Do you predict any company to cover Microsoft's place on console market ?

[Pemalite]

Cerebralbore101 said:

Pemalite said:

Profit is literally everything to a for-profit company. They aren't a charity.

As for Microsoft and Profit, you can ascertain profit and margins from current reports by extrapolating pieces of data.

One of the biggest problems for modern corporations is that they push profits one quarter at the cost of long term sustainability. Anti-consumer business practices to drive short-term profit often result in company collapse years down the road. Saying that profit is everything to a for-profit company reeks of laissez-faire capitalism. Long-term sustainability, customer respect, and competitiveness are all just as important as profit. Hell, there's even a line on most PnL sheets for "Public Goodwill". You can't just jack up the price of water during a drought, reap millions, and then watch as your sales drop off a cliff and never recover after the first rain. That's a recipe for corporate failure. 

MS will only ever provide incomplete data. So anything you extrapolate will be erroneous. 

If you think a company like Microsoft; that has been chasing a $5~ trillion dollar market cap cares about long term sustainability, customer respect and competitiveness... Then you haven't been paying attention to what Microsoft has been doing for the last 30 years... 
Or the fact that Microsoft has thrown sustainability out the window and started rolling out A.I/Data Centers everywhere, driving up the cost of electricity in those localities, consuming significant amounts of water, gobbling up all the DRAM and NAND which has forced all consumer-facing products (Phones, Consoles, Tablets, TV's, Cars and more) to increase in cost.

They are a for-profit company, they put profit above all else.

Why else do you think they aren't willing to be price-competitive with Sony and Nintendo?
Why else do you think they mandated a 30% profit margin?
Why else do you think they have pivoted towards selling profitable software and services and not loss-leading hardware?

It's because Profit matters above all else.

And why does profit matter above all else? Shareholders.

It's shareholders that push that drive for short term profit signalling, it's literally Microsoft's legal obligation to provide a return to shareholders and chase that next profit-ceiling.

If you think these companies actually give a shit about you, me or anyone else on this forum... Then I have some Kangaroo feathers to sell you... Because they don't.
They care about the cash in your wallet, that is literally the entire purpose of their existence.

Where a companies priorities change is when they are a privately held company like Valve, profit isn't the main goal as they don't have shareholders to constantly appease... But they still need to have profit as a primary goal to continue to exist as a viable entity.

Any other answer in this capitalistic world is simply wrong.