Microsoft is in a unique situation. This E3 and the next 6 months critical.

[Tigawoods]

Fei-Hung said:
sorry, my mistake for not being clear on what i meant by MS falling apart (please note, its just an opinion). I don't mean the 360 will go broke or anything in those lines, what I meant is:

1) although having a good head start, now they may have to start compensating for not including next gen features that the Wii and ps3 offer.
2) Start to think of ways in which they can stay ahead or keep in line with its competitor if games do become larger.
3) What they can offer online gamers now that the new firmware has landed and proven to be successful enough to rival xbl on a more serious level.
4) With the PS3 library growing and better titles now appearing on the PS3 (one of the main reason why the PS3 had a shit start), what MS can do to keep people interested enough to stop switching consoles.

As a businessman, i can't just sit there ignoring these facts. The PS3 is constantly improving on what it offers to buyers and its users. Every month they give more reasons why one should by a PS3 over a 360. If someone was to rival me by constantly introducing new features and new products, I would have to offer my clients something similar before my clients feel underprivileged and move away from me. That's commonsense and it happens with every product; whether it is mp3 players, pc's (look at how Apple has started to steel away MS clients over the last few years for MS not being as innovative), mobile phones or any other gadgets.

Admittedly for now, the 360 is doing better and offers a better gaming library, but this is just for now. If PS3 have gained this many extra sales and been able to out sell the 360 for the majority of this year (with one simple price cut and just 1 of many long awaited titles being released), what will happen at the next ps3 price drop or the next time they release a triple AAA title?

As for JaggedSac saying "M$ console business is falling apart? They sell boatloads of software and rake in tons of money from XBoxLive". what you have totally failed to recognise is what happens when someone who owns a 360 trades it in for a ps3. The general public cant afford to have both. They trade one in for the other. So not only has MS lost out on the yearly subscription, but they have also lost out on software sales. So although you can say 26mil 360's have been sold, and software sales are awesome (for now). a lot of these large hardware number won't mean much when the ps3 steps up another gear (if MS fails to do anything about the long-term predicament they are in). i remember when the xbox and the ps2 were battling it out. most the stores in my city were refusing to buy xbox's because so many people had come in to return them and they were not shifting. Meanwhile, everyone was queuing up to buy the slimline ps2's or trade in their xbox's.

I am not looking at the situation MS are in from a fanboy's point of view. I'm just looking at it thinking if this was my company and i owned the 360, what could i do to keep ahead of my rivals and will trying to buy out exclusives be a feasible risk in hoping I keep my clientele base. In my opinion- NO!

For 1st, my rival has bigger and better triple AAA exclusives which are in-house that have an enormous following (GT, Tekken, God of War, MGS, FF, Crash Bandicoot, Ridge RAcer, Time Crisis, Warhawk, Killzone, Resistance, SOCOM, Wipeout, Way of the Samurai, Jax and Daxter, Motorstorm and many more) and they won't need to bride anyone to make them exclusive. If i keep buying 3 party exclusives and it doesn't work in my favor, i will have gambled a huge portion of my companies capital for no good.

Secondly, if i do nothing, then my clientele will be unhappy for not offering them what my rival is offering them at a better price with less hassle (blue-ray, motion controls, eye toy, free online gaming, div x player). If i won't accept this as a customer, why should my customers accept it!

Last but not least, if I keep asking my clients to keep purchasing parts to upgrade their console, will they eventually get fed up for having to continuously fork out extra money to have their console kept up to datee.g.

PS3) for £315 you get, blue ray player, 40 gig hard drive, div ex player, the console, blue tooth, easily upgradable hard drive from any pc store, blue tooth and wire less.

360) for £220 you get basic 360, no hard drive, no wire less (basic features). if i wanted to match the above i will need to buy: wireless accessory which is around £15, cooling kit (unless youre fond of the ring off death) which is about £15, 20gig hard drive which is about £70 and 1 year subscription for xbox live which is about £40. Grand total to have a up to spec 360 will cost you £370 with an additional cost of £40 every year for another year of xbox live. and even with these upgrades, my 360 wont offer as much as my rivals ps3 as well as end up being far more costly then the ps3.

With this many concerns I would start thinking twice about my short lived glory unless I dont care and i am happy enjoying today's profits and don't give a shit about tomorrow. And if there are no solutions in the pipeline, then yes, I would accept that things will start to fall apart if i dont do something very good very soon, i will be losing a lot of my customers to my rival.

Again you missed the fact that the huge fall update that is coming to XBL. I play both PSN and XBL avidly and while I like PSN being free, I certainly feel like im getting my moneys worth on XBL. Basically I would be disappointed if I had to pay for PSN and feel like I was getting away with murder if I wasn't paying for XBL. This topic needs to be taken out back and shot lol

One simple price cut? 200 US is not a "simple" price cut. It's also a move that's put Sony deep into the red this gen.

To refute the rest of this the AAA exclusives are all a matter of opinion as to what is better. People will lean toward either one. The PS3 library pales into comparison, still tho thankfully they are starting to put out more quality titles.  (loved MGS4)

Hardware: Eyetoy...are you even serious I doubt that a a lot of 360 owners are sitting at home killing themselves b/c the 360 doesn't have the eye toy. Motion Controls: E3   Blue Ray: Ok heres the kicker. I like Blue Ray but the disks are expensive. Tho Blue Ray played a large role in keeping the console in the race but it could also say that it kept them behind. Sony fans might disagree with me but I would rather of had the PS3 without the Blue Ray which would make the console a lot cheaper and Sony would have payed more attention to the games. You said it yourself PS3 had a "shit" start b/c of few games. I'm not sure what innovation you are talking about. Other than Blue Ray and the more powerful machine what innovation has Sony done to the PS3? Other than MGS4 whats happened over the last few months to entice ppl to buy a PS3 more than a 360 or Wii? What are these updates?

The whole thing on trading consoles in and what not. What makes you think that people don't trade their PS3s in. And 360 owners notoriously buy a crap ton of software but who knows if could pick up for Sony.