a market owing to the high production base in the region, followed by North America and Europe. The large market share is majorly attributed to the presence of large production bases in China and India. In March 2020, China Association of Automobile Manufactures has announced that vehicle production and sales volume reached 3.47 million and 3.67 million units. Adoption of robots assists the industries in reducing labor cost there by providing opportunities for industrial PCs during forecast period. Adding to this, In U.S., Many manufacturing companies have started implementing robots to increase productivity and improve efficiency. Monitoring of robots require high quality industrial PCs which set to drive the market growth.

Schedule a Call

Drivers – Industrial PC market 

Growing demand for automation and technological advancements in industries set to drive the Industrial PC Market

There has been significant growth in Industrial PC Market owing to the increased adoption for automation and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in industries. Industrial PCs assist in providing the platform to run automation software for monitoring and controlling the processes in real time applications. Many companies and startups are focusing on adoption of IoT technology. For instance, in June 2019, Indian IoT startup SwitchOn had raised $1 million seed funding from Pi Ventures. In April 2019, Altizon Systems Pvt. Ltd had raised $7 million in series A funding from investors TVS Motor Company Ltd.

Rising demand for energy efficient manufacturing operations

The manufacturing companies are majorly focusing on increasing their production capacities in order to reduce costs and strengthen their competitive position by increasing their production efficiency through adoption of industrial PC, thereby driving the market. In industries such as metals and mining, oil and gas, and others where the profit margins are comparatively lower than other industries such as automotive and food and beverages, among others, it is critical to optimize their resources and reduce waste. This is a flaw in the production process which result in huge losses, causing manufacturers in compensating the flawed product with a new one.  Owing to this, the manufacturing companies are actively increasing their focus towards adoption of industrial PCs in order to automate their manufacturing processes to enhance productivity. These PCs also assist the companies in improving accuracy, and minimizing operation costs, thereby achieving superior quality, uniformity, and safety. Therefore, increasing demand for energy-efficient manufacturing operations is anticipated to drive the demand for industrial PCs market.

Buy Now

Challenges – Industrial PC market

High Initial Investment

Implementation of industrial PCs in factories is a part of automation process. Adoption of automation machines can be one of the most cost intensive process for an industry. It involves millions of dollars. In addition to the initial costs, there are several unpredictable costs which may exceed the real cost saved by the accomplishing automation in the company. Some of these costs involve research and development costs of automating a process, anticipatory repairs, and maintenance costs. Additionally, there is also training cost associated with industrial PCs operation that further restraints the market growth. Most of the industrial PCs also occupy larger space which is a major challenge in small sized industries.

Market Landscape

Technology launches, acquisitions, and R&D activities are key strategies adopted by players in the Industrial PC Market. Industrial PC driver market is expected to be dominated by major companies such as Advantech, Beckhoff International, Siemens, IEI Integration Corporation, Kontron S&T, ABB, Nexcom International, among others.

Acquisitions/Technology Launches/Partnerships

In 2019, Advantech had launched palm size embedded industrial PC. The product includes features such as intelligent software integrated for remote system monitoring and management.

In 2019, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation had launched MI3000 model industrial computers and extended its MELIPC series of industrial PCs for edge computing and control applications in factory automation.

For More Electronics Market Research Reports - Please Click Here

[gender-euphowrya]

something about when gamer men do the whole "ugh women just don't get why we love gaming so much :(". Well. maybe if women were actually treated seriously as gamers and gaming stopped being seen as a Male Activity where they get yelled at and harassed in voice chats or made to feel like the only games they're allowed to touch are the sims and stardew valley played on their pink computers

maybe women would 'get' gaming if gaming 'got' women

[lord-radish]

Tens of thousands of people have been fired in the tech sector in the last six months alone. With the economy the way it is, and with people who are already unable to get a job, I wonder how an extra 20,000+ jobseekers are going to have any luck finding work.

[ravinderimarc]

The global industrial PC market size reached USD 5.4 Billion in 2024. IMARC Group expects the market to reach USD 7.8 Billion by 2033, exhibiting a growth rate (CAGR) of 4.02% during 2025-2033. The global market is primarily driven by the increasing demand for automation and control systems, technological advancements enhancing performance and ruggedization, growing adoption of IoT and connected devices for real-time monitoring, and an increased focus on cybersecurity measures to protect critical infrastructure.

[focusedmarketinsights]

Dive into the US online gambling market, which has witnessed an astounding value of $11.51 billion in 2022 and is ambitiously gearing up to double that, touching an anticipated $22.31 billion by 2028. With an impressive CAGR of 11.66%.

