Steve Ballmer never used to be someone who let facts speak for themselves. In the 1990s, he was the hyper-energetic Microsoft exec yelling 'Developers! Developers! Developers!' at an all-hands meeting in Safeco field.
People often say that videogames made by Western developers are somehow different in terms of taste for the players, in comparison with Japanese games. I think that means that the Western developers and Japanese developers, they are good at different fields.
In addition to transitioning to the cloud, our customers continue to invest in premium versions of our on-prem server products like Window Server, System Center and SQL Server.
We tend to think of Steam as tools for content developers and tools for producers. We're just always thinking: how do we want to make content developers' lives better and users' lives a lot better? With Big Picture Mode, we're trying to answer the question: 'How can we maximize a content developers' investment?'
We're passing milestones all the time on the amount of money our community developers are making. And we're seeing developers that are making $250,000 a year.
For the first time we're allowing developers who don't work at Facebook to develop applications just as if they were. That's a big deal because it means that all developers have a new way of doing business if they choose to take advantage of it. There are whole companies that are forming whose only product is a Facebook Platform application.
For most developers, that kind of situation - a player figuring out how to do something that the designer didn't intend - to most developers, that's a bug. For me, that's a celebration.
I think there's that widespread sentiment that game developers need to be quiet unless they're talking on-message. I think that's changing a little bit; Twitter has helped, with developers sharing personal opinions on things.
I think that that multiplatform development is what's on the mind of most high-end PC developers now... this is really the first time in the industry's history that we've had console machines that can handle all that PC developers can deliver.
While Microsoft does not share all of Oracle's ambitions for Java, we agree that it is a very valuable tool for software developers.
Our developers are constantly thinking about, 'How do I bring new and novel experiences to our platforms?' whether it's the Switch, 3DS, or even a smart device. So that is just part of the way our developers think.
People get really attached to it: many of our players have played for four to five years, and our developers range in age from eight to 80. Some of the top developers are 18 or 20, and we have kids in high-school who are making two, three or four thousand dollars a month.
Some of our developers are starting to make $20,000 a month, which is really significant... We're getting developers who are 14 and 20 years of age making more money than their parents, starting to make a professional career of developing games on Roblox.
The Web is not a prize to be won, and Mr. Ballmer's attitude is deplorable in the light of what the Web means to the world, to users, to designers and developers, and - to put it into Microsoft parlance - customers.
Today, Web services is really about developing for the server. What it means to developers is any set of systems services that you make a Web service you to access by any kind of device with a highly interactive client, not just a browser.
I have been able to attend many technology conferences around the world over the years, including some of the largest, like Google I/O, Microsoft's Developer Conference, Apple's WorldWide Developers Conference, Oracle World, Le Web, and more.