@ Lingysis
Buying Apple was just an example, not necessarily what they would do. Try reading the Wall Street Journal and watching CNBC more often if you've never heard of large shareholders threatening to sell stock if changes aren't made. It was done to the big auto companies a few years ago by guys like Kirkorian (and maybe Buffett but I'm not sure on his role), the WSJ had an article a few months ago about a group of activist shareholders who buy into mid-size manufacturers and then threaten to sell if the plants aren't made more efficient, mutual funds are always moving their money around and threatening companies with profit issues. Microsoft isn't at the moment at risk of such a major move but the Xbox360 is showing no signs of being profitable anytime soon and if MS profits begin to slide shareholders will have a very obvious first place to look. For lesser actions by shareholders just do a news search for "shareholder discontent", shareholders are causing problems all over even at companies that have a single majority owner.
That's great you think MS subsidizing the gaming habits of young males (I'm assuming youself included) is a good use of its money but I'm willing to bet most shareholders would not. I would also bet most would have preferred MS just give them $6 billion in dividends if they knew what a sinkhole Gates was getting them into. They could have done more with the money than MS has. Nintendo is doing just fine, the last thing they need is to throw there cash reserves into some new venture that bleeds so much money that they'll never make it back. Assuming market return rates is called "marginal cost of capital", ie the money spent on a venture should return more in profits than the money would have earned had it been saved or not borrowed instead. At this point MS could have made over $6 billion in investments, instead its lost $5.4 billion. Addmitedly I'm just using a rough average since I don't know what MS' exact cost of capital is. They do have more of their own money that may be locked in safe low interest savings or some such so it would probably be lower. Even so, if it were half of average for the Xbox division to ever be considered a good move it will have not only make back $5.4 billion but also the $3 billion in lost earnings (which grows every year). In short it's impossible.
