Corporations are made up of people. Nothing more, nothing less.

The fact is that anybody working at MS or Sony would feel personally insulted if you called their respective company a greedy, corporate pig. 

You should go check out what it's like to work at Google or even Apple. Since ALL companies are like this in your opinion, then that extends to these as well. It seems like an awesome thing to be part of Google for instance.

There is nothing to gain by coming into threads and using the "their evil" card. Nothing at all. Best you not do it at all and let the people here make justifiable criticisms based on the company's actions instead of blind negativity like you are. It's not constructive and it isn't in sync with the reality.

Some of the products available to consumers these days are truly incredible - especially considering how little we pay. Go and see how much tech stuff cost in the 80s, 90s etc. to realize how fortunate we are. No need to call the  manufacturers of these products greedy pigs.

I'll make this my last post on the topic, as I'm just not sure you get what I am trying to say.

Keep your blind faith in MS. No ones advocating it or putting it down but rather talking about Microsoft as a corporation and their practices which ARE detrimental to the industry (which can affect consumers). Once the paid exclusives dry up just like the 360 and MS is expected to have creativity of their own just like the last three years when confronted by the media on a drought of exclusives they'll say... "We're focused on quality over quantity" when really...they mean, "We dont know how to finish the top notch game outside of that which has already been made for us. Microsoft, much like AT&T, Comcast and more are bad examples of what large American mega corporations represent in a capitalist society. Doesn't stop me from getting and Xbox One eventually, but my point stands about Microsoft. My feelings about them and being a gamer are two separate things.

http://www.examiner.com/article/what-really-grinds-my-gears-of-war-microsoft-hopes-you-aren-t-paying-attention

“"I think it's fair to say there's a segment of consumers at this show (E3) in particular who really pay attention, who are very passionate about all aspects of gaming, and that we listen to closely. In a broader set of community, people don't pay attention to a lot of the details. We've seen it in the research, we've seen it in a lot of the data points."

This Article has other pertinant information to this argument but I will center on the main statement. The quoted line above is from  Microsoft PR, Mehdi Yusef. Its not really new knowledge but it isn't something you usually hear admitted aloud. Ive always seen MS marketing tactics for what they were. 

Back when PS2/Xbox/Gamecube ruled the octogon, I went exclusively PS2, its a product I grew up with, it was familiar. Yet I have no qualms with the others. In fact I was quite envious of KOTOR and Fable on the XBOX back in that day. Just after those console's reign came to a close, I decided I would pick up an XBOX system for cheap, yet right around that time many stores stopped carrying XBOX stuff. At that point I looked towards the next gen. PS3 was a logical choice as many of the games I loved would assuredly go there, but 360 was interesting too. It came a whole year earlier and so much positive media going for it at the time. I remember being in Walmart and seeing King Kong in HD on the system, blew my mind. Yet I had to wait on getting any next gen console due to financial troubles. What I learned during that waiting period I found troubling, and was basically why I ended up going exclusively Playstation once again....

1. Faux Cheaper Price tag. At the time, 360 looked to be the cheapest and quickest way to jump into HD gaming. Yet if you pay attention, 360 is/was the MOST expensive of them all. With things like rechargable batteries, wifi capability, HDMI support(new models),Gold Membership, and sometimes hard drives,it all makes the 360 the most taxing of systems. One might say "Well none of these are necessary" but in reality, majority of 360 owners own/ed these accessories at some point.  So many hidden fees to get it comparable to both other generation systems.
2. Played it safe Tech wise: In order to even get the 360 at the price it was, it had to ignore certain benefits that the PS3 did have; Bluray and standard hard drives. It might not have been that big of an issue the first 3 years, but later on, the fact that it didn't was a huge drawback for the generation as a whole. Games stayed small because they always had to take in account of 360's lack of better specs. At some point developers had to start ignoring the fact 360 didn't have HD and they built their games for it anyway. This meant the millions of people who bought 4GB systems would be shut out of playing some of the recent AAAs. GTA4,Battlefield 4 are two that come to mind. Both require more harddrive space than the 4GB can offer, meaning all those people came rushing to stores to get HardDrives so little Timmy can actually play his Christmas Present. That was going to run you a bare minimum of 100 bucks. I find this insane that they would do this to consumers and the consumers as a whole just let them get away with it.
3. The lack of gaming support from the 1st Party after the first 4 years is the most troubling. They had gotten the HardCore on their side already so what do they do? Totally forget them and persue the Casual Market with Kinect Games. They knew most were far to monetarily/socially invested to just give up on the 360, so their dominance at the time was safe. Xbox Live Yearly fees, Big Hit game series like Halo, the fact that theyve invested so much on just making their gaming system competent would trap them in place.
4. Spent more on Biased Advertising than actual compelling exclusives. In the later years, MS forgot that a system needs exclusives to differenciate it's offerings from the competition. One of their remedies was to just throw a lot of money at advertising Multiplatform games as exclusively on 360. This was the yearly COD cycle. To this day......many casual gamers believe these games are only available to them if they have a 360. This false illusion definitely works, but how misinformative it is?
5. Let us not forget RROD, one of the biggest manufacturing blunders in my lifetime. 40% failure rate was being spoken at the time. Insiders told us that the only reason the issue existed was because MS refused to relinquish their head start over Sony. Yet MS shrugged this off in the media as common place with most gaming console devices(not true in the slightest) and downplayed the shear amount of failed consoles out in the wild. Many either had MS fix it for them....or just went out and bought ANOTHER console, some people did this more than once. I don't understand how this is so easily forgotten....