Americans have a legacy of favoring gambling; just think of Las Vegas, the world's glittering casino capital. To give you a snapshot, a staggering $157 billion was the consumer expenditure on gambling in the US in 2022.

What's fueling this market? The lavish spending capacity of the baby boomers and Gen X, paired with the tech-savvy millennials. This digital generation, addicted to their smartphones and the latest tech, is poised to catapult the demand for online gambling in the region. And let's not forget the soaring numbers in the casino sector; nationwide, consumer spending is on a pronounced uptick.

[dnnikhil]

The personal computer (PC) as a service market is expected to witness market growth at a rate of 47.69% in the forecast period of 2022 to 2029. Data Bridge Market Research report on personal computer (PC) as a service market provides analysis and insights regarding the various factors expected to be prevalent throughout the forecast period while providing their impacts on the market's growth. The rise in the demand in the business organisation is escalating the growth of personal computer (PC) as a service market.

PC as a Service is known to be the device management model with which organization pays for the lease management services and endpoint hardware from a dealer. The services offered are maintenance, imaging, logistic services and other.

[bishtmeenakshi]

Insights into the Dynamic Tech Market

Dive into the dynamic tech market with profound insights into the Computer Peripherals and PC Accessories Market. Uncover major players shaping this ever-evolving realm, exploring trends that define the intricate world of tech accessories and peripherals.

[hyperxcomputersqtr]

Benefits of Video Games in Learning

Parents usually distrust children playing video games. According to them, they don’t want their children to get addicted to video games. But some people consider video games as one of the best ways for children to learn.  The benefits of video games can include bringing out these skills in children such as concentration, creativity, team work, etc. The more we get to know about online gaming, the more we get to see its usefulness for children. However, it is necessary to use those video games that are useful for learning and at the same time the ones that are age appropriate.

Some of the benefits of video games in learning are :

Improved cognitive skills: Video games help in building cognitive skills such as problem-solving, decision-making, critical thinking etc. Players will have to solve complex puzzles while playing games, which can improve their problem-solving skills.

Enhanced creativity: Video games can improve creativity and encourage players to think out of the box and can make them come up with unique solutions.

Increased motivation: Video games are highly engaging and motivating for the players. The players are rewarded for achieving certain goals or completing challenging tasks in most of the video games. This can really encourage the players.

Improved hand-eye coordination: Most of the video games require quick movements while playing games. This can improve hand-eye coordination.

Improved memory and attention: Some of the video games require players to have good memory and remember rules and sequences, which further helps in improving memory and attention span.

Read More.....

[esportschimpnews]

Microsoft files a 37-page document with the FTC justifying the purchase of Activision Blizzard

Microsoft files a 37-page document with the FTC justifying the purchase of Activision Blizzard

Credits: Disclosure/Microsoft Announced in January of this year, the purchase of Activision Blizzard has faced a lot of resistance from regulatory bodieswhich led to the filing of a lawsuit by the US FTC. In response, Microsoft sent a document with 37 pages of arguments justifying the reasons why the acquisition should be approved. During the discussion, the company also laid out some of its…

[bisrsrch]

Data centers consume a lot of electricity and generate heat. Excess heat and humidity can damage appliances and equipment, triggering them to malfunction and stop functioning.

Data center cooling system is utilized by various end-use industries such as IT and telecom, healthcare, banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), and retail. Telecom companies have made numerous investments in emerging technologies over the years to expand network capacity, lower costs, enhance versatility, added new requirements for data centers.

Request for the Sample Report at: https://bisresearch.com/requestsample?id=1413&type=download

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Microsoft pinky swears that THIS TIME they’ll make security a priority

One June 20, I'm live onstage in LOS ANGELES for a recording of the GO FACT YOURSELF podcast. On June 21, I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On June 22, I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel and a keynote at the LOCUS AWARDS.

As the old saying goes, "When someone tells you who they are and you get fooled again, shame on you." That goes double for Microsoft, especially when it comes to security promises.

Microsoft is, was, always has been, and always will be a rotten company. At every turn, throughout their history, they have learned the wrong lessons, over and over again.

That starts from the very earliest days, when the company was still called "Micro-Soft." Young Bill Gates was given a sweetheart deal to supply the operating system for IBM's PC, thanks to his mother's connection. The nepo-baby enlisted his pal, Paul Allen (whom he'd later rip off for billions) and together, they bought someone else's OS (and took credit for creating it – AKA, the "Musk gambit").

