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Microsoft Books Media

Microsoft Building an 'Xbox Reading' App For Windows 8 52

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
Nate the greatest writes "Microsoft has already sunk $600 million into Nook Media, the ebook division spun off from Barnes & Noble in 2012, but I guess that's not enough for the Redmond tech giant: news broke today that they have a third ebook effort in the works. A new job listing discovered by the Chinese tech blog LiveSino has revealed that Microsoft is hiring an ebook developer to work on 'a groundbreaking interactive reading app on Windows, which incorporates books, magazines, and comics.' The position was posted by the Xbox Music, Video, and Reading unit, which had already released two apps for Windows 8 (video, music) and is clearly going for a trifecta. This new app shows all the signs of being completely unrelated to the Office Reader app, which leaked last year. That app reportedly focused more on PDFs, textbooks, and office docs, while the 'Xbox Reading' app mentions magazines and digital comics."
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Microsoft Building an 'Xbox Reading' App For Windows 8 More

Microsoft Building an 'Xbox Reading' App For Windows 8

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  • Patent lawsuit (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bernywork ( 57298 ) <.bstapleton. .at. .gmail.com.> on Monday February 10, 2014 @12:10PM (#46210215) Journal

    Let's get one thing straight here, the only reason why Microsoft dropped $300m into the Nook business was to bury a antitrust suit by Barnes and Noble over the patents they were allegedly infringing by using Android. Fearing failure and their Android licensing business drying up, they decided to make the whole lot go away.

    http://blogs.reuters.com/aliso... [reuters.com]

  • Who cares (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 )

    No one uses Windows 8 apps anyway.

    Even I am surprised as much as I hate Windows 8 I assumed due to it being installed on every computer at least some app writters would target it. Most of the users just click desktop. You can tell as most Windows 8 users have not upgraded to 8.1 according to statistics which means they do not even know it has a Windows Store?!

    Hell even Windows Phone has more apps and a reader I may add too.

    • Well, considering that if you blink, you will miss yet another shift in development platforms at Microsoft, I don't find the lack of dev support surprising at all! After all, why learn one platform when you can learn FIVE!

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by 0123456 ( 636235 )

      Even I am surprised as much as I hate Windows 8 I assumed due to it being installed on every computer at least some app writters would target it.

      Everyone hates Metro. Pushing it onto the desktop only made people hate it more. So the only place you might sell a Metro app is a Windows phone.

      And who in their right mind wants Windows on their phone?

      • And who in their right mind wants Windows on their phone?

        Since this is a reader application, I would say the same about reading on a phone. It can be done, but it's not a good fit.

        On a convertible laptop/tablet (Surface Pro), on the other hand, making Windows 8 flexible enough to handle both settings well actually makes sense. Especially for a reader - you might be using it as a tablet (sitting on the couch reading), or you might be referring to a textbook while doing homework using the keyboard.

        So

      • Even I am surprised as much as I hate Windows 8 I assumed due to it being installed on every computer at least some app writers would target it.

        Everyone hates Metro. Pushing it onto the desktop only made people hate it more. So the only place you might sell a Metro app is a Windows phone.

        And who in their right mind wants Windows on their phone?

        That post speaks volumes. Microsoft's artistic demos before any code was written showed LinkedIn, Monster.com, Youtube, and several other apps. I am just shocked how badly it ended up.

        FYI I own a Nokia after having a crappy Android experience with a Samsung Galaxy 1. It slowed down to being unusable .. eg. 30 seconds before my contact list on my phone would show up to add someones number etc.

        Windows Phone is much lighter and frankly gorgeous compared to Android and IOS. If MS didn't make it I bet people on

  • The direction to Nook should have taken. (Score:3)

    by taxman_10m ( 41083 ) on Monday February 10, 2014 @12:13PM (#46210239)

    The eInk Nook was able to be rooted into a full fledged android tablet. The version of android was rather old which was unfortunate, but otherwise it was a nice device. Reading GMail, looking at RSS feeds, viewing twitter were all pretty good on an eInk screen. It would have been nice to see a company produce a device that did this.

  • Is the Windows Mobile store really so bad that it doesn't have a basic e-reader? Why is it so exciting that Microsoft is building one? Doesn't everybody have an e-reader app these days?

    I guess it's mildly interesting if they can deliver a bunch of content "for free" to XBLive Gold members or something, but I don't see anything in the article about that.
    • Not sure about what runs on windows phone, but as far as my Surface goes, here's the experience. There are many eReader apps as well as an official Kindle app. The reason that MS wants to do this is because they want to make money off the actual sales of books, just like Amazon makes money from the sales of Kindle books. Having more competition in this arena will help keep prices down. If Amazon has the lowest price, buy the book there. If Microsoft has the lowest price, you can buy it there. I see no pro
  • Since anyone who can read is not the target audience for either the Xbox or Windows 8!

  • And they have been here before... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by R_Harrold ( 669587 ) * <robinton@benden.com> on Monday February 10, 2014 @01:03PM (#46210627) Homepage
    Anyone remember the Microsoft Reader application? They abandoned the application and all of the folks who purchased DRM protected material for it when they came out with the Windows Phone. Let's hope that they don't make the same mistakes again.

  • Competing Against Amazon (Score:3)

    by Jason Levine ( 196982 ) on Monday February 10, 2014 @02:14PM (#46211071) Homepage

    I know that Microsoft still likes to think of itself as the 800lb gorilla that can just walk into any area it chooses and dominate, but in the eBook market, Microsoft is a mouse and Amazon is the 800lb gorilla. For better or worse, Amazon essentially *is* the eBook market. (Source [digitalbookworld.com] - Amazon has 67% of the market. Next is Barnes & Noble with 11.8% and Apple with 8.2%.)

    If Microsoft is going to win over eBook readers, they are going to need to offer something substantial to woo market share away from Amazon. I honestly don't see that happening and it's not like they can use Windows 8 as leverage the way they used to leverage Windows to prop up IE against other browsers. They'll probably launch this, it will languish in the market for a few years, and then it will be killed off.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rob Y. ( 110975 )

      ...like not being a Windows-only book format. That's over. Kindle and Nook books can be read on just about any device. If Microsoft thinks they can introduce a new ebook format at this stage of the game that's Windows only, they're in worse shape than even Slashdot-level schadenfreude could imagine.

      • Who says it has to be Windows only? They could release apps for Android and iOS to let you read the books you purchase off their book store.

        • Who says it has to be Windows only?

          Stop and think about that for a second. With the exception of Office for Mac, how many cross-platform apps from Microsoft can you name? I don't really have a big problem with MS like most /.ers do, but even I know that MS is not a big fan of cross-platform development. One OS to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      I know that Microsoft still likes to think of itself as the 800lb gorilla that can just walk into any area it chooses and dominate, but in the eBook market, Microsoft is a mouse and Amazon is the 800lb gorilla. For better or worse, Amazon essentially *is* the eBook market. (Source - Amazon has 67% of the market. Next is Barnes & Noble with 11.8% and Apple with 8.2%.)

      And the DoJ has decided that was a good thing - because as long as Amazon can dump ebooks, no competitor can come in and end the practice b

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