In defense of Microsoft: A response to DMeisterJ

[Final-Fan]

starcraft said:

Final-Fan said:
2.  I guess I did incorrectly argue "PS3 vs. 360" instead of "360?"; however, (A) I think that your OP had serious overtones of that itself from which I took my cue; and (B) I don't think you've adequately made your case that the 360 is going to avoid entering a period of decline by tapping the current PS2 userbase.  The 360 is not the PS2 and price cuts didn't help the Gamecube or Xbox as much as I think you expect them to help the 360.
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4.  "Redact ... to obscure or remove (text) from a document prior to publication or release"  When I say that he did not "redact" any part of his OP, that means that he did not remove any incriminating material talking about (for instance) SW sales.  AFAIK the original portion of the OP is unaltered.  If you look carefully at that OP, even without the big flashy warnings it's clear that, although he uses GTA (SW) as a milestone, the subject of his question is HW.  The numbers he cites are HW.  The numbers he talks about are HW.  Why would it now follow that the numbers he is asking a question about would not be HW?

I said "if you look carefully", and it's painfully clear that very few took the time to do so with DMeisterJ's question on a very touchy subject -- exactly the kind of situation that calls for careful reading.  Next time check your dictionary if you don't know the definition of a word.

Finally, as for the post you quoted, is he now not allowed to respond to other people who talk about SW?  In fact, his initial response to the post in question talked about HW instead of SW, suggesting that DMeisterJ was concentrating his attention on HW discussion to the point that he didn't even notice that someone else had brought SW into it!

DMeisterJ's OP talked about HW.  Not SW.  SW got dragged into the fray by other people and DMeisterJ simply failed to jump on them like a rabid badger to keep the thread on topic ... until it became obvious that there were many people misinterpreting the OP, at which point he clarified, and re-clarified, and bolded and underlined etc.  Shame on him?

2. I don't need to show that the Xbox 360 won't enter a decline because it will tap the PS2 userbase. All I need to show to prove my point is that it can do it beyond the present, and it is. It's sales are up year over year. Unless your suggesting that will change next week?

4. Of course he is allowed to respond to people that talk about software, am I not allowed to respond to his response? I didn't say that all of his statements were established in the OP of his thread did I?

Read the third line of my OP:

"But it culminated in DMeisterJ's thread"

2.  I'm not sure what you mean by "beyond the present".  Are you suggesting that DMeisterJ was insinuating something along the lines of "OMG 360 sales will die now that GTAIV is out!!! lol"?  Because I'm pretty sure that's not what he meant by "beginning of the end".  That would be "the end".

4.  Yes, but the POINT is that his post, which you quoted, was not (as you allege) an elaboration of the line of questioning of the OP, but rather a comment on the SW argument someone had made in the thread.  By jumping on that you deny him the right to pursue parallel lines of discussion apart from the OP subject.  He may have made SW arguments in other threads but this thread was explicitly limited to HW sales, despite the provocative title.

You can make any allegations you like about this being the apex of "360 fad will die soon" sentiment, but if you are now trying to refer to posts and discussions occurring in other threads then perhaps you ought to quote them instead.

Going back to the "failure of logic" premise of my first post, what I mean is that this:  "Many people often fail to realize that whenever a PS2 owner buys an Xbox 360, Sony normally loses a customer and future revenue, whilst Microsoft gains a customer and future revenue." makes no sense with respect to either the PS3 or the 360.  It makes perfect sense discussing the PS2 vs. PS3 situation, of which I think we are all well aware, but that has nothing to do with the current gen.  That is the mental association I made with the common "sunk costs" mistake.  (It is also valid when discussing the financial fortunes of Sony, which is well outside the scope of these discussions.)  Half your OP revolves around this irrelevancy.