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Forums - Microsoft - How Did Microsoft Lose In The Video Gaming Market?

tuscaniman on 14 March 2010
Ldn.se said:
tuscaniman said:
supercat said:
I think that MS's opportunities for the next gen have both lower risk and return.

Less risk b/c they won't be so studpid the next time and make a console that will melt during a halo game

Less return, because they won't have the advantage of a highly overpriced PS4 and will have to pay royalties to Sony for every Blu-ray based game, assuming of course that the 720 will be using blu-ray for its games.

So, the 720 should have a lot less upside and also get rid of the losses in profits sooner (no RROD w/ the 720) .

The next Xbox will not use BluRay. Expect something new, HVDs, or Digital Distribution.


It would be unreasonable if they didnt use bly ray. How are they going to introduce a new format? Thay tried HDDVD and failed. Blu ray is here to stay IMO. DD maybe. It worked with music but games are so much large. 5-8 years earliest

HD-DVD was not used for the games themselves. Obviously if HD-DVD wasn't treated as an add on for movie viewing and used for the format that the games were used for then HD DVD would still be around. Your logic fails in this sense. If the cost of HVDs is low and around the same as BluRay and it prevents Microsoft from paying royalties then you can bet they won't go BluRay. HVDs hold 10x the amount of info a BluRay disc does and thats the minimum. Microsoft is not going to pay Sony money in order to use a disc format. If they are required to pay Sony royalties (which I don't know if thats true or not) then it won't happen, simple as that.



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Mistershine on 14 March 2010

Microsoft won't lose. Alan Wake is going save them. He spits on inferior PC gamers.



mirgro on 14 March 2010
tuscaniman said:
mirgro said:
tuscaniman said:
mirgro said:

The fact more games are coming out on platforms other than Windows, that is the Mac, does not bode well for Microsoft's main source of revenue, Windows and Office.

I remember reading, on this very forum actually, that in Revenue the Xbox part is almost half that of the OS and Office part of Microsoft, yet the Profti from Xbox is something like 1% of the profit from their OS and Office. Makes me wonder if them giving up on PC gaming has hit their OS, since that would mean they made a huge mistake.

Well seeing as PCs don't run a Mac OS I don't think that is a problem. I don't see PC gamers spending $1500 on a Apple to play games. Microsoft will always have the huge market share as long as Apple decides not to license their software.

I am not so sure on that end. People are stupid and Apple can market. I know many people where they only had Windows so they can play games. Microsoft has been working very hard to remove that benefit, for some retarded reason it seems, and as it stands a lot more people will get  Macs or Linux and play on their 360s instead of bothering with Windows.

Whichever way you slice it, the OS trade of Microsoft makes the Xbox looks like fractions of a penny.

I think you are missing the point. Apple can market their asses off but the average consumer is not gonna drop minimum $1500, but normally $2000 and up on an apple because its Apple. PCs are half the price and you can bet Microsoft gets a piece of every PC sold. So unless your average consumer deliberately decides to build their own PCs and put Linux on it or spend 2 months salary on an Apple Microsoft will own the OS market.

Second of all how can you be using people playing games on their 360s as argument of them abandoning Microsoft PC gaming? Microsoft won't care if you have a 360 or PC so as long as you are using a Microsoft product.

People are already paying that much an Apple's market share keeps growing. Apple will probably keep hitting Microsoft's marketshare. Fruthermore, I don't know where you have been, but you can already order netbooks and laptops that come with Linux instead of Windows, which Microsoft gets nothing from.

As for how the Xbox affects Microsoft. Because one of the biggest incentives Windows had was gaming, if you can get it elsewhere and you know you can't on Windows, then you will go with a better product, Mac or Linux.



shio on 14 March 2010
DirtyP2002 said:
Xbox 360 is making money and will break even this year.

They are close to 1 billion USD / year just with XBL fees. They are posting profit after profit for more than 5 quarters right now, they still carry the Zune and WinMo. Look at the WinMo 7 R&D (or Zune HD). That cost some money, but the Xbox360 still made a profit.

They lost too much in the beginning, they're not going to make profit, unless this gen overextends a couple more years.



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De85 on 14 March 2010
shio said:

I thought it was clear that temporally I was talking about this generation. "Money is still being lost" meaning that Microsoft will still be on a negative income with the Xbox 360 at the end of this generation (unless something highly unexpected occurs).

Being in the red overall is not and has never been the same as "still losing money."  Just because that's what you want to say does not mean you can rewrite basic accounting vocabulary.  Since they have been making profits for quite a few quarters now I'm not really worried about them going anywhere.