Finally, something we agree upon.  Perhaps you should consider this in relation to your original post and its premise....to which I've refuted several pages ago and you've yet to address.

As for counting Rare as Nintendo, of course we should.  They owned a controlling interest, which in business terms means ownership.  Therefore it is irrelevant whether the ideas, coding or technical prowess came from Kyoto or Twycross, England. 

1a.  I presume by "1st" you are addressing the first challenge, as I requested.  Therefore, you didn't really address at all the very fact Nintendo has made that $32 billion you were complaining about when you began this thread.  In order to question that statement you basically have to contradict your own earlier position.  But instead you just spouted irrelevant nonsense.  [edit:  deleted an irrelevant argument of my own]

1b.  "2nd" OK, I admit Nintendo also makes video game hardware, and that video game hardware can be a source of business by [edit:  both direct profit and] getting royalties from third parties publishing their games on it.  But it is well known that Nintendo hardware has not attracted enough business to their home consoles to be particularly successful in this way for over a decade now.  So yes, they are reliant on video game sales.  Their hardware depends on their software, not the other way around; if no one bought Nintendo games, the hardware would soon follow. 

Your analogies are—I'm going to be blunt here—idiotic.  People buy TVs to watch TV even more than to play video games.  People buy computers for business, the Internet, email, and a thousand things other than video games.  When the PS3 launched in 2006 you could use it as a Linux computer, but let's be honest here, it would never succeed if there were no PS3 games.  If there were no computer games, computers would still be successful, even if the market took a hit and some individual businesses would be in trouble. 

Saying MS and Sony have more "at stake" because they have not recovered the money they've spent sounds a lot like the "sunk costs" fallacy.  It's nonsense.  If they think they can make money somehow by investing in games (even if they make money on TVs people buy to make their games look better or because Sony fanboys like Sony TVs better or something), then they will stay in it.  If they think that investing in games would lose them money overall, then they will walk to the door, no matter how much money they've sunk, because as a business they don't want to sink even more with no expectation of ever getting it back. 

2.  So if some music is just inherently more complex than other music, then the implication is that how complex a piece of music is depends on how it was composed rather than simply whether it has vocals in it, which is very sensible, and destroys your entire argument. 

That's right. And I've already admitted to Finfal-Fan that I may be wrong about that. Yet, there's no proof about which one came first.

You continue to focus on the technological side of the issue. Nothing makes me think what I had claimed but the games themselves released so far. I'm not following logic, I'm seeing the results directly. Look at the games that had instrumental-only soundtracks and look at the ones that began to have vocal music. Don't you see a pattern? Well, I do. Moreover, it's easier to make instrumental-only music. I'm not saying it can't become harder than vocal if one puts a lot of effort and resources on there. I'm saying vocal demands a higher "minimum level" of commitment.

Why do you say I am incapable of understanding other forms of music? The fact that I can't count the number of instruments (or even if I could it doesn't mean I would have the availability to do it) doesn't mean I can't appreciate the music I'm listening.

I disagree. Jumping to conclusions is embracing them. I just consider them as possible conclusions.

I think you are going too far. I had never presented such a logic. I only acknowledge that vocal music (with instruments, of course) demands a higher minimum effort than instrumental-only.

Music is Mario 64 is simpler, it has definitely less instruments than in Sonic Adventure, less music tracks and no vocals. Is it enough for you? It's not merely because of vocal music (this is only an indicator).

If some musicians create more with less effort, then they are most probably more expensive so it all comes down to the same thing (I have been saying for quite some time): effort / time / money.

Design choices are not valid arguments. If, by design choice, I decide to create a very simple game that is extremely easy and quick to develop, I'm not as commited as other dev that puts millions of euros and man-hours work on another game.

A company doesn't need to profit 32B$ to survive.

All companies want to maximize profits, that's why they are companies and not non-profit organizations. But they have different ways to get there, that's what distinguishes them. Nintendo is more about easy-business and greedy moves. Sony and Microsoft are more about raising up the standards and trying to be the best of the best. If you take a look at the OP, you will realize there's no part saying Nintendo is evil, just what is its mindset and long-term strategy. If you consider that to be evil, that's already your opinion.

