edit: nevermind

Ill take 1b as 1billion. Correct me iif im wrong..

Money lost is money lost. 

they need Japan, without that they will never win, they probably could have won this gen if it had some support over there, now how they will get Japan...hell if I know

The problem is that, all of what you talked about aren't what's going to get the Nextbox to win next gen. All these five things will do is ensure that it wont fail. What it needs to win next gen is to have something new, something different that no one has thought of before. OR, it needs to have this certain position in the market that will make it immediately popular despite whichever advantages the other two consoles might have over it. Consoles are very strange and the videogame industry isn't as straightforward as you make it out to be. The online advantage that set it apart this and last gen is shrinking and people are getting a bit tired of Halo. Kinect disappointed a lot of people and as you mentioned, Sony bought Gaikai. in other words, in streaming all Microsoft can do is catch up. To win next gen, they need something, the problem is no one is completely sure what it is that they need.  And to be fair, the same can be said of Sony and Nintendo.

With the high attach rate and massive library available to the 360, MS would do well to ensure good backwards compatibility.

MS should just throw a ton of money at Activision for the next-gen Call of Duty exclusive for 6-12 months.

Sony can't afford to outbid them and the PS4 is starting back at a userbase of 0, so Activision can just justify it as them forcing the CoD userbase onto one platform rather than two, but getting a big fat payday out of it.

important for me:
price and bc, paired with games. don't care about kinect. extended multimedia-features would be nice, too (speaking of mkv-streaming and playback from ntfs-storage).

don't think MS has anything to fear.... and Sony or ninty either... well at least in the VG department for sony... to me the console race/war is more a gamer thing... while it does matter from a financial/economics stand point for the respective comp and shareholders... they proved this gen that there is room for 3 players (or more if you count handhelds, pc, streaming, cell/tabs etc)... ultimately they can all say they've performed well this gen even though some better than other... after it's more a cock size contest for the gamers and a brand recognition issue for the constructor... a bit like cellphones is turning into and probably tablets will in the future...

and that will keep growing.... users and customers are more and more tech savvy... new markets are slowly emerging as much geographically than niche markets.... and people need more and more quick and easily accessible entertainment... kind of slow japanisation of the world on time management....

we'll see a wider range of services offered on a wider range of devices we use more and more naturally in our daily lives..

the one i'm worried about is developers... they have more and more platforms to choose from... and a wider range of formats to play with... it could bring a lot of waste and turbulence in the gaming sector...

but i'm pretty sure all 3 consoles will do alright...

Microsoft will auto win if they hire Selnor and make him head of marketing.

Well put.