So do you believe its fair to have console gamers foot the bill for PC gamers Xbox Live? MS obviously seems to believe so.

My XBOX is only 2.4tflops. T_T

lol, what? Another completely urelated reply.

Microsoft already publishes Minecraft on PlayStation. With a decreased interest in pushing XBOX hardware through exclusives, why wouldn't they port other games too?

You are so good at trying to spin anything MS into a negative :). In what way are we on consoles footing the bill? We have payed for online since many, many years ago, it has absolutely nothing to do with MS releasing games on PC.

I would try Halo 3 and Sunset Overdrive. Other MS games? I couldn't care less. But that's a good move. Xbox becoming a service is the way to go.

They wanted to put their OS on the Playstation from the very beginning. Nintendo and Sony both told them no. He is onto something. If Sony and Nintendo both let Microsoft have their OS they would probably drop the console division all together.

And Sony wanted to take advantage of Nintendo´s position to get into the Video game market which was an important image factor for that company at the time. They all do it for their own selfish reasons, and I am pretty sure MS wouldn´t be in the hardware business if their OS had been on those platforms. That doesn´t change the fact that they ARE in the hardware business now and has realized how important the XBox brand is for reaching out to different demographics and expanding the Windows 10 platform. I do think they want to go the Steam route, where XBox is the platform, while the hardware is made by different producers.

I agree that Microsoft would not have entered the console race if Sony and Nintendo wouldve just come quietly and allowed them to create their OS. Nintendo was using Sony R&D behind their back and instead of becoming enemies Sonys board was talked into creating a relationship instead of firing Yamuchi (father of the playstation). Sony expressed their terms in contract to Nintendo before CES in the 90's and Nintendo walked out on it before they revealed it. Sony wanted to scrap the playstation but was talked into keeping it. Sony's advantage with the gaming industry came from using hardware to sell their formats and thus serve to sell hardware for not just their platforms but their hardware competition outside of the gaming realm (Many people would not have been able to buy DVD or Blu Rays had Sony not sold their consoles at a loss) . They evolved into a legitimate game developer (Something Microsoft still struggles to do). Sony's battle with Nintendo was a legal one.

At the end of the day, Sony and Nintendo's bread and butter are still consoles. This cannot be disputed in any way shape or form. This has always separated them from Microsoft because at the end of the day its about consoles for them. Microsoft is now firmly a cloud/OS game publisher.

Microsoft is still making consoles now, but the question remains whether they will still be interested in making consoles after this gen.

its definitly a good thing, however it would be smart to keep online servers segregated. I know you can hook keyboard and mouse up to a Xbox but some people (like me) like the fact that everyone uses the same controller on a console. Where as on PC some people have crazy awsome gaming keyboards and such. And keyboard/mouse is far superior functionally to a controller so (for FPS) so the PC guys would end up wrecking the guys playing on the console.