| Soundwave said:
It's not just about "video games" anymore, this is about control of the living room, if MS can consolidate the living room under their XBox banner, that's more than just video games. That is getting to something before Apple and Google can get there with Apple iTV and GoogleTV. Losing $30-$40 extra/unit for a year or two is a small price to pay. Do not ever confuse MS with being in the same boat as Sony. Their financial situations are miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiles apart. Just because Sony is broke doesn't mean anything to Microsoft. |
Those billions in profit aren't pocket money or savings to soak up losses though that's why share holders would not be pleased, they're needed to keep the company going and for future ventures, losses on hardware sales can stack up into the billions easily if a company is reckless. At this point MS' other ventures like OS' and such are funding the gaming side of things and that's not what MS want in the long run or why they entered gaming to begin with and in both gens they've been beaten out to the market leader spot.
Remember Sega and Atari crashed out of the hardware market when their reckless financial approaches caught up with them, the problem I see for MS is what someone earlier mentioned in that they may have maxed out their potential trying to dethrone the Playstation brand this gen. The idea of selling at a loss is that you need something in return to show for it, if the X3 is all powerful but is beaten out by the U and PS4 which lets say are both affordable that's more money down the drain, look at Vita for one, remember Sony at one point were highly rich as well so MS simply won't take their profit for granted.
