I finally understand Sonys 10 year plan!

[BTFeather55]

NJ5 said:

BTFeather55 said:

nintendo_fanboy said:

And, first and foremost, why should Microsoft be so stupid to end this gen already in 2010 when they are finally making a fine profit with their console?

5.  The same reason they did in 2005 following the release of Halo 2 one of the biggest games of its gen and for the same reason they moved from XP to Vista because they were ready to work with new technology.  They've given up on winning this gen already (see the article released last summer when one of the Microsoft ceo's is saying that the Wii has won this gen and they are going to battle Sony for second place -- you don't see such defeatist statements coming out of Sony) and are ready to start working on winning the next one. 

 

Apparently you don't know much about Xbox's history. The reason the Xbox was discontinued was that NVIDIA stopped making GPUs due to a feud with MS. Since NVIDIA owned the GPU's design, Microsoft couldn't keep making consoles.

In this gen, Microsoft went with ATI instead, and this time they probably own the GPU's design in order to prevent the same problem.

Long story short, you won't see the same thing happening this gen. Microsoft will very likely keep the 360 alive for as long as they can, and I don't see any good reason for them to undercut its lifetime by launching another console in 2010. They're now starting to recoup the game's division losses with the X360 as a machine that sells lots of software, and they will want to keep this going for a few more years.

 

 

       Actually, I wasn't aware of the first point you make in this post.  However, still I don't see the 360 continuing on as it is for much longer and certainly not past the release of  Gears 3 on the next machine.  I did say I expected it to be a home for third-party multi-console games after the release of the Nextbox, but with the PS3 getting exclusives from Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Sucker Punch, Level 5, and Square and most of  MS's next wave of exclusives being on their next machine in an attempt to build up its marketshare; I really don't see the 360 selling that many consoles without the exclusives.  About 50 million tops.  I can see certain companies like Rare maybe making games for the 360 after the release of the next one (kind of like Megaman games on the nes after the release of the snes), but I don't expect that Viva Pinata 3 and the like are going to sell tens of millions of new 360 consoles. Look at the sales numbers for most 360 exclusives other than Halo 3, Gears I and II, Fable 2, and Forza 2 they haven't been that spectacular.  And, I don't expect that more than for Crackdown, Lost Odyssey, Ninja Gaiden 2, and Too Human for Alan Wake and some of the other announced new games.