Why microsoft is such a great company...as supposed to Sony

[Lord N]

 

The 360 isn't exactly the best model to use if you want to make a case for MS being better than Sony.

Yes, Sony has lost a lot of marketshare this generation, but that's due entirely to Sony's own blunders, not anything MS did.

The 360 is selling pretty well right now, but this is the holiday season. When it isn't the holiday season, its sales don't warrant a celebration at all. Back in 2007 when the PS3 was putting up abysmal numbers, the 360 wasn't doing too much better, it's just that there was a console that was selling worse to compare it to. Had the PS3 not been around, then the 360 would have been on the receiving end of that sheer hell. It's funny that every time MS wants to talk about how great the 360 is doing, it conveniently ignores the Wii.

Furthermore, look at their business model. MS still hasn't managed to turn a consistent profit with the 360. It seemed to think that it could wrap up the generation simply by launching early and money-hatting third party devs, but that hasn't been the case. MS's business model requires them to have mass exclusive third party support to turn a profit, but even with all the money they've thrown at devs, most PS2 exclusives have only gone multi-plat. The only way to achieve the third-party support that would allow them to achieve a consistent profit is to have the market share of the PS1/PS2, but that's obviously not going to happen.

At best, MS will end up in the same situation it was last generation, which is a distant, unprofitable second place. It's just that instead of taking a beating from Sony, they're taking it from Nintendo. Even with all of the mistakes that Sony has made, MS hasn't really taken advantage of it. They've been so focused on hurting Sony that they didn't stop to think about how they could make their own console better. That approach has proven unnecessary and counterproductive as Sony had already done enough to hurt themselves. Instead, Nintendo has been the one to capitalize on Sony's mistakes as they've gained almost as much market share as Sony has lost. But asking this of Microsoft would be too much as creativity and innovation aren't what MS is known for. This is why MS usually fails/does poorly outside of the OS/Office tools markets.