Might want to look up sony history, it takles near hell freezing over for them go give up on their product.

this piece of shit has started a 2nd thread that just angers some. are you willing to respond? i'm calling you out! feel free to PM me. you're nothing more than a flamer.

Even if the falcon fixes all the problems, theres still 12-14 million potentially problematic machines out there, to say thats going to "blow over" is a little short sighted!

MS had the idea that they would get a nice foothold in the market with the xbox1, this would be a springboard to the followup console which would make them profit. They failed from the first step. Firstly the xbox was a failure, it sold barely more than the gamecube, which even Nintendo themselves look back on as a mistake.

According to MS's plan they should have bailed out of gaming there and then, but american pride made them unable to accept defeat and pushed on with the 360.

The problem initially is that MS seem to believe that their business model with the first xbox was working, so they continued down the same path and its taken the Wii's success for them to actually realise what they were doing was wrong.
On top of that, the massive costs of the failing hardware is just throwing copius amounts of salt into the already gaping wound.
From a target 15million installed units and a healthy profit late 2007 they have had to slash sales targets repeatedly and splash out over a billion on the 3yr warrenty, not to mention untold costs of shipping and repairing all the RRoD machines already.

Im very sure that Bill isnt happy about the whole state of affairs right now, and im very sure the shareholders and investors are even more unhappy. Unless theres some sort of miracle and MS suddenly do everything right, i cant see there being another MS console, atleast not in its current form.

MS need to decide what market they want to aim for, at the moment they seem to be trying to provide a PC game experience on a console, but most people who want a PC game experience already own a PC, so theyre not going to buy a 360 to play games on a potenially inferior machine, with inferior controls and a terrible reliabilty record. If they suddenly try to aim for the casual market, which seems to be their new sales pitch, theyre already a million miles behind the Wii.

I think basically, unless you crack the japanese market, theres no way you are ever going to compete with your competitors that are already well established there, and MS will never do that.
Sony sold more PS2's in japan than MS sold Xbox's worldwide, thats a hell of a disadvantage for them.

Microsoft is still the number 1 console in Europe, and while not selling as strong as the PS3, at its current rate the PS3 will take a very long time to overtake the 360. By then, momentum may be gained by the X360.

Japan is a lost cause for Microsoft, but Sony isn't exactly lighting it on fire either. The battle for Japan between Xbox360 and PS3 is unlikely to be anywhere near as important as the battle between Xbox360 and PS3 in USA. Look what happened with the Gamecube vs Xbox.

The number of hardcore gamers potentially interested in the Xbox360 is not infinite, but nether is the number of hardcore gamers interested in the PS3. The only benifit the PS3 has over the Xbox for the hardcore is the brand name, but I don't see how that will stack up when the Xbox has more games, a larger game section, and a cheaper price than the PS3. 

Also, I don't know why you say "of course [the Xbox360] will never be profitable". Why "of course"? The Xbox was never profitable because of a terrible business decision in the design. MS didn't make the same mistake again. While I doubt neither the PS3 nor the X360 will be profitable over their respective lifetimes (neither will get a large enough install base) the X360 will definitely see some profit before it dies (if not Holidays 2007, then definite holdays 2008. But I predict next quarter will see a profit for MS Xbox division). I don't see any rationale behind "The Xbox360 will reach 20-25 million WW" besides this magic theory that the PS3 sales will suddenly skyrocket and the X360 will suddenly fail. The same reasoning behind the PS3's miraculous rise above the Wiis sales in 2009/2010. Something which has never happened before.

Of course, I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying it's unlikely. The Xbox360 has the momentum to stay ahead of the PS3 even without Japan. And MS will see a profitable quarter by the end of next year.

The 10+ million problematic machines will be fixed over the next 3 years at no cost to customers.  MS has taken care of that and written off the (huge) loss.

You're right that MS wanted to get a foothold with the Xbox, and that's exactly what they did.  The 360 would not have had the developer support and strong launch library if it were not for the original Xbox.  Yes, they spent multiple billions of dollars in order to gain that foothold, but that is exactly how Microsoft operates; they simply push their way into the market.  It was not "American pride" that convinced MS to launch the 360, it was exactly what they planned from the beginning.  It's the reason the 360 launched a year before either of its competitors.

Nintendo's unexpected strategy threw a wrench into their plans, and the RRoD was a stroke of bad luck.  But please don't think that MS is just floundering out there without a clue as to what they're doing.  They've been blown a little off course, but they'll weather the storm.

@omgwtfbbq,

In Europe, PS3 outsell Xbox360 with no games and a more expensive model.
Same for Japan.

People are waiting for price cut + PES/GTA/GT5
that is all they want,
they dont care about GTA4 exclusive content on Xbox360
They only want a PS3 or a Wii.

HEY EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

don't get worked up over this shithead, he hasn't the balls to even respond to his own thread. don't let someone else turn you against one another.

The 360 is selling at the same rate as the original Xbox, so that's where everyone is getting the 20-25 million worldwide. Anything more is being nice.

One of the things working against the 360, ironically, is its software library. It's composed almost entirely of shooters, sports games, and racing games, which is why it does pretty well in N. America but rather terribly in the rest of the world. Those games target older American males exclusively, so even though it has a larger software library than the other two, there's no diversity or variety needed to reach other demographics, which it needs to do to gain a larger user base.

Microsoft already blew its chance to put the PS3 away when it didn't drop the price last Christmas or earlier this year. The 50 dollar price cut coming next week seems really half-assed, and it's just the minimum possible they could do to respond to the PS3 price cut and to divert attention away from their hardware issues, which brings me to my next point...

 Microsoft knew about the hardware problems a long, long time ago, but they ignored it, and now it's blown up in their face. They've already had to waste a billion dollars fixing them, and now the public has a lowered opinion of the 360's reliability. MS has a history of releasing software with bugs, glitches, etc, and then ignoring them and releasing patches at their own convenience. With hardware, however, they don't have this luxury, so it's a lot more costly for them to clean up their mess.

It also isn't just hardware costs that's causing MS to lose money(as a matter of fact, the manufacturing costs have been lower than the retail price for quite some time). They've also spent a lot of cash on advertising and marketing(more than Sony and Nintendo), paying developers insane amounts of money, and buying game studios, and even with the high attach rate of the 360's software, they still haven't enough to make up for what they've spent.

 There's no doubt that Halo, GTAIV, and Bioshock will move a lot of 360's this holiday season, but what about after that? There hasn't been anything big announced for the 360 in 2008 whereas the PS3 and Wii have a boat load.

The only place Sony really messed up with the PS3 is the price, but in Europe, the PS3 is outselling the 360 despite having less games and being 33% more expensive, so what happens in this vital market when the PS3 does come down in price and get more games? And what about America? There is no guarantee that the 360 is even going to beat it there. Even if the 360 is always $100 cheaper than the PS3, it wouldn't surprise me if there were more people willing to pay it for the PS3.

Bottom line, the 360's sales are nothing to write home about, and shareholders, investors, and the higher-ups at MS aren't going to keep pumping money into a void, so if the 360  hasn't made a profit by the end of the generation and/or falls into 3rd place, I doubt MS will be back a 3rd time.

Say goodbye to this thread.

Its locked.