Microsoft then proceeded to make a fortune by monopolizing the OS market through illegal, collusive arrangements with the PC clone industry – an industry that only existed because they could source third-party PC ROMs from Phoenix:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ibm-pc-compatible-how-adversarial-interoperability-saved-pcs-monopolization

Bill Gates didn't become one of the richest people on earth simply by emerging from a lucky orifice; he also owed his success to vigorous antitrust enforcement. The IBM PC was the company's first major initiative after it was targeted by the DOJ for a 12-year antitrust enforcement action. IBM tapped its vast monopoly profits to fight the DOJ, spending more on outside counsel to fight the DOJ antitrust division than the DOJ spent on all its antitrust lawyers, every year, for 12 years.

IBM's delaying tactic paid off. When Reagan took the White House, he let IBM off the hook. But the company was still seriously scarred by its ordeal, and when the PC project kicked off, the company kept the OS separate from the hardware (one of the DOJ's major issues with IBM's previous behavior was its vertical monopoly on hardware and software). IBM didn't hire Gates and Allen to provide it with DOS because it was incapable of writing a PC operating system: they did it to keep the DOJ from kicking down their door again.

The post-antitrust, gunshy IBM kept delivering dividends for Microsoft. When IBM turned a blind eye to the cloned PC-ROM and allowed companies like Compaq, Dell and Gateway to compete directly with Big Blue, this produced a whole cohort of customers for Microsoft – customers Microsoft could play off on each other, ensuring that every PC sold generated income for Microsoft, creating a wide moat around the OS business that kept other OS vendors out of the market. Why invest in making an OS when every hardware company already had an exclusive arrangement with Microsoft?

The IBM PC story teaches us two things: stronger antitrust enforcement spurs innovation and opens markets for scrappy startups to grow to big, important firms; as do weaker IP protections.

Microsoft learned the opposite: monopolies are wildly profitable; expansive IP protects monopolies; you can violate antitrust laws so long as you have enough monopoly profits rolling in to outspend the government until a Republican bootlicker takes the White House (Microsoft's antitrust ordeal ended after GW Bush stole the 2000 election and dropped the charges against them). Microsoft embodies the idea that you either die a rebel hero or live long enough to become the evil emperor you dethroned.

From the first, Microsoft has pursued three goals:

Get too big to fail;

Get too big to jail;

Get too big to care.

It has succeeded on all three counts. Much of Microsoft's enduring power comes from succeeded IBM as the company that mediocre IT managers can safely buy from without being blamed for the poor quality of Microsoft's products: "Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" is 2024's answer to "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."

Microsoft's secret sauce is impunity. The PC companies that bundle Windows with their hardware are held blameless for the glaring defects in Windows. The IT managers who buy company-wide Windows licenses are likewise insulated from the rage of the workers who have to use Windows and other Microsoft products.

Microsoft doesn't have to care if you hate it because, for the most part, it's not selling to you. It's selling to a few decision-makers who can be wined and dined and flattered. And since we all have to use its products, developers have to target its platform if they want to sell us their software.

This rarified position has afforded Microsoft enormous freedom to roll out harebrained "features" that made things briefly attractive for some group of developers it was hoping to tempt into its sticky-trap. Remember when it put a Turing-complete scripting environment into Microsoft Office and unleashed a plague of macro viruses that wiped out years worth of work for entire businesses?

https://web.archive.org/web/20060325224147/http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/newsinfo/collateral.aspx?cid=33338

It wasn't just Office; Microsoft's operating systems have harbored festering swamps of godawful defects that were weaponized by trolls, script kiddies, and nation-states:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EternalBlue

Microsoft blamed everyone except themselves for these defects, claiming that their poor code quality was no worse than others, insisting that the bulging arsenal of Windows-specific malware was the result of being the juiciest target and thus the subject of the most malicious attention.

Even if you take them at their word here, that's still no excuse. Microsoft didn't slip and accidentally become an operating system monopolist. They relentlessly, deliberately, illegally pursued the goal of extinguishing every OS except their own. It's completely foreseeable that this dominance would make their products the subject of continuous attacks.

There's an implicit bargain that every monopolist makes: allow me to dominate my market and I will be a benevolent dictator who spends his windfall profits on maintaining product quality and security. Indeed, if we permit "wasteful competition" to erode the margins of operating system vendors, who will have a surplus sufficient to meet the security investment demands of the digital world?