I guess it's mutual then.

It's not fair to bring age into this. You don't know who I am and where I work and what I know.

But it doesn't matter cause our conversation is over.

You can be profitable by valuing the consumers and coaxing them to pay you rather than forcing them to pay you. XBL vs PS+ is a fundamental example. PS+ gives you free games that are accessible with the service, the more games you have the more incentive you have to subscribe, similar to the gamerscore with XBl. Now PS+ requires payment for multiplayer to make the service more valuable by taking value away from the console. Its a shitty practice, but XBL has this problem in spades. Rather than just multiplayer, practically the entire feature set of the console requires XBL, stealing value away from the console to make itself look like a premium service, but of course it should have ads because MS is bleeding money from every oriffice.

Leave you conjecture at the door, the only reason you think all companies act like this is because Microsoft Xbox has indoctirnated you.

What example are you talking about.  You were vague to begin with so why don't you make that part a little more clear.  Also what wild claims am I making.  The claim that Sony, MS and Nintendo are a business and they make decisions based on business not some type of customer love which is what you are stating.  You talk about changes Sony has made during the PS4 era but forget about the policies during the PS3, PS2 and PS1.

What has changed Sony has nothing to do with valuing the customer and all about competition.  With no competition, Sony only tries to keep their marketshare and dominance.  With competition, they have to win customers from competitiors which is why you would see more consumer related practices from all of the OEMs

@Bolded, I totally agree with that line.  The thing is, you only see companies doing that when they are at the bottom not at the top.  This is one reason why new companies in an established business have a better chance

@2nd Bolded:  This part here shows exactly how much you do not understand about business. For some reason you believe that PS+ and the rental service was something Sony did because they wanted to add value for customers.  This is flawed logic.  Sony came up with the rental service because they needed something that XBL their biggest competitor in that space did not provide.  Sony was willing to eat the cost for profits by offering such a service to gain more subs.  Sony needed something that customers could easily see value in without worrying about their spotted networking past.  Withou XBL, you would not have PS+ in the form that it is now if Sony did not have any competition.

Why is Sony putting MP within PS+ when they did not do it for the PS3.  Reason is because PS+ is a cost and not a profit.  In order to make the service pay for itself, Sony need more people to subscribe.  Those rentals are not cheap since Sony has to pay for that exclusive window for downloading the game.  Throwing MP in the pot ensures getting more subs just like it does for MS XBL.  

Most companies when they are in a position of weakness will do loss leader type of deals.  These deals are great for consumers but bad for the business to try to substain long term.  PS+ is a prime example.  First iteration of it was a solid plan that probably was and still is a loss leader.  Sony is probably paying more for delivering the serivice then they have in subs to pay for it.  Force MP on the PS4 ensures you get more subs because a lot of the games coming out have a MP component.

Shaunaka.  Sorry, wasn't trying to personally insult you, so I owe you an apology there.

Let me retract all previous statements and start from scratch.  All I'm trying to say is every company is trying to be profitable (selling their product for the largest profit margin possible).  Seriously, every single one.  That's not the same as greed, or evil.  It's called business.  

This, in turn, also means they are all trying to create products that people want to buy (in order to charge that healthy margin described above).  Yes, these products have people's passions, lives, etc. poured into them sometimes.

I just think it's rediculous to claim one company preys and not another as the OP states.  People can be preyed on by scams, etc.  But MS is not preying on anyone.  Why is it so hard to believe that some people find VALUE in the Xbox One?  That's how this all started - claiming people buying hte X1 are Ignorant.   Hardly true.