Brennan: They've made roughly a Billion U.S. in the last 12 quarters running. Why panic and abandon an industry that could potentially earn them 2B/yr. next gen? They paid a lot of money to prevent Sony from controlling the household entertainment centers of the world and threatening their core business. Another $B written off to deal with rrod. You really think they will bail out if Natal doesn't turn an instant profit?
Not buying first party devs seems like the same sort of corporate ass-coverage that led them to put in a dvd and sell the HD drive as a peripheral 'just in case'. If a third party dev loses money it's not on their bottom line. Cash in hat has accomplished almost as many exclusives, timed or otherwise with a lot less risk. Did you see what EA paid for Bioware? Bungie alone could have cost them a whole year in the red. I'll look for the articles about M$ shareholders and their reasoning behind not buying devs but I just don't see your best-case scenario playing out
If anyone has nervous shareholders I would think it would be Sony right now. One more HW price cut will negate all the hard work they've done building a HW base and a SW library. It's time for SCE to show some black ink on their bottom line for a change.
