Sony did try partnering with Sega after the Nintendo deal didnt work out. But like i said it didnt even make it past the board of directors at Sega.

Sony itself didnt want to make a console or get into gaming as they seen it as a toy and for kids. It was Ken who went behind their backs at first to make the Sound chip for the super Nintendo and convinced Sony that gaming was an emerging market. Sony pretty much agreed as long as they could partner with one of the established companies being Nintendo first when that didnt work they went to Sega but when that didnt work for them and being Japanese company they probably felt embarrassed after it (Even more so with Nintendo's announcement and people expecting something from Sony) and then investing into it Ken got the go ahead to make the playstation without needing Nintendo or Sega. Sony was a billion dollar company compared to Nintendo and Sega, They had Movie Studios a record label, making electronics etc. They where able to use all that money to make Playstation a success by lower license fees, paying devs to develop for playstation, massive tv and radio and newspaper adverts. Back then the was no chance Sega or Nintendo could compete with them on the same scale, Sega tried and failed since Sony was targeting the same userbase sega had and they where releasing their nextgen console before Nintendo so thats why Sony undercut them by €100. Nintendo failed that gen too since playstation got so many of the devs and publishers that used to make games for Nintendo consoles to pretty much just work with Sony. Only reason Nintendo survived is they always made their consoles at a profit. and in the end Nintendo ended up finding a new stratagy with the Wii and now the Switch.

Some guys working at MS (Just like with Ken) seen the video game market as the future and thought Ms should get in on it. Ms didnt really want part of the console market. Them small few guys working at Ms really wanting to make a console went and convinced bill gates that the Playstation 2 could eat into the PC market as they where already on the way to taking over the living room (Something bill gates also wanted with media center PC's he wanted windows to be the center of the house, bill gates ended up giving them the go ahead to see if they could find a partner to work with on the hardware and they would make the OS. Remember Ms at first wanted other hardware makers to make the xbox. When this didnt work out the guys went and worked on their own hardware trowing together some pc parts and making it work like a console and the xbox was born.

Sure thats just the gist of it and the is more to the story. But just like Sony thought of gaming consoles as a toy and didnt want in on the market until ken convinced them is not much different then how Ms didnt want in on the market until some guys working there convinced them.

So just like MS having so much money today that Sony fans complain about being able to use was no different then when Sony entered the market back in the 90's. Sony was the multi billion dollar tech giant entering the console market just like Ms was when they entered compared to Sony.

Cod, diablo 99% of other games were going to be released on xbox day one regardless of the aquisition. So yes i'd love it if microsoft took first party/ third party exclusives  seriously, and from 3 to 4 years took on the Initiative to try get on sony's level and bring on the exclusives for the series s/x, so I can play them , along with the many other thirds party offering , that were coming.

So you're telling me that Nin figured out Sony was looking to get more into the games market, shocker, and because they were a massive company and could become serious competition, that after Nin poorly told Sony to kick rocks, Sega didn't even bother? What was Sega thinking? Why not partner with Sony knowing they were willing to compete and would target you if you wronged them in a partnership?

Another question to ask, was if Sony was so big and powerful, why didn't they just do their own thing from the start? Same reason MS tried to partner or acquire?

Ken saw a bright future in gaming, and was right. He was Super correct, considering how important PS is to Sony. DX MS employees simply wanted to get more into gaming, and the excuse used to get in was PS might cut into MS business and cost them billions if not tens of billions in the future. MS didn't care about gaming, they cared about protecting their PC OS profits. Now that gaming is becoming a big thing, MS doesn't just want a slice, they want it all to themselves. You don't spend the kind of money they have on hardware and acquisitions, along with insane subsidies to just take a piece of the pie.

Sony and MS were not the same in terms of entering consoles.

They are now, I'm refering to the rise of playstation and the runaway success of ps2 vs Gamecube. Sony understood that their audience gets older with new generations coming in as well. Nintendo seemed to keep focusing on consoles as a toy, while the ps2 was a media player as well. (Which is what scared MS into jumping in)

But Nintendo corrected and jumped passed Sony's following the growth curve of games, marketing the Wii to young and old, play with your grandparents, brilliant strategy. But not a demographic that understood the WiiU. And now Nintendo has taking over the mobile gaming market with the Switch, consolidating their two fan bases in one device.

Nintendo has wisely benefited from the MS Sony rivalry. While the 2 big guns were competing on graphics, sales and putting things out (too) quickly, Nintendo simply kept the HW price down, software price stable (no use waiting for sales, just buy it now and it will hold its value) and game quality high.

The Microsoft Monopoly Ruling Aftermath: Why Microsoft Didn't Split | Time

A Judge Ordered Microsoft to Split. Here's Why It's Still a Single Company

It was Friday, Nov. 5, 1999 when then-Microsoft CEO Bill Gates got the bad news. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson had declared that his company was a monopoly. And not just any monopoly, but the very worst kind: one that uses its power to squash would-be rivals before they’re even out of the gate. At the time, Microsoft packaged its Internet Explorer web browser with its Windows operating systems, which gave Microsoft an incredible advantage over rivals like Netscape in an era when dial-up Internet meant that downloading and installing alternative web browsers was a slog at best.

