You forget one thing sony isn't the only one who can produce blue ray it is a format so more than one company makes it so they can just buy from another company. Sony pushed dvd and xbox had it what makes you think that they won't switch to blue ray. Hd was samsungs mess. they were lucky to even get ms to semi support it no one realy believed in it. any way games are games. Format doest matter what matters is quality and large selection to choose from which xbox has. Oh and no way would they give up live. I pay 50 bucks a year and so do millions of others, many out of the us. Uk is strong mexico and europe for live anyware they speak spanish or english. They just need to break the language barrier of chinese and japanes. Tell them the xbox is made in china and they would buy it in china.

BAHAHA.  Just last year people were comparing the PS3 to the Dreamcast.  The Dreamcast never made money, the 360 is currently making hundreds of millions of dollars each quarter.  It isn't going anywhere.

Listen to yourself for a moment.  Even assuming that Blu-Ray becomes the standard (and it will NEVER be ANYWHERE near the size of DVD), do you actually think that MS will not use it because a consortium of Blu-Rays investors (over a dozen companies only one of which is Sony) will also receive a royalty?

As for why MS may have (I say may because this was never proven) given Paramount money?  Two reasons.  The first was too prolong the format war to give downloads more time to expand.  The second was because Microsoft did a lot of the software development for HD DVD, so they had a vested interest in keeping it afloat. 

It would take 4 to 5 profitable years of earning at or over one billion dollars each year for MS to get back to recover its losses.

What Starcraft says is true. If a company made a huge investment and it turning a profit, they don't mind the huge gap in their bank account, because it's slowly filling up with money from profits.

The point is, if they fill another 1 or 2 billion now, and 360's empire starts to collapse, and they have to invest another 3 billion to put the Xbox 720 into the market, they're gonna think that maybe that's not the smartest idea. And certainly not if they are more or less pushed into using blu-ray. Because Sony will use every nickle they make on MS to fight them with it. The better the Xbox 720 does, the more money Sony makes to make life hard on them.

That's no battle you want to get into.

Because if you do, and you fail again, then you've gone down 3 rounds, and you can kiss consumers trust goodbye.

I know it sounds bad when you think about how much money they have lost in the past, but in reality that sunk cost has created a large number of assets that will make it easier to make money in the future.  For example, they have lost less on this generation than last and it's likely this generation will eventually be profitable on the whole for Microsoft.

It just doesn't make any economic sense for them to quit now they have carved out marketshare and profitability to work with. 

You know what i want for xbox is a darn new Mech Game from the battletech universe.  One that combines the best elements of Mech Assault 1 and 2.  Plus a Mech lab this would be a killer game. for 360 or 720 an improved conquest and clans system more chat longes.  explorable worlds.  Mercinaries.  Basically a MMorpg based Mech game plus a simple mech game for new people.  Also two new controlers.  one for message typing and another saber like point click device and maybe an xbox branded compatible digital camera.

You really think the consumer will decide on the fact that blu-ray will be bigger than dvd? Jeez, you're ignorant.

Just as DVD was forced upon us, BD will too.
Distributors want to move away from dvd, because they're too easy to copy, have too small a profit margin and illegal downloading makes them miss out on tons of $$$.

So in the future, you will see big movies being released first on blu-ray, with the dvd release the following month. Just as they did with dvd. And the more people who buy into dvd, the more they will push dvd releases back.

BD means less piracy for distributors, bigger margins, and selling you some of the the same crap multiple times.

And I know BD has lots of contributors, but Sony's share in all this is quite big. So the % of the royalties for them is also quite big. You really think a hardware and software giant with that much resources would be pushed out of the market that easy?

As a gamer, I hope MS keeps making Xbox 720, Xbox 1440 and so on. Just to keep competition running, and keep Sony away from domination. Because that wouldn't be a good thing for us, gamers.

But the analist in me says it aint gonna happen.
We'ge got more chance to hope for a unified platform. Like DVD is one, and HD tv is one, and gasoline is one, and so on.

Only then wil gaming truly be mass market

yeah in 2012-2015 xbox1440 will be out, i agree with u

 y? it's been a success IMO so far