Microsoft's 3 generation plan for the Xbox, will it work?

[xman]

jetrii said:

It seems that when Microsoft decided to enter the console business, they had a pretty basic plan.

Xbox 1: Enter the industry

Xbox 2: Become competative in the industry

Xbox 3: Dominate the industry.

Despite the fact that it lost Microsoft billions of dollars, the original Xbox was a success. It did exactly what Microsoft wanted. It established the Xbox brand and gave Microsoft a feel for the industry. It's pretty obvious that Microsoft is in it for the long run seeing as how they didn't expect to turn a profit on the Xbox 1 or Xbox 360 (luckily they will on the 360).

With the Xbox 360, Microsoft became much more competative in the industry. They took what they learned from the Xbox and they put it into practice. They partially own the IPs for the hardware inside of the Xbox 360, meaning they can produce it without paying royalties out the wazoo. They got hit hard with the RROD, but luckily Sony also had a few blunders of its own. Nintendo came out of nowhere and awed the entire industry. Microsoft tried to respond to it but simply couldn't.

Now for the moment of truth: do you think Microsoft will take everything they learned from the Xbox 360 and create a console that will dominate the industry?

- The RROD fiasco showed them that being cheap will cost them in the long run.

- They were in a hurry to beat Sony to the market and were unable to get the CPU they wanted from IBM. They had to settle for the Xenon CPU, a CPU much weaker than Microsoft wanted. IBM simply couldn't engineer such a chip at the time.

- They had to settle for DVD9 as neither HD-DVD nor Blu-ray were practical at the time.

- They did not consider the casual audience

- Xbox Live wasn't as mature

What are the odds that Micosoft will release a console that pleases everyone? High quality, bleeding edge media features, most powerful console, revolutionary online/social capabilities, affordable, mid, and high end SKU, etc.

These are some of the reasons why I think it may be plausible

- Microsoft seems to like having the most powerful console. Xbox 1 was the most powerful console in the generation. Had IBM been able to engineer the CPU Microsoft wanted, it would have outperformed the Cell CPU in games.

- With a dominate console, Microsoft pretty much ensures that DirectX is the *only* serious graphics API. OpenGL 3 is nice but it is very dissapointing. PS3 and Wii don't use OpenGL, but they don't use DirectX either. In the future, Sony and Nintendo may be forced to go to Microsoft for DirectX due to pressure from developers.

- The line between console and PC is blurring. In the future consoles may very well be underneath each TV, something which Microsoft definetly wants.

What do you think? Realisticly, I see Nintendo owning the next generation of casual gamers, but I also see Microsoft owning the next generation of hardcore gamers.

They use this mdel for everything, Windows, MS office and now the xbox.  The scary part is its working the 360 is a great console the only thing I wont allow is them to become a monopoly that would be bad but I give them props