crissindahouse 1 day ago
It gave MS a foothold on the console market and established Xbox Live which, over the long run, was a success.
Burning some billion to get a foothold into a market isn't something special. It's pretty much the tactic of every new player on the market nowadays regardless the industry (Palantir, Rivian, Beyond Meat, Tesla, Space X and so on...) and MS wasn't some new company but an already huge company, it was even less of a problem for them. Some companies lose over 100 billion before they even start to make money.
Maybe it wasn't that common back then but nowadays it's standard to burn money for years until you succeed with it (or not)
But Nintendo already came from a better position and lost that.
