How did Microsoft do it?

[dib8rman]

 

I'm looking back and my jaw is on the floor, I can't understand it but Microsoft is an amazing company.

I've always understood video gaming as an industry of entertainment and retail; depending on which end your on.. with that consumers place an investment (like many other purchases) in that product to entertain them and in the case of video games sometimes their friends and family. 

I look back this year and the year before, and the year before that, Microsoft has the most million seller titles on their platform, they have a 8 games that are Million sellers and the other 33 are 3rd party games. They have Xbox live that has two versions, but the gold(pay to use) version attracts apparently has 6 million subscribers - that's a revenue of around 60 million a month on just XBox live - they also have XBLA - which turns them roughly 70% of the software sales. (They addressed that recently.)

 

I normally don't like to talk about platforms I honestly know little about - but from what I do know as skewed as it maybe... I stand up and applaud them. For they have an install base of almost 20 million, have sold amazing amounts of software, can charge their install base wads of cash a month, can get that install base to accept paying even more to buy XBLA games all while giving them a system that burns current up the wazoo, isn't as online friendly as it could of been out the box (wireless) and doesn't come with hdmi but boasts 720p native.

 

But that's not really why I'm in awe of this company - I'm in awe that they are still around after RROD, Ring DvD kill, and an XBL that can crash without any contingency plans. This in terms of time and charge actually cost their install base upwards of $2 million when it happened last time.

 

I'm hoping no one really assumes I'm bashing the Xbox360 though - I'm more in awe of Microsoft as a company than the and Xbox360 just happens to be the Xbox360 the needed catalyst. Their support team must have a short life expectancy with that much stress.

I consider this company amazing, as they managed to minimize their loses and maintain their business values - that is amazing to me.