How Microsoft Ruined fun for everybody

[Legend11]

crumas2 said:

noname2200 said:

crumas2 said:
Not to bash the op's opinion, but I find it amusing that someone will balk at <$4 per month for a great service, but won't complain about the fact that the Wii has stayed at its original price of $250. How Wii ruined fun for everybody by gouging users who buy the base unit.

I'll admit that I've seen far worse rebuttals, but yours kinda stinks too...

Why does my rebuttal stink?  Someone who complains about MS charging less than $4 per month for a service that costs them money to operate, but who refuses to acknowledge that Nintendo is providing much less hardware at $250 than MS is at $199, is being inconsistent.  So MS gouges by charging a little money for a service that costs money to operate, but Nintendo isn't gouging by charging so much for their console that they're making a killing on each one?

Does it stink to point out this inconsistency?

Perhaps you should actually explain why someone's post stinks if you're going to criticize.

I agree and I think it's pretty ridiculous to call one company greedy and others not greedy.  The truth is companies are out to make money and Nintendo and Sony are no different than Microsoft in that regard.  Take Nintendo for instance, does anyone really think that the original Nintendogs and Pokemon games had to be released in three separate versions?  As for Sony does anyone really think that their hands were tied and Blu-Ray was the only way they could have HD games on PS3?  No they did it to further their own bottom lines (Sony for future licensing fees).

As for Sony not charging for online, I am speculating but I wouldn't be surprised if they did it because they knew they'd get a lot of grief from consumers over paying for an inferior service at the time or simply because they chose to use it as a bullet point against the Xbox 360 and expected to recoup the costs with online microtransactions.  Also people can continually bash Microsoft for the hardware problems but they have admitted it (something Sony never did with PS1 and PS2 cd/dvd drives) and are continually working to fix the problem. 

I wish Microsoft would be more transparant though and show hard numbers and behind the scenes work to silence the critics.