What if Microsoft goes on a shopping spree?

[Jereel Hunter]

Lostplanet22 said:

DirtyP2002 said:

Soleron said:
The reason why companies do anything, from announcing products to doing marketing campaigns, is because it will bring greater profit.

Would the 200m USD investment increase Microsoft's profit? Decreasing Sony's profit is not the same as that. Microsoft won't do anything merely because their fanbase wants it, and they won't do anything that will bring antitrust investigations upon them (making secret exclusivity deals third parties with is the fastest way to do that).

 

 No but it could weaken Sony for the next generation. Plus Xbox brand will be bigger next generation as well. The ROI won't be in the money, but other aspects like the two I mentioned should be considered as well.

After generations where companies as Sega/Nintendo and Sony were on top you saw generations where people just don't care about brand name you still say 'having a strond brand one generation will help the next generation' =p?

 

It absolutely does. If an unknown has made the Wii, it may be big, but it wouldn't be as big as the Wii is today. (Nintendo is both a strong brand, despite the prior 2 generations, and more importantly they have big franchises)

Whereas Sony's brand name is what allowed them to even survive this generation. If the Sony PS3 had been something like the "Acer GameStation", and released at $600, vs the 360 in it's second iteration, it would have bombed. the 360 would be over 40m sales and the GameStation would have had the plug pulled after <5m sales. Sony's powerful brand was the only thing that prevented them from basically ruining their own gaming division.