Will Microsoft target Nintendo in the next generation?

[Onimusha12]

Nintendo will not make the mistake that Sony did thus they will not offer an opening for MS to exploit.

Microsoft can only keep their head above water in gaming by buying support and strongarming the market. Even looking at this generation they really aren't doing that well all considered. It's really only through the looking glass of the PS3's failure as a console and the choice of developers to back HD gaming that we see the 360 as any kind of success.

Microsoft is in all honesty doing a very poor job of strengthening its position as it encourages bottlenecking of the game genres and franchises as a means of maintaining its stronghold over the fickle hardcore gamer market. The most that can be said of Microsoft's attempts for branching out boil down as such:

- In regards to family oriented gaming they simply just bundle and hype the mediocre multiplat family games that can be found on any console this generation while putting a half hearted effort toward in house teams like Rare in hopes they'll produce anything even remotely similar to the calibur they pumped out during the N64 days.

- In regards to Eastern oriented gaming they simply just buy exclusivity or shared rights to JRPGs, a genre all in all in decline (especially in the west) of which its offerings on the 360 are either mitigated by the lack of 360's appeal to that audience (Anything by Namco-Bandai), Mixed efforts or just Mediocre new IPs (Anything by Mist Walker), or just Western Targeted side projects produced by independent developers hired by a larger company (Any by Tri-ace games)

Quite honestly, by default of Microsoft's strength in the hardcore western gaming community that has made them so prominent this generation, they cannot successuly expand into any of the markets/genres that they require to compete realistically. They can't even create in-house game studios on par with that of Sony's formidable harem.

In fact, the more you look at it, the more apparent it becomes that Microsoft's sheer success this generation is due not in any real degree to their efforts but due more so if not solely to Sonys fall through the failures of the PS3 and PSP. And even then PS3 still manages to sell as well as it is (aligning launches, even better than the 360) inspite of all of this showing just how tenuous and fragile the 360's stronghold is this generaiton.