Hm, MS's actions are heavily influenced by shareholder interests as we can see by Ballmers latest announcement, so I can only assume shareholders might not be too happy if large amounts of money were used to gain control of a seemingly not very lucrative market (well Nintendo did have some very good years, but apart from that?).

If I were Bill Gates I would use my personal fortune.

No, thanks to MS returning to their senses and ditching their earlier X1 policies

What I have found out from my colleagues is that out of 5 of them who were mainly Xbox players, only 1 currently is looking at getting Xbox day 1. This doesnt mean they wouldnt get an XboxOne later, just initially its PS4. I also used to think that games collections and trophies would have a big impact on people not moving across, but no backwards compatibility has acutally helped Sony.. as gamers don't feel so inclined to have to buy the previous brand (I actually think users are less bothered about this as time goes by)

I would say MS now have a better chance now since they did their 180 though. I think it would have been a disaster level if they had kept with their original plans.

1. Yes I agree, people buy machines for exclusives, I know a few people who only use their PS3 for Uncharted etc.

2. Nope. Don't agree with that at all. I don't think people automatically think the PS4 network will be as "poor"? as some people perceived the Ps3 network to be... it just lack features... also i really do think Gaikia is Sony's ace card..

3. All i would say is reserve judgment until you've actually tried both controllers :) - I think you might be surprised by how good the PS4 controller actually is.

I believe Sony will initially do alot better than they did, and i expect them to Win Europe and Asia, while I still have the feeling that USA is xbox country, it should acutally be closer this time.

haha that might work

the easiest way might to be buy a good portion of Sony stock, rally for splitting off the gaming division, then buy the gaming division (not sure if you are allowed to) and finally close it or merge it into the xbox division

lol. I would do it just for the laughs.

That's not what I said at all. But nice job lumping criminals, psychopaths and the Sony community together, sick deduction skills.

I agree. Some people stuck with microsoft even before the one eighty. Theres a limit on the percentage of fans you can possibly convert.

I still think PS4 will outsell XB1 (including converted players) though and heres why:
1) will have same amount of great exclusives as PS3 did
2) it wont take a hit on the 3rd party games and wont be inferior to xbox version like most 3rd party PS3 games were. Also exclusives will make the most of GDDR5.
3) it wont be 1 year late to the party like the PS3 was
4) it wont cost more than the xbox like PS3 did
5) its launching in more places than xbox.
6) PS+ is better value than XBL, and you dont need to subscribe to use all features. even some f2p games can be played without PS+.
7) the money from PS+ will go into improving the infrastructure.
8) xbox one wont have as many re-purchases as Xbox 360 did (yeah yeah, i know they were eventually covered by a guarantee, but a lot of people still repurchased new ones in the first year)
9) PS4 wont be limited by RAM so if Xbox has a feature, sony can have it too. (unlike when PS3 missed out on cross game chat)
10) PS4 will be very easy to program because of its similarities to a PC, forget about the days when indie games came late to the PS3...or didnt show up at all.

I simply cant see halo, a better controller (how?), and peoples perception of XBL v PSN being an issue. I still think that XBL v PSN perception is more to do with justifying the fee rather than the service itself.

The only thing from last gen I can see being similar to next gen is how a lot of people will buy an xbox first but eventually get a playstation too.

You're kidding right, you would refuse to get a console because you don't like some of the people on here? Grow up. Just get the console based on its merits or not. I don't really want an Xbox One because I haven't made that much use of my 360, not because Xbox fans are annoying

And yes, the PC is more powerful, we all know that, if you spend as much money on your GPU as you would spend on a whole PS4

So given that Gears is seemingly gone, it is just Halo left and Halo's strength is fading with Bungie gone (so says my Halo-fanboy-friend).

Xbox Live, maybe. I think the main thing is that they have existing Live subscriptions that probably carry over, so changing over is going to waste some of that. There is also a question of where their current gaming community go (especially if they are CoD/Halo players) and they'll want to keep playing with them

Controller isn't an issue, Sony have fixed whatever complaints people had with the DualShock 3 other than the placement of the analouge sticks, but people will get over that