Sony and Apple are tough competitors, so one cannot expect that MS can dispose of their established brands (Playstation, Ipod) in no time. Not instantly dominating the competition doesn't mean epic failure, though.
You can go on replacing Sony and Apple by every single competitors who bested them, like Google.
Of course they are going after Nintendo. I just don't think they expect their new controller to change anything in the current generation.
So if there are only negative outcome from doing this, why whould they do it?
It depends on what you expect. The past has demonstrated that it is not easy to get a foot in the door in Japan for a foreign company, unless you have a product that in some way appeals to the Japanese people. Obviously both the original Xbox and the 360 didn't and still don't appeal to the Japanese, so what could have realistically been expected from Blue Dragon? Unless you live behind the moon, the momentum it generated has to be considered decent - not overwhelmingly huge, but decent.
I love your truisms. Here, you can make them universal: the past has demonstrated that it is not easy to get a foot in the door in some group of people for a company, unless you have a product that in some way appeals to this group of people. It was expected that Blue Dragon was enough to make the XB360 interesting for Japan market. Were you sleeping in a cave while MS trumpeted this everywhere? Now, you tell me the momentum it generated is decent? Wow! I guess that's why Blue Dragon is now headed to the DS. Anyway, I think Mistwalker destroyed their own company brand (and didn't help XBox brand in the process) and are dead already.
Could you point out some examples of those "other markets" where they failed? And please don't say HD DVD now, because they only supported it, but it wasn't really their product.
I admit that "adapt to the MS way" might have been a better transcription, but whatever you call it, it often led to a successful product.
I won't say HDDVD, but it's good you talk about that, as it's one of their biggest failures, one of the most epic ever.
With Win95, MS wanted to own the content delivery market. Don't get me wrong, that was no idea of theirs, MS never had any innovative idea. No, it came from Apple. I remember in 1993, when I started using the then brand new WWW, videos were only available in Quicktime format, Apple's vision of codecs and containers for video and audio delivery. So, MS wanted that, as everything they stole from Apple. Of course, they couldn't compete, they lose when they compete, so they tried to use their unfair advantage in Windows to get that. They started with VfW things that include AVI (which is taken from the Amiga RIFF, lots of things in Windows were taken from the Amiga actually), ans ASF for streaming, and tried to put that in everything. They started gaining ground with AVI and ASF (WMV, WMA, ...), but now it all failed, because they were disrupted in every single part of the content delivery market: codec with Xvid/H.264/..., container with Apple Quicktime (iPod) as AVI is not compatible with the new HD codecs for video, or even for music files, media with BluRay where their formats are not the main ones, ...
All this money lost, all this posturing, all this boasting about being the best, all these dirty tactics, to arrive to being insignificant: that's what I call an epic failure. This epic failure I described spanned 15 years, which is why I call it one of the more epic, with the last episode being losing the HD DVD media hope.
Perhaps you're too young to have lived through all of this. Just remember the posturing when MS said they would have the best search engine within 2 years, several years ago. People (who should know better, like the Times) actually believed them, while we knowing people just rolled on the floor laughing. That was an attack on Google. Look where they are now.
Again: past losses are meaningless, regardless how high they were. The have already been balanced in past fiscal years. I don't understand what you mean by "diluted". Xbox is an established brand now, not as strong as Playstation, but it is recognized and MS have the majority of the third-party developers on board, even Japanese ones. That is worth far more than cash.
Again: not instantly dominating the competition doesn't mean epic failure. If you see it as one, it probably gives you a good feeling because you hate MS. But that doesn't make it more real.
You mean that a brand that is know for losing 6.5 billion dollars is worth more than cash? Well OK, I'm not an expert on these things, I'll just believe you.
As for the hating part, you almost got it right, but failed.
I actually don't care about MS, except when they attack people like me, because you know, I'm part of the most hated group of people by MS nowadays (and since at least 1999). MS has been a good laughing stock for all these years, but they can be dangerous with all their money. I don't understand why they can't let people be instead of hating on them.