Business is not about red numbers, but it's definitely about pleasing fans (and I would add "other stakeholders"). We all can see how successful NES and SNES were and how unsuccessful N64 and GC were (because of Nintendo's bad practices from the past). We can all see how Wii was successful at the beginning and how unsuccessful it was at the end and now Wii U (because of the low quality/price ratio those eco-systems ended up to be). Nintendo doesn't take advantage of its dominant positions to thrive in the long-term, only to cash in as much as possible in the short-term.

Sony and Microsoft act differently. Sony, for example, continued to expand their investments in videogaming despite 2 consecutive massive successes (PS1 and PS2). They think in the long-term, not in getting to 32B$ of profits as quickly as possible.

Think about it for a moment.

That question made me laugh, as you assume that City Escape is just about boarding gameplay. Furthermore, that was the first level of the game (Sonic Team ussually puts more effort in the first levels), which is about San Francisco (the city they just have moved into) and it had the right to a tailored vocal music track.

I'm pretty sure that if they were willing to invest on all levels the same time / effort / money they had invested on City Escape, most of them (if not all) would have vocal tracks.

It's very interesting that you would make this argument, considering you have previously discounted artistic creation as being (paraphrasing) "effortless".

However they do need more than $0.

It's been mentioned to death that Sony and Microsoft may leverage off other departments, so pure profit from gaming isn't necessary.

Their consoles also serve as loss leaders, multimedia Trojan horses, advertisement boards, tools for brand recognition etc. which are all worth the additional cost to Sony and Microsoft, particularly when they can leverage off other departments.

But how could you possibly present that as some kind of rule, that vocal music always require more effort than instrumental-only? How much knowledge do you actually have about music theory, composing etc? So far you've completely ignored the part of music making where you actually make music. You only look at the number of instruments and if there's any vocals or not, and ignore the rest. You might as well claim that the effort behing a piece of music can be calculated by the length, the number of notes, the amount of accords, tempo shifts etc. Because if two composers write music for piano and one uses 54 notes and the other 67, the one who used the most notes clearly put in the most work, right?

And no, that's not enough to say that the music in Sonic required more than the Mario soundtrack. How can you know that the composers spent equal amount of time on their songs? What if one composer spends as much time on a single track that it takes the other to make ten tracks? Not saying that it is so but the possibility can't be ignored. Musicians also works in different ways. Some make more songs than they need and scrap the ones they don't want, while others work on exactly the amount of tracks they're supposed to make. And again, just because there's vocals doesn't mean that the effort is greater. I could sit down by the piano and write a song in 30 minutes if I wanted. The result probably wouldn't be the most groundbreaking work ever created but it would be a piece of vocal music done in 30 minutes.

I really don't understand how you can write off design choices like that. We are talking video games here, aren't we? The composer(s) make the music needed by the game designers, and the amount/type of tracks varies from game to game. Going back to Sonic and Mario, Sega wanted Sonic to have that "cool factor", and the games and music were made with that in mind. It was a design choice. The pop music used in later Sega games were design choices, they choose music that fit with Sonic's image.

As for you last paragraph, the part about spending millions of euros on a game is plain silly. How many one man teams out there do you think have millions of euros at their disposal, and have the luxury to spend tons of man-hours on their games? You're taking a piss at a lot of indie developers with that one, as many of them have to settle for more simple graphics, gameplay, story etc. because they don't have the resources to spend on a grand project. You got to pay your bills somehow.

Choosing a small project doesn't automatically mean that you're not commited, unless you choose to be lazy. If you make a basic game and put all your efforts behind it you're just as commited to it as someone putting all their efforts into a bigger project. Your commitment isn't measured by the size of the project but by how much of yourself you invest into it.

Are you naive or just...

ok. Sony is not the god of games and didn't expand because they believe in the long term. If they do they wouldn't have to cut some of their divisions. If they "expand" is because their incompetence to make profits. They cannot compete with Nintendo in the Wii Sports territory (like their copy sport game showed) but they can compete in the areas that the competition lacks.

And I'll like to remind you that Nintendo is investing and expanding to the point of making new buildings and developing new tools to share among devices, while Sony is selling the ones they have. Is selling a building to generate fake profits the same as investment in the long term? NO.

Stop with this bullshit. You clearly doesn't understand.