But monopolists always violate this bargain. When faced with the decision to either invest in quality and security, or hand billions of dollars to their shareholders, they'll always take the latter. Why wouldn't they? Once they have a monopoly, they don't have to worry about losing customers to a competitor, so why invest in customer satisfaction? That's how Google can piss away $80b on a stock buyback and fire 12,000 technical employees at the same time as its flagship search product (with a 90% market-share) is turning into an unusable pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Microsoft reneged on this bargain from day one, and they never stopped. When the company moved Office to the cloud, it added an "analytics" suite that lets bosses spy on and stack-rank their employees ("Sorry, fella, Office365 says you're the slowest typist in the company, so you're fired"). Microsoft will also sell you internal data on the Office365 usage of your industry competitors (they'll sell your data to your competitors, too, natch). But most of all, Microsoft harvest, analyzes and sells this data for its own purposes:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

Leave aside how creepy, gross and exploitative this is – it's also incredibly reckless. Microsoft is creating a two-way conduit into the majority of the world's businesses that insider threats, security services and hackers can exploit to spy on and wreck Microsoft's customers' business. You don't get more "too big to care" than this.

Or at least, not until now. Microsoft recently announced a product called "Recall" that would record every keystroke, click and screen element, nominally in the name of helping you figure out what you've done and either do it again, or go back and fix it. The problem here is that anyone who gains access to your system – your boss, a spy, a cop, a Microsoft insider, a stalker, an abusive partner or a hacker – now has access to everything, on a platter. Naturally, this system – which Microsoft billed as ultra-secure – was wildly insecure and after a series of blockbuster exploits, the company was forced to hit pause on the rollout:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/microsoft-delays-data-scraping-recall-feature-again-commits-to-public-beta-test/

For years, Microsoft waged a war on the single most important security practice in software development: transparency. This is the company that branded the GPL Free Software license a "virus" and called open source "a cancer." The company argued that allowing public scrutiny of code would be a disaster because bad guys would spot and weaponize defects.

This is "security through obscurity" and it's an idea that was discredited nearly 500 years ago with the advent of the scientific method. The crux of that method: we are so good at bullshiting ourselves into thinking that our experiment was successful that the only way to make sure we know anything is to tell our enemies what we think we've proved so they can try to tear us down.

Or, as Bruce Schneier puts it: "Anyone can design a security system that you yourself can't think of a way of breaking. That doesn't mean it works, it just means that it works against people stupider than you."

And yet, Microsoft – whose made more widely and consequentially exploited software than anyone else in the history of the human race – claimed that free and open code was insecure, and spent millions on deceptive PR campaigns intended to discredit the scientific method in favor of a kind of software alchemy, in which every coder toils in secret, assuring themselves that drinking mercury is the secret to eternal life.

Access to source code isn't sufficient to make software secure – nothing about access to code guarantees that anyone will review that code and repair its defects. Indeed, there've been some high profile examples of "supply chain attacks" in the free/open source software world:

https://www.securityweek.com/supply-chain-attack-major-linux-distributions-impacted-by-xz-utils-backdoor/

But there's no good argument that this code would have been more secure if it had been harder for the good guys to spot its bugs. When it comes to secure code, transparency is an essential, but it's not a sufficency.

The architects of that campaign are genuinely awful people, and yet they're revered as heroes by Microsoft's current leadership. There's Steve "Linux Is Cancer" Ballmer, star of Propublica's IRS Files, where he is shown to be the king of "tax loss harvesting":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego

And also the most prominent example of the disgusting tax cheats practiced by rich sports-team owners:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#economic-substance-doctrine

Microsoft may give lip service to open source these days (mostly through buying, stripmining and enclosing Github) but Ballmer's legacy lives on within the company, through its wildly illegal tax-evasion tactics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/13/pour-encoragez-les-autres/#micros-tilde-one

But Ballmer is an angel compared to his boss, Bill Gates, last seen some paragraphs above, stealing the credit for MS DOS from Tim Paterson and billions of dollars from his co-founder Paul Allen. Gates is an odious creep who made billions through corrupt tech industry practices, then used them to wield influence over the world's politics and policy. The Gates Foundation (and Gates personally) invented vaccine apartheid, helped kill access to AIDS vaccines in Sub-Saharan Africa, then repeated the trick to keep covid vaccines out of reach of the Global South:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#gates-foundation

The Gates Foundation wants us to think of it as malaria-fighting heroes, but they're also the leaders of the war against public education, and have been key to the replacement of public schools with charter schools, where the poorest kids in America serve as experimental subjects for the failed pet theories of billionaire dilettantes:

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/millionaire-driven-education-reform-has-failed-heres-what-works

(On a personal level, Gates is also a serial sexual abuser who harassed multiple subordinates into having sexual affairs with him:)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/technology/microsoft-sexual-harassment-policy-review.html

The management culture of Microsoft started rotten and never improved. It's a company with corruption and monopoly in its blood, a firm that would always rather build market power to insulate itself from the consequences of making defective products than actually make good products. This is true of every division, from cloud computing:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/28/other-peoples-computers/#clouded-over

