14 years ago. Profit is Microsoft's long term vision.

Edit - And this is not a knock towards Microsoft at all, its just simple fact that Xbox division is puny in comparison to most of the company. Xbox is a great product though and have been profiting for a while now and will most likely continue too. But until the profit margins rise, Xbox division will not be integral to the company considering they could drop the brand right this moment and be the exact same company with the exact same profits tommorrow morning.

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Microsoft didn't come into the gaming industry for the love of gaming. It was to throw off Sony. MS knows its nothing compared to their profits but as long as they keep their competitors at bay they are happy.

Agreed. Console gaming is a very proprietary business sector and Xbox brand doesn't really meet MS's typical criteria of business practise; if Sony wasn't so dominant and threatening to MS for the home space I don't see a reason for MS to enter the gaming space at all. But that's not to say the Xbox brand hasn't established itself considering the amount of push towards online the industry has recieved and the catching up of developer relations (money, lol) compared to the competition plus the general knowledge that comes with experience through exposure. All-in-all Xbox brand is strong and should continue to be profitable but in no way do I see it ever be integral to MS.

I'm inclined to agree. Someone said it earlier, but I think the war for control of all our media content went in a completely different direction than Sony and Microsoft foresaw, and now the manufacturers of the televisions themselves are helping to ensure that there will be even less and less need for entertainment boxes in general.

Microsoft doesn't care about Sony any more. To concern themselves now with that when windows is contracting by 10% every year would be preposterous. Google and Apple are the enemy now, make no mistake about that. Back in the 90s the theory was that consoles could threaten PC supremacy, a flat out stupid concept that proved utterly wrong. Meanwhile Microsoft got completely blind sided by mobile. Everything they're doing is now focused on apple and Google, mobile is their goal now, while maintaining backoffice and cloud leadership. Xbox is no longer more than an asterisk in their worries, and most of their attention there is damage control rather than plans to expand or succeed in the home box sector. At most, they want to transition Xbox branding to their mobile products to shore up against the epic success Google and Apple are having with mobile gaming sales. Xbox Done.

I would agree with the fact that Sony is an entiertainment company. That's definitely true and that's why I didn't lump them in directly with MS. They obviously have a better grasp of what gaming is and what it means. But I still say they tend to follow instead of lead (at least since the PS4). There was a time when owning a Playstation instead of an Xbox meant having a much more diverse software lineup to choose from. But since the launch of the PS4, it seems Sony is more concerned with grabbing the FPS, dude bro crowd and throwing their own people under the buss in the process. They seem to be chasing western trends instead of focusing on what made owning a PS so unique.

I'd much rather see them go back to the PS1/PS2 days where there was a company wide focus on variety. No one should HAVE to own two consoles but as it is now, you really have to own both a PS4 and Wii-U is you want to cover all your bases imo.

Quote tree shortened - Krensik.

Nintendo generally doesn't go beyond 6-7 years. Since Sony takes more risk than Nintendo Sony announced after their first gen they are using ten year profitability plans. Nintendo consoles are made cheaply because it ensures profit even though they don't push their consoles technologically. That is the reason Sony introduced the ten year plan, because they knew ten years would make up for the risk and bring them back into profitability. The ten year plan is why the PS2 sold as much as it did in the long run and also why the PS3 continued to profit after 2010.

Sony takes more risk then Nintendo???  10 year support not plan.  Sony 1st party studios did not bring out games on the PS2 for 10 years. Sony did not extend any of the capabilities of the PS2. Instead Sony kept making the unit because it was still being sold at a profit and they still get paid for games released on the system.  How is that a plan.  It gives nothing to the current gamer and only just feeds into Sony pockets.  The WiiU and the Wii show way more risk then anything Sony has done within the games market for years.  While MS and Sony go for broke on making another system that output better visuals, only Nintendo tries to actually change the way you play games and improve on the experience.  It goes against the other console makers and is way more risky as a result.

Its not that simple, its a return on their investment. Support goes without saying. Microsoft vowed to follow Sony with their ten year plan, thus why the 360 will continue to shadow the PS3 even into its eleventh year. Next year the Xbox 360 will be a decade old. This means Sony will pull the plug on the PS3 in 2016 and MS following shortly after even though they launched a year ahead. MS always follows Sony. 

Its just as simple as you stated.  Whether its a return on investement or just a money making machine its the same thing.  The PS3 has to have a 10 year plan because it lost so much during the first 5 years it will take that long to if not greater to break even.  The PS2 stretched that long because it was making money while the PS3 was losing it.  If anything thats not a substainable plan and one no company would be proud of.  Its what kept Sony in the red even today and I am not sure why you would promote it as something good.

Microsoft unveiled a market that was emerging from the PC market. Sony doesn't understand the PC market, but obviously they understand the console one. Every lesson MS has ever taught Sony or Nintendo has come from the already written book of PC. Multiplayer online? PC. Do you want Indie games? PC.  The console realm was headed in that direction as Sony ushered consoles into the the direction of highly computerized multimedia devices. MS just helped them reach their goals sooner by giving them something to follow that they kept failing that. Eventually they would've succeeded.

Not buying it.  Sony demeanor and policies concerning indies was how the console indurstry at that time viewed them.  They were not important.  MS comes into the game and give indies a shot.  MS develop XBL and give indies a shot.  Sony only changed after they saw the success of XBL and understood that games are what important not what category a developer belong to.  The console industry did not start to move towards indie friendly until the Iphone and later android market made them popular.  Long before those products made indie important, MS has already paved the way.  I will give kudos for Sony changing policies faster than MS for the PS4 launch but then again its almost as if they needed to because of the limited amount of first party development so far.

Keep telling yourself Microsoft don't care about Sony anymore. I wonder then what will inspire their next movements in the industry. The only thing in the gaming industry that changed their visision was the peripheral war with the Wii, and Sony and Nintendo already had their own so they bought project Natal and made it the Kinect.I wonder why the Xbox One is now no different from the PS4. Also newsflash, Mobile gaming is throwing off the whole console industry, including Nintendo. Nintendo maintains that Mobile is the reason for their issues with the DS. When Sony is no longer an issue to MS, they will evacuate the industry just like they did with the Zune. The only industry the MS wont back out of is the one that is their bread and butter. When it comes to gaming just like Sega, Sony and Nintendo will go down with the ship since it is their bread and butter. Imagine that. Before Sony entered the industry, their board laughed at the idea of having a videogame console, while Nintendo was using their workers behind their backs. Who would've thought it would become their bread and butter.