RUMOR: Natal going to be really expensive!

[Alby_da_Wolf]

Untamoi said:

Alby_da_Wolf said:

theprof00 said:
Look, if they put a price tag for 150$+ it's because they know it is going to sell a lot of units. If they set the price tag at around 50-75$ it's because they don't think it will sell very much, and between those two price points I'm not really sure.
But it's all a gradation.
MS is in this for profit. What you guys need to understand is that prices aren't set in order to promote sales. Predicted sales set what the price will be.
You're all (most of you) looking at it backwards.

Not only for profit, if in the past it wanted to crush Sony, now that it failed at that, maybe it's realizing that the longer this gen lasts, the later competitors will  grab a share of living room PC market with next gen consoles, as it's clear that current gen is lacking in key components, like RAM amount, for that purpose. MS now knows it can't kill the ghost that's scaring it so much, but it can do as much as possible to keep it away some more time.

Actually, I doubt they really care much about crushing Sony, they care much more about profits. If they could do more profits with collaboration with Sony they would do gladly do it. Just like Sony would do collaboration with MS. They only crush their competitors because usually it gets them more profits.

Remember, Sony uses Windows just like most PC manufacturers and PS3 has codecs made by MS. Even Blu Ray standard has some codecs made by MS. And PS3 Cell prosessors are made by Toshiba because Sony sold all their PS3 Cell factories to Toshiba. Yes, all CPU's in PS3 are made by Toshiba, not Sony. So, to them, even HD DVD vs Blu Ray fight had no meaning in business relationships.

They stopped mainly because after release they saw PS3 has enough shortcomings to prevent it from doing what they feared, and now they see that while they were busy fighting Sony, Nintendo quietly grew enough to become a possibly greater threat, but they are lucky, as Nintendo cares only for games. The threat is still there, as living room PC's are still not widespread, so legacy is weak and office tasks play a little role for them, so just like it already happens now on a very small scale, a device without either Windows or any other MS SW could perfectly do, even more if it's a console, able to play a vast library of games and so removing a possible weakness of devices without Windows.

PS3 uses, more than MS codecs, some MS formats that MS released for free to help them become industry standards, like VC-1. MS earns money from its codecs, but their use isn't mandatory, despite being the most used for their formats, and the revenue produced is a very tiny fraction of the one from Windows and Office.

Anyhow you are right that neither of them is afraid of doing business with the other each time they see it fit, 90% of PC's is required with Windows, so Sony is happy to buy it and MS to sell it, but when MS sees anything that could potentially prevent it from putting Windows in whatever it can, Ballmer gets (more) mad.