In defense of Microsoft: A response to DMeisterJ

[Final-Fan]

starcraft said:

Final-Fan said:

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; his notes above it are merely a (large) annotation.  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 or overall fortunes of Sony, which is well outside the scope of these discussions.)  Half your OP revolves around this irrelevancy.

(Bolded points in order)
1. By "Beyond the present" I meant that my point is proven as long as the Xbox 360 continues to sell to PS2 owners (in decent quantities of course) for a substantial period of time from this point onwards. I think that the insinuation in the original thread was clearly meant to imply that the Xbox 360 (though not "dead") would become something of an irrelevance henceforth, and that it would begin a general decline from now on. I think with continued year-over-year increases, more exclusives, more multiplatforms that were exclusive on the PS2 and another price drop, the Xbox 360 will demonstrate that it is not in a recession and it IS taking PS2 userbase and therefore IS taking Sony customers.

2. I don't think I've denied anyone anything. There are people in this thread discussing HW, SW, profits etc, and I haven't attacked any of them for it. If you meant the other thread, you should be aware that it was locked BEFORE I began this thread, so it wouldn't be within my capacity to futher deny anyone a right of response in that thread either.

3. This thread has, from the beginning, been about both a Microsoft vs Sony comparison AND an Xbox 360 vs the PS3 comparision. However, the latter came about more because it has become impossible to discuss the competitive capabilities of one console without discussing those of the other. Below is the third paragraph of my OP which was meant to sum up my position:
I want to examine GTAIV for a moment, because an understanding of what this game represents is critical to understanding the fact that this week just gone, Sony lost more consumers than it has in any other week since the generation began. Thats right, Sony LOST CONSUMERS! For weeks now, Sony fans have been highlighting the close association GTA has with the Playstation brand, and inadvertedely showing us that this week gone was never Microsoft's to win, it was always Sony's to lose. But Microsoft DID win, and Sony DID lose. Read on.

1.  Well, it can sell more year-over-year and still be in decline if the amount the YOY is up by goes steadily down.  I frankly don't know if this will prove to be the case and don't want to speculate at this time.

PS2 owners are LAST GEN.  Sure, some people still buy it, but those are not the same audience you speak of, I think.  The only thing MS is stealing from Sony is SW sales from the PS2 owners playing their 360s instead of continuing to play their PS2s.  This obsession with PS2 owners buying 360s is becoming tiresome.  Sony's console is not the juggernaut of this gen:  we all know it.  Therefore the userbase of the dominant PS2 has bled in all directions, including to MS.  But that does NOT speak directly to DMeisterJ's thread.  It's clear that the 360's trajectory is well above the Xbox's, so clearly it HAD to get that increase largely from the PS2.  (Anyone who says "but teh gaemkyoob" is getting slapped.)  But the question is how high that trajectory will go -- and whether it is now at or near its apex.  Your continual blathering about PS2-userbase-stealing does not speak to this subject at all, at least not with any specificity.

You know what?  I just thought of something:  maybe you've spent so long arguing against Sony fanboys saying that all those PS2 owners were just waiting in the wings, chastely awaiting [INSERT GAME HERE] and coyly avoiding the overtures of the 360 -- you've spent so long being bombarded with "ZOMG they will come eventually!" -- that you've internalized it and see the fact that the 360 is getting some of those fabled masses as a huge victory that means the 360 can't possibly be heading for a downturn.  One does not necessarily follow the other.

2.  I find your utter failure to comprehend this point very frustrating.  He was not elaborating on the line of the questioning in the OP.  He was, in fact, commenting on a TANGENT brought up by someone making an argument about software.  By speaking in your OP as if that comment was relevant to his OP, you twist his words.  I said you "deny" him the right to talk about things not related directly to the OP e.g. SW because you insisted on acting as if everything he said in the thread was necessarily related directly to the OP.  The only way he could have avoided this misrepresentation would be not to post those other thoughts at all.  Do you understand what I am getting at now?  Do you wish to recant that portion of the OP or would you like to defend your reasoning for including that?

(So if you thought I meany that you were actually exercizing power in some way to stop him from voiving his opinion, I'm sorry for giving that impression.  Hopefully you understand what I have been saying now.)

3.  Are you now saying that the main argument in the OP was simply that much of the PS2's userbase is going to consoles other than the PS3, and that a substantial amount of that is going to the 360?  I think you would be hard-pressed to dredge up more than one or two members here that would disagree with that statement.  I think you would even have a hard time finding people to argue that GTAIV does not highlight those facts.

As for your stated topic of this thread, I can see that somewhat in the OP.  But in that case, why did you choose to put your argument in the framework of a response to a post that was not only specifically about the 360 but limiting itself to HW sales as well?  Surely you understand how people would naturally think that your goal was to discuss the 360, or 360/PS3, instead of Sony and MS generally.