To gaming:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/27/convicted-monopolist/#microsquish

No one should ever trust Microsoft to do anything that benefits anyone except Microsoft. One of the low points in the otherwise wonderful surge of tech worker labor organizing was when the Communications Workers of America endorsed Microsoft's acquisition of Activision because Microsoft promised not to union-bust Activision employees. They lied:

https://80.lv/articles/qa-workers-contracted-by-microsoft-say-they-were-fired-for-trying-to-unionize/

Repeatedly:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/activision-fired-staff-using-strong-language-about-remote-work-policy-union-2023-03-01/

Why wouldn't they lie? They've never faced any consequences for lying in the past. Remember: the secret to Microsoft's billions is impunity.

Which brings me to Solarwinds. Solarwinds is an enterprise management tool that allows IT managers to see, patch and control the computers they oversee. Foreign spies hacked Solarwinds and accessed a variety of US federal agencies, including National Nuclear Security Administration (who oversee nuclear weapons stockpiles), the NIH, and the Treasury Department.

When the Solarwinds story broke, Microsoft strenuously denied that the Solarwinds hack relied on exploiting defects in Microsoft software. They said this to everyone: the press, the Pentagon, and Congress.

This was a lie. As Renee Dudley and Doris Burke reported for Propublica, the Solarwinds attack relied on defects in the SAML authentication system that Microsoft's own senior security staff had identified and repeatedly warned management about. Microsoft's leadership ignored these warnings, buried the research, prohibited anyone from warning Microsoft customers, and sidelined Andrew Harris, the researcher who discovered the defect:

https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-solarwinds-golden-saml-data-breach-russian-hackers

The single most consequential cyberattack on the US government was only possible because Microsoft decided not to fix a profound and dangerous bug in its code, and declined to warn anyone who relied on this defective software.

Yesterday, Microsoft president Brad Smith testified about this to Congress, and promised that the company would henceforth prioritize security over gimmicks like AI:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/microsoft-in-damage-control-mode-says-it-will-prioritize-security-over-ai/

Despite all the reasons to mistrust this promise, the company is hoping Congress will believe it. More importantly, it's hoping that the Pentagon will believe it, because the Pentagon is about to award billions in free no-bid military contract profits to Microsoft:

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/17/pentagon-weighs-microsoft-licensing-upgrades

You know what? I bet they'll sell this lie. It won't be the first time they've convinced Serious People in charge of billions of dollars and/or lives to ignore that all-important maxim, "When someone tells you who they are and you get fooled again, shame on you."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/14/patch-tuesday/#fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again

[blacktabbygames]

Hi, I admit I dont really know what the process for this looks like, but would you ever consider adding Slay the Princess to the Playstation Plus subscription service, or to Xbox GamePass? Even temporary, with a time limit?

This might be something we do towards the very end of Slay the Princess' life cycle, but subscription services are a pretty hard sell for us in general. I don't think they're sustainable for the games industry as a whole, and they're a contributor to some of the race-to-the-bottom mentality. (Absolutely zero judgment for folks who use these services, btw. *I* use these services, but then I also know that I never actually buy a game after getting it on Game Pass or PS+; this is really just about the corporate side of things)

A big news item in the industry over the past month was the closure of Tango Gameworks, the Microsoft-owned studio that made Hi-Fi Rush last year, a wonderful game that got a bunch of awards and scored an 87 on Metacritic.

There's been a lot of speculation around this closure, and to add to that speculation, I believe that at the end of the day, Hi Fi Rush lost a lot of money, at least on paper.

It was shadow-dropped as a day 1 gamepass exclusive, which meant that there was no marketing done in advance, and sales were immediately cannibalized. (Side note— Hi-Fi Rush is maybe the only game I've picked up on Game Pass that I turned around and bought a Steam copy of, mostly because I wanted to play it on my Steam Deck.)

Since Tango was owned by MS, this was almost certainly a deliberate choice to make Game Pass seem more appealing, and even then, the studio behind a *hit* game was closed for financial reasons. So we're not sure that's a part of the industry we want to dance with.

I know this probably seems at odds with our stance on piracy, but at the end of the day, I think they're different beasts, and it's the scale, perceived legitimacy, and corporatization of subscription services that gives me a lot of pause, especially with Game Pass, which tends to double-release for PC and console. And on the flipside, I legitimately don't think piracy hurts developers.

So again, I think if we were to do something like this, it would be towards the end of the game's life, or it would be something tied more to an isolated ecosystem (i.e. if we do mobile, something like Apple Arcade, since people don't really *buy* mobile games, and the overlap with console + PC is very small.)