I kinda wish MS never had entered the game business. They don't need it financially at all, they haven't accomplished what they set out to do in the first place (Sony is right back to kicking their butts), and they've cannibalized the business so that Nintendo has been forced to be the weird outsider.

If anything the game business and being focused on the PS2 was always a paper threat to MS. They ignored the actual threat that was right under their noses in Apple and Google who actually beat MS to the punch in creating the lead OS for the new century (iOS and Android). Sony was of no threat in the long term, in fact Sony of today is a drunk shadow of the company they used to be in the 90s, bleeding money all over the place, MS' assertion that Sony was a threat to them was laughably wrong. They should have been paying attention to Apple and Google not being distracted by things like game consoles. 

This guy right here gets it.

Alright, I'm willing to bet on it.

If by December 21st 2099, sales of Nintendo consoles are higher that of Xbox consoles I win, otherwise you do.

Winner takes sig control for the next century.

Deal! I think MS will overtake in 2016 though.

yeah apparently MS thought that the operating systems on consoles would matter more than PC operating systems and so they saw the Playstation's dominance as a threat to their OS monopoly (or close to it).  This was obviously a strange thing when looking back but hey with the explosive growth Sony had given gaming I can't really blame them for thinking consoles in the future would overtake PCs with their increased functionality.  That being said Sony was a hardware company and MS is a primarily software company so they probably shouldn't have been the primary threat lol

I'm gonna be pedantic and say the 21st century started in 2001, not 2000. Just a pet peeve.

Nintendo cannibalized themselves not ms into being that supposedly weird outsider...

Haha! You wish, Netherlands FTW! 😛

Nintendo is just too conservative but when MS entered the business I think Nintendo made a concious choice that MS is such a massive company that dwarfs them in spending power that from there on in they weren't going to try to compete head on anymore. So if say MS did things like woo third parties, Nintendo stopped doing things like that almost entirely (aside from a few Japanese collaborations). If MS was going to emphasize online, then Nintendo's philosophy became to not do that. Etc. etc. etc.  

Nintendo needs the money from the game business, that's all they have, for MS it's nothing but peanuts, they don't need it. 

It's not that MS makes a bad product, but I kinda wonder if it wouldn't have been the best for all parties involved (MS included) to just not have entered the business. With them out, Nintendo would have the market breathing space they need to be more relevant to the average gamer IMO. Two's company, but three's a crowd. 

And really MS hasn't accomplished any of the things they wanted, even the whole "we want to control your living room" thing, the XBox One is basically the fulfilment of that vision and it's still getting its butt kicked in every market worldwide by Sony. Not that the living room really even turned out to be an OS battleplace ... that was always cell phones and tablets, MS was just too distracted to see it coming. 

He always goes there.

OT: It's not nice to give such a crutch to MS, Seece. It'll be more impressive when/if they outsell all Nintendo home console sales.