Microsoft to overtake Nintendo in Home Console Sales this Century

[StuOhQ]

Soundwave said:

I kinda wish MS never had entered the game business. They don't need it financially at all, they haven't accomplished what they set out to do in the first place (Sony is right back to kicking their butts), and they've cannibalized the business so that Nintendo has been forced to be the weird outsider.

If anything the game business and being focused on the PS2 was always a paper threat to MS. They ignored the actual threat that was right under their noses in Apple and Google who actually beat MS to the punch in creating the lead OS for the new century (iOS and Android). Sony was of no threat in the long term, in fact Sony of today is a drunk shadow of the company they used to be in the 90s, bleeding money all over the place, MS' assertion that Sony was a threat to them was laughably wrong. They should have been paying attention to Apple and Google not being distracted by things like game consoles. 

I was thinking the same thing. Their intention was to move the PC into the livingroom, eliminating the need for consoles. They've bled money into Xbox for more than a decade and watched the PC market change entirely while they were "playing games".

By and large, a company the size of Microsoft should have trampled Sony and Nintendo to the point in which they were willing to sell their brands over (M$ actually did try to buy Nintendo out) within 6-8 years. They might have been able to accomplish their goals with the Xbox One launch had they completely controlled the markets, and we'd all be stuck with always online, fees on used games, mandatory XBL accounts for observers, etc.

As it is, they are no closer to taking the market entirely than when they started. Nintendo is back in the ~20m units a generation debacle they were facing with the GCN when Microsoft entered the scene and Sony is dominating the field once more. 

And that's exactly what Microsoft's billions have accomplished -- stirring the pot.