“In the face of dwindling sales and attendance — the place has been a ghost town for months — Microsoft and Sony (Metreon’s landlord) have quietly agreed to close down the Microsoft store and replace it with, well, more of the same.”

“MicrosoftSF no longer fits with Microsoft’s or Sony’s core businesses,” Metreon spokeswoman Kirsten Maynard told me. “It would require a significant investment from both companies to keep going.”

In other words, business sucks.”

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/.....173923.DTL

But seriously, why does the world need something like this to demo software when they have places like Comp USA and Circuit City?

Oh, wait.

Yes, more and more people are getting their PCs through the mail or at deep discount stores that don’t have demos of anything. The price point of an “average” home user machine was in free-fall a few years ago after processor speeds stopped doubling every 20 minutes.

Those price points were rescued by throwing in terabyte hard drives, multiple laser based devices, cameras and monitors bigger than many people’s TV sets.

In the end, the hardware integrators are doing a lot of work to get MS products out there, and struggling to make a decent return in the process. Applications software companies too have withered in the shadow of Microsoft acquisitions, and the reality already is as David Owens suggests, that those few stores selling software are focusing on what people come in to buy: anti-virus, anti-spyware, network security and various Windows-speedup utilities.

Who has time to run applications?

PS: Don’t forget the Zune listening room!

A couple of ideas for them: on suitable HD displays, a continuous loop of Ballmer jumping around on stage, made famous by uTube.
Zunes prominently displayed, with marked down prices, this week only!
Tables full of cheap plastic computers, packed with crapware.
A Genius bar with guys dressed up like Bob.
An entire wall filled with various virus detection software.
Discontinued Motorola phones running Windows Mobile.