Is Microsoft bleeding Sony on purpose?

[NJ5]

SlorgNet said:

eugene said:
Microsoft knows that they could do a death blow or at least significant damage if they followed with similar price cuts or at least bundle Halo 3 this holiday but their not. Why?

Microsoft has already lost $6.5 billion on their games venture since 2001, due to bad planning, dependence on FPS games and sheer corporate arrogance, so they're under lots of pressure to cut their losses. I'm not sure a price cut would help them at this point, though. Their hardware quality issues are what killed them in Europe and Japan, and there's no short-term fix for that.

Microsoft's position in the console market is surprisingly tenuous. They have no way to compete with the Wii at the low end, and they have no media strategy comparable to Sony's emphasis on BluRay and multimedia functionality. Add up sales of the PS2, PS3, Wii and 360, and Microsoft is still slogging along with about a quarter of world market share. And this is as good as it gets for the 360 - its lead in software will vanish, and go into reverse, as all those exclusives from Sony and Nintendo studios hit.

I'm sorry but the 360 has been anything but killed in Europe. It's getting very slightly outsold by the PS3, and the weekly sales gap decreased last week. It still has a much bigger install base.

Regarding Blu-ray, Microsoft doesn't want (or need) to compete with that.

Regarding money losses, I'll just say this: 360 is now starting to be profitable, and the PS3 has already eaten about half the profits that Sony made in its entire games division in the last 10 years!