Nidan said:
I think that no one is factoring in Microsofts total plan, which does make a huge difference to their position now and over the next 3-4 years. Firstly MS has never been interested in hardware, they are a software company and some people think that they have become very good at that (Somepeople). MS knows that the best way to drive a platform is through competition and they have stated recently that they are going to license the platform to a number of OEMs and Brand name customers. There are a number of ways that they are going about this and some of them are as follows
This is a interesting plan as we would see many variants of the same platform available through many sales channels and competition would grow and in some case reduce pricing. With this plan MS falls back into the same roll the company has taken for many years, and that is of producing software, but driving each successive generation of the xbox internally. Secondly MS never put a harddrive into the XBox360 for a good reason "MEDIA CENTER" as the prices of the xbox reduces over the years, the base Xbox will become sub $100USD. This then becomes practical to have these throughout the home (kids bedroom, living room, main bedroom etc). With the use of Media center or a windows pc MS has now taken over the digital entertainment for the living room. Licensing the platform will obviously bring competition and help MS to achieve their goal. Sure the software is still in it infancy, but ultimately when the price becomes sub $100USD, the software will be ready and able to preform all these tasks simply and easily. As the software evolves more and more people will become aware of the connectivity and be drawn to MS. The Xbox does not just represent a battle between MS and Sony, it goes alot further and represents a battle against its major rivals
Another major point to MS success was not to put alot of emphasis onto HD-DVD vs BR, as their future lies in digital distribution (and again the Media centre approach). Doing this was only prolonging the uptake of HD-DVD or BR content and positioning MS in a position where before HD-DVD or BR became mainstream they were already offering the same content streamed to media center or the Xbox. Back to my point Ultimately, if the plan is well laid out and converged properly, then adoptance in Japan and Europe is just a matter of time as multiple systems will be levered off one another, when you buy an xbox you are buying more than just a gaming machine, you are buying a machine that will do alot more:
Overall MS is waging the war for the living room, not just gaming, and ultimatly I think they will/ need to succeed.
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Very good points. I don't expect MS to win though (at least not meaningfully outside US).
Just looking at Sony they have many advantages over MS in terms of actually owning or influencing many more of the pieces (Film and Music divisions, Electronics divisions, etc) plus much much more experience of supporting home vs business environment.
They also (at least outside of US) seem to be forming better partnerships (based on what I see in UK, for example, where they are parterning with Sky while MS have partnered with BT).
The issue I see is the big market. The big HW players are established for home entertainment and MS is far from being one of them (Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, etc). The big content players are established and MS is far from being one of them. What's more likely is Warners, etc. will licence content to all potential providers - and just as DVD Player sales dwarf console sales you'll have a global niche of people sitting on 360 (or equivelant MS machine) buying or renting content but this will be tiny next to HW from Sony, Samsung, etc. providing the same content.
Apple I think will soon start to be squeezed out - the Ipod gave them great traction but they are now facing steep competion from Amazon (for example) with DRM free music from all the major studios including Sony.
A new battleground for the home is definately brewing - but I think MS are way down the line as likely winners and you are letting their monopoly in PC OS and bags of cash cloud the issue. As a company they trail massively behind others in these areas and have very little real credibility.
I see it this way - for this to work I'd have to trust MS platform, and I don't, and I doubt the majority of home entertainment viewers would either. They are linked to gaming and have made good ground delivering content to gamers. But for other content? I don't know. I wouldn't buy a TV from them or any other electronics, and to be honest I haven't bought a 360 from them due to RROD - why would I trust them to deliver content to me? There are a lot of other companies (Apple, Google, Sony, etc) I'd far rather trust for a media-centre or similar HW delivering content into my home.
Really, all you need is content, HW and communications. MS are OS and recent entry to gaming consoles - what can they really offer (apart from cash) that others don't know how to do better?