Staude said:
yes but there is a rapid difference here. These previous markets were the OS market where the sole reason for microsofts dominence was their contract with ibm. IE have never been a commercial success. They contracted and cheated the developers out of their money (by bundling it for free) whereafter they were sued (and lost i think?) and to this day they haven't made money directly off IE. :p (which has lost a lot of it's dominence too)
Actually my point is that microsoft haven't really made any money of any of their xbox'es yet. With profit from their entertainment devision most likely coming from zune and other products.
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You seem very narrow minded for business. This gen is completely different. For M$ at least. Sony have been very silly indeed making online free. It isnt helping sell the console at all.
M$ have 14+mill gold subscribers now. (you do the math each month that they make). On top of that they sell shitloads more software than PS3 and in many cases the wii. So it's not just about the HW sale itself. If I'm wrong tell me, but dont you have to have a 360 for Xbox Live? That means their Xbox's are making money. Heres Bach from M$ in late November interview.
“Sometimes we make some money on the hardware, sometimes we lose money,” Bach said.
“The business is neutral for us. We earn money from the games or from our online service Xbox Live, which is going very well.
http://www.gamer.tm/news.php?id=3245
M$ make 70 mill just on Live Gold accounts in 1 month. Based on $5/month of 14 mill Subscriptions (likely more now). Thats 840 mill in 12 months through Live. Add to that the downloads and your probably looking currently at 1bill+ just from Live each year.