That'll do pig, that'll do

no wonder patapon sucks.

Damn, I  did it again!

I need help.

Ms had 3rd party support last generation,

3rd party does not determine the success of a console:

one only has to look at the nintendo Wii!

the game's do that is what matter's where those game's come from does not matter as long as the system get's them,system.only. because if you can get the game on multiple system's that is far less of determining factor as is if what make's the system unique.

is it's 1st and 2nd party game's

example why did you buy your xbox360

was if mainly for

crackdown, forza, what exactly brought you to buy the xbox360 ?

your point out this:

MS simply doesn't have that many 1st party studios or resources to build custom engines for the console, and they somehow let 2nd parties be bought by EA or other large companies. Why? Beats me.. Letting a developer like Bioware get to EA made me really go WTF. But it might be better than letting Bioware turn out like Rare... Games like Fable don't really stand out graphically, and Halo is more about scale than graphics. It's all about the priorities, and MS simply does not have graphics as a high priority, while Sony does.

Unless your saying that Microsoft does not care to push their system,?

so what your saying is Sony has better graphic's because it's a Priority vs' better game play?

than if Microsoft does not have graphic's as a high priority,

Yeah well IGN gave modern warfare 2 a 10 in the graphics section..

Yeah, they did, but less compared to this gen, and that support didn't really help them. Why? Because they were too late. People who already had PS2 had no reason to go for the Xbox for the 3rd parties. This gen MS decided to go first (RROD was a real bugger though), and they got a better 3rd party support, allowing for some exclusives to come to the platform, plus lots of (timed) additional exclusive content. Halo was the only thing that saved them, but despite Halo, the old Xbox could still not be called a success. Maybe that was mainly because of nVidia too though. 

But 3rd party support seriously does matter. If you don't have it, it's like giving the other console "free" exclusives plus missing out on money. Nintendo is the exception in this case, and they're a completely different market. Nintendo also has a LOT of 1st parties, and they already gain money from hardware. Software profit is not that necessary for them, for MS and Sony it is, and that's why 3rd party support is important. 3rd party games are usually cheaper than in-house games,  and if they sell well, well you do the math. Exclusives might be a reason for the console to be bought, but for making large sums of money, 3rd parties are more important since it's easier to have a lot more of 3rd party games than 1st party ones, and more games equals more money to make up for the loss of selling your hardware.

Why I bought my X360? For a reason almost no one buys an X360.. I wanted to play DOA4.. xD I was a pc gamer, but was always bugged that my favorite genre was not on that platform... Fighting games. I bought my console in 2008. Before that, I noticed VF5 on the PS3, but it didn't have online, and then it was gonna be released to the X360 as well with online.. And having DOA4 on the X360 as well, I had more fighting games to play.. Plus, I really liked the old DOA games on the old Xbox and Ninja Gaiden Black and the X360 had backwards compatibility with them.. So the choice was obvious. After that, I began to appreciate more games, like Mass Effect etc, and my fighting spirit went down and my genre kind of broadened out, and somehow, most of the PS3 games never really appealed to me. The X360 was also cheaper at the time, had the better controller (I played both consoles on kiosks before) though the D-pad sucks, which is a bummer for a fighting game lover xD. So no, the reason wasn't Halo or graphics.. Lol

To get back to the graphics thing, that's exactly what I'm saying yeah, MS is not really concerned with pushing graphics. That does not mean they don't wanna push the hardware, it just means the developers are pursued to give other things priorities than graphics, and the graphical gains are a 2nd priority, unless fans really rage about it, like with Halo 3. We can see that Reach is tackling the issue of jaggies, which was the main thing people complained about. But MS knows that Live is a strong component for them and they try to implement as much as possible in it. I mean, they could've used the time and resources they used to create the whole customization thing in Forza 3 to optimize the graphics engine further instead, but they didn't. Same could be said about a lot of other of their games. Gears 2 was a graphical improvement over Gears 1, but look at what happened with the online component. PGR4 had great graphics, much better than PGR3, but the online component was pretty basic compared to something like Forza 3. You simply can't do it all. Maybe a game like GT5 will since it has been in development like forever, but with limited time, there are priorities, and each has his own method...

I don't see them making the same considerations for OS etc on the Xbox 360 nor any idea of how they actually tested the consoles.

Are you talking abou real life or on the web or both. Because years ago every response I would get from a 360 owner when I mentioned my PS3 was it has no games and its an expensive blue ray. These claims were partially true at the time, but it sure doesn't create any love for those ignorant 360 only owners. I'm sad to say it had an effect on my opinion of my 360, even though it brings me hours of entertainment I can't experience on my PS3.

Yea thats messed up but that still doesnt take away anything that I posted , unless you want to push the point that "OMG IGN are teh bias!!!!"