Anyone believe or hope Microsoft will leave the videogame business?

[lestatdark]

WilliamWatts said:

lestatdark said:

WilliamWatts said:

Perhaps the single biggest product failure, but not the biggest blunder. Nintendo recovered from that mistake quickly whereas what Krazy Ken did with the PS3 Sony may never recover.

I think that's a bit too harsh to call on Sony, it's true that they have taken a major hit with the PS3 due to their own mistakes, but recent trends have shown that Sony can recover and that the PS3 can be a succesful console.

Even if they couldn't recover from this hit, that would already be showing in their 1st party efforts, just like it happened with Sega during it's swan song days of the Dreamcast, which they totally pulled the plug from, in all aspects of the business itself, something that Sony is doing in complete oposition, strenghtening the brand image and product placement of their games.

Only time will tell if Sony can pull through from this generation, I hope that they do, I don't want to see any company leave the market because that will mean less competition and less need for the companies involved to actually pursue new and more varied content with much more value for the consumer. 

A major hit? They are a mere shadow of their former selves. Over the past few years they have gone from >70% market share down to <25%. They can't just come back from this even if they strike it big with every move from here on out for the next 3 years. The PS3 will not and cannot be a successful console because they have lost so much money to get to this point. There isn't really much justification for them to lose that much money either, you can't wave it away by saying that they are establishing themselves in the business when they were already the most established.

I don't want Sony to leave the business, but if they did then it wouldn't be of great loss to the consumer as console makers usually find themselves irrelevant before the end anyway.

I'm not waving away anything :P But wasn't it the same for Nintendo from the past two generations? True that they have been profitable still in these generations, but they also went from being the dominant force, by large, on the 8-bit and 16-bit era, to being overwhelmed by Sony.

Who's to say that Sony can't do the same for the next generation? As long as they're around, anything can happen, as much as we speculate and think that this or that can happen, we'll just have to wait and see ;)

Also, I don't agree with your last statement, no console maker is irrelevant to the market before the end. Sega wasn't, Atari wasn't and sure as Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo aren't as well. All console makers are relevant in diferent parameters and different scenarios, that's why they still exist and why even console makers who left the business are still in the minds of the people who supported them in the past.