TheLastStarFighter said:
The Playstion (first as an intended partnership with Nintendo, then solo) brand was made and developed to mainstream new media and harware - CD's, DVD's, Blu-Ray's. It was very successful in this goal. The XBox (first as a partnership with SEGA) brand was made to push the gaming and media capabilities of PC's and prevent a different option from becoming a central computing hub in the home. In particular, in the very late 90's Microsoft was concerned with the stagnation of PC advancement. Microsoft makes most of it's money on new PC purchases with new pre-installed Windows, so a slowing in tech advancement means less new PC's purcahsed. The XBox was designed to push game and multimedia limits which would in turn push PC game and multimedia expectations of consumers, encouraging them to buy new machines. It has always been OK at Microsoft if XBox loses money, as long as it's doing it's job of pushing PC sales.
Developing game software has always been secondary for Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo is the only true "games" hardware company left, but all three just want our money in one way or another.
But great sales for 360, wii and DS, systems that pretty much anyone who wants one already has it!! |
Xbox was at first intended to be a partnership with Sega? Nonsense for starters.
The Sony bit is well known and been verified for over 15 years.
The rest is just opinion with a few small well known facts inbetween to give the opinion some credibility.
It's not nonsense. I have a close relation who was responsible for Windows CE at Microsoft. Two years before it was released, he told me they had begun working with SEGA to build the Dreamcast. Dreamcast uses DirectX. It was a partnership intended to help SEGA compete, and promote DirectX for games development. The goal of this (for Microsoft)was to push technology envelopes so people would buy new computers. Regular software such ass Office and Internet Explorer can be run on the most basic systems. Games are the only thing that demand power for most users. At the time the vast majority of games were on consoles. Pushing console games further with Direct X means that PC games (using the same tech) will be pushed further, making users need better systems. This makes new systems trendy and encourages other users (who may not even play games) think they need the latest tech. They buy new PC's.
The Dreamcast failed of course, so then Microsoft decided to make its own machine using DirectX to do the same thing. You can believe me if you want or not, it doesn't matter to me. But that has always been the primary goal of the Microsoft game machine, and why the division is allowed to lose money. They pack as much tech as possible into it to raise the expectations of what software should be. It's a strategy that works wonders for Windows and overall makes lots of money for Microsoft... just not on games.
