Quote:
Originally Posted by murraypaul
The headline figure is also misleading, it comes in a number of tranches, which haven't all been paid yet, and includes a number of ways for the money to actually be channeled back to Microsoft. As part of the deal, Nook Media agreed to switch to Microsoft's backend processing, and to pay Android royalties to MS.
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Uh-huh.
The royalties they were going to pay anyway, and using Microsoft hosting is probably a step up. Plus MS believes in "eating their own dogfood" so if Nook Media is to be partly owned by MS it shouldn't be giving money to competitors for services Microsoft can deliver in-house. (I expect Netflix is reconsidering their use of AWS.
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Main thing to consider is MS invested in Nook Media to avoid having to build an ebookstore from scratch at this late point in the game. Or, to buy time until they build one. If Nook Media does look like it might tank, you can be sure MS will take steps (if the aren't already) to prepare for that contingency.
(XBOX ebookstore is not out of the question, as a companion to XBOX Music and XBOX Video, XBOX Arcade, XBOX Indie-games, etc.)
MS has partnered with Nook Media, not given them a blank check.