“It’s actually hard to imagine how, for Microsoft, it could have come out any worse,” TIME wrote in a Nov. 15, 1999 cover story on Jackson’s decision. But Jackson wasn’t done yet — the declaration that Microsoft was a monopolist was only the first half of his decision. Jackson’s conclusions and remedy wouldn’t come until April and June of the next year, respectively, after Gates had already stepped down as CEO and transitioned into the newly created role of “chief software architect.”

“Assuming he says yea [to the question of whether Microsoft’s monopoly was used to violate antitrust laws]–a near certainty considering Friday’s findings–he can impose a remedy as far-reaching as the total dismemberment of the Gates empire,” TIME wrote in 1999. “The gamut of possible outcomes runs from a mild go-forth-and-sin-no-more to the truly Draconian stuff: forcing Microsoft to share its Windows source code with its competitors or carving up the company into the so-called Baby Bills.” (“Baby Bills” was a clever riff on the “Baby Bells” born of the 1982 breakup of the Bell telephone system.)

In 2000, Judge Jackson took the harsher path, decreeing that Microsoft should be split into two halves, one dedicated to Windows and the other to everything else Microsoft.

So why aren’t there two Microsofts today?

Jackson’s word was far from final. The case found its way to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected Jackson’s remedy and accused him of unethical conduct after it was http://news.com.com/Former%20judge%20defends%20his%20bid%20to%20break%20up%20Microsoft/2100-1014_3-5755593.html">revealed he had private conversations with reporters about the trial while it was still ongoing. Microsoft would settle the case with the Department of Justice in November of 2001 by agreeing to make it easier for Microsoft’s competitors to get their software more closely integrated with the Windows operating system — a tough pill for Microsoft to swallow, but hardly on the same level as a forced breakup.

These days, it’s harder to see Microsoft as the big monopolist bully Judge Jackson once described. Microsoft Windows operating systems still dominate the PC OS market, but PC OSes are less important than they’ve ever been before, diminishing Microsoft’s ability to use Windows’ market share to make life harder for its rivals. Thanks to the rise of high-speed Internet, web-based solutions and cloud computing in general, it doesn’t really matter what OS you use — Facebook and Gmail don’t care if you’re accessing them from Windows, OS X or Linux. On top of that, we do more of our daily computing on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, a sphere that’s owned not by Microsoft but by rivals Apple and Google. (Interestingly, that latter company has increasingly run afoul of antitrust regulators, particularly in Europe, where a four-year investigation of Google’s potential abuse of its dominance in search to favor its own secondary products over those of its competitors was just reopened. As the power has shifted from Microsoft to its rivals, so have the watchful eyes of regulators.)

Sure, there have been fresh calls to split up Microsoft — except they’re not coming from regulators, but from Microsoft stockholders and analysts, surely inspired by the trend of corporate spinoffs that’s already hit massive players in tech like eBay, HP and now, potentially, security and storage firm Symantec. Microsoft, the spinoff advocates say, would be better off jettisoning its consumer-facing products, like the Xbox and its Bing search engine, so it can focus on enterprise solutions for corporate customers.

Will we ever see the birth of the Baby Bills? Maybe, but not for a long while: Microsoft’s newest CEO, Satya Nadella, hasn’t even had the reins for a full year yet, but he’s already well underway in changing course to a mostly software-oriented, platform-agnostic company. Microsoft’s stockholders seem to be willing to give Nadella some time to enact his vision, which could preserve the single Microsoft that’s been around since Gates and Paul Allen founded it in 1975 — a single company, even if that’s not so threatening anymore.

How many times have you ever heard there's no point in suing because they're too rich and powerful and you'll never win? Way too often. That doesn't mean people don't sue from time to time, and even against giants they do win here and there, but even here with MS, after losing, they conveniently are able to appeal and get the result they want. I'm sure nobody thinks any funny business went on behind the scenes, especially since the original judge themselves was doing something they shouldn't have been. Corruption is the name of the game for most at the top in whatever sector they operate.

I disagreed with this view point.  Its not like Nintendo viewed consoles as a toy but instead as a game machine for the whole family.  Nintendo did not waste time going after the graphics crown but instead stuck to their own strengths which has allowed them to continue to print money and not sell their hardware at a lost or even have to discount their own software.  Nintendo does not have the benefit of making mistakes like Sony and MS, they cannot rely on other parts of their industry to keep them afloat during heavy losses or failures.  While the gamecude did not sell like game buster, it did very well and from there Nintendo has consistently been in the green.  I give Nintendo props for understanding their strengths and weakness, not chasing after their competitors and dominating their niche which they have proven very successful at.

After the layoffs of all those Xbox employees I'm beginning to retract my previous opinion on the acquisition. They can afford a company with about 9800 employees but have to layoff 10000 of their own? Fucking horse shit. -_-

It's not about affording or not affording; it's about appeasing shareholders. It's certainly not a perfect system, but it's how corporation's functions. On the Xbox side of things, they weren't/won't be hit nearly as hard as other MS divisions. There's not an exact number but my guess is roughly 100 out of 10,000 with 343i hit the hardest. That number may grow since the layoffs continue until March, but it's still a very small portion of the total employees laid off. With that said, the Xbox division is still hiring for varies studio positions.