Microsoft does not really care about these in the console business:
- Hardware.
- End user software (Games).
Microsoft does care about these in the console business:
- Developer services in return for royalties.
- Consumer services in return for subscriptions.
I suppose that sounds good in theory.
But Sony and Nintendo aren't going to be offering MS customer or developer services on their console.
I don't think the PC world is much better as far as expanding their base. Windows Live subscriptions tanked, so there goes consumer services. I'm not sure what services developers by from MS, but I know it's not dozens of expensive dev kits.
So unless MS makes their own hardware, their market to sell developer and consumer service is prety limited.
Yet, today, America's leaders are reenacting every folly that brought these great powers [Russia, Germany, and Japan] to ruin -- from arrogance and hubris, to assertions of global hegemony, to imperial overstretch, to trumpeting new 'crusades,' to handing out war guarantees to regions and countries where Americans have never fought before. We are piling up the kind of commitments that produced the greatest disasters of the twentieth century.
— Pat Buchanan – A Republic, Not an Empire
