Microsoft’s real competition: Stormhoek

by on November 12, 2005

Huh?

Oh, you gotta read Hugh Macleod’s blog to get this one. But, there’s a lot of truth to this. Let’s say you have $400 burning a hole in your pocket. You have a lot of choices where to spend that money. It could go to an Xbox 360. But it could go to a case of wine too.

Hey, if you decide Stormhoek is a better investment than an Xbox 360, at least invite me over to drink some! ;-)

  • And if you had $3,000 burning a hole in your pocket, would you get a tricked out gaming PC with all the bells, whistles and the best display you could find.... or a suit from English Cut?
  • J. Random Poster
    Sorry, buddy: you've had enough.
  • Xbox 360 is too expensive for me.
  • I think in some ways the Xbox 360 is going to end up competing with the iPod. A shiny white entertainment box that costs $300-400. Plus there are accessories, micro stores, etc. It seems like Microsoft designed it to go after the iPod.
  • $400 for a case of wine? Son, you need to read up on double-blind taste testing techniques. You could save yourself some serious cash, invest it in some Web 2.0 bubble-mania...
  • edddy
    I friend of mine, who has a travel agency, says that his real competition is home appliances.
  • Jason Zions
    I'm nominally with Don on this one - gimme a case of three buck Chuck *and* an Xbox 360. (Except I'm not gonna get the Xbox360, and I'd go a little higher-end than three buck Chuck.)

    There are wines whose labels catch my eye. (Anyone ever see a bottle of Marilyn Merlot? Seriously.) And there are wines I drink. The eye-catching labels generally (big generalization) attach to average wines with above average prices. Design firms aren't cheap (Hugh McLeod is trying to get design for 1000 pounds; more power to him, but if you win the money, you're getting paid pennies on the dollar for what others in the field charge).
  • John Cleese (yes, THAT John Cleese) did a special on wine on the Food Network. It's probably one of the best food programs I've ever seen. In addition to it being humorous, it was just a great program. In particular, I really liked his party ideas.

    He did one where he picked a white and red and put them in opague water bottles. Then people had to guess what they ended up with. That one wasn't too hard for many, but the other test he did was with six wines of different price ranging from I think $5 a bottle to ...very expensive. Then they ranked them based on how much they liked them. The results were all over the map.

    Perhaps an idea for one of those geek parties?
  • Christopher Coulter
    You can instantly tell a bad wine, but once you get into the realm of real good, you have to become a wine snob with a whole new dictionary and vocabulary of tastes to really detect radical differences. Being close to Napa, I do the dance, but it's mostly all for show. Frankly mixology and cocktails is a much more honored skill-set. Your Drinkboy is a near-God, imho. :)
  • Hugh's wrong. Again. (Can you believe it!) You don't make a decision to buy an Xbox within the first three seconds of seeing the damn thing on the shelf. Stormhoek's competition is BMW.
  • Goliath. Meet David (stormhoek).
  • Great post. The problem is that if I had $300 I'd have the XBox and one game. I'd get bored too easily. With the case of wine you have fun for hours possibly over several days (depending on whom you invite over to share the wine).

    I wouldn't recommend the XBox and the Stormhoek. That South African wine is like fire-water yah know.
  • Interesting to see that they managed to get Robert to blog about their brand. ;)
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