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. 

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.

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.

You have a great habit of ignoring the points you want and trying to twist words. I'm not even going to re explain myself to you you can go read my post again until you understand it or go watch some non biased history videos on Sony and MS they are much more a like then you like to think or just simply choose to stick your head in the sand and ignore.

What I would like for you to backup is exactly how has MS been extremely controlling and monopolizing compared to the other companies.  I will be the first to say MS has never been a saint company but neither has any of their competition as well.

Not sure if that really actually proved your point.  Exactly what point are you trying to make.  You made some hint at sleazy tactic but what you just posted have absolutely nothing to do with that insinuation.  Then you made another summary with some conclusion about sleazy tactic but still have not listed anything that support that summary.  MS bundling Internet explorer could be considered as a power move but not a unethical tactic.  Not sure you are talking about the same statements you made previously.

What I would like for you to backup is exactly how has MS been extremely controlling and monopolizing compared to the other companies.  I will be the first to say MS has never been a saint company but neither has any of their competition as well.

Not sure if that really actually proved your point.  Exactly what point are you trying to make.  You made some hint at sleazy tactic but what you just posted have absolutely nothing to do with that insinuation.  Then you made another summary with some conclusion about sleazy tactic but still have not listed anything that support that summary.  MS bundling Internet explorer could be considered as a power move but not a unethical tactic.  Not sure you are talking about the same statements you made previously.

Getting sued and taking to court is one thing.  Winning is another.  Anyone in the US can be taken to court that does not mean guilt.  Being a monopoly is not a crime or is it sleazy tactic as you continue to suggest.  Sleazy tactic would be MS actively preventing software from running on Windows or actively making competition software that run on windows run worse while their software always outperforms.  This is the point I would be looking from you to actually make, not that bundling internet explorer into Windows somehow is a sleazy tactic because one judge thought so.  

Bundling Explorer into Windows I would not consider a controlling move unless MS also made it so that no other browser could be run on the system.  While being the browser for windows, Safari is the default browser for Mac OS. Its expected by user to have a default browser for the OS more than it being a controlling move.  All OS have a default browser, so I still do not see your point.  Also Apple bundle pretty good software within the OS just like MS bundle basic software within Windows. Linux distros also bundling a lot of default software. No one would think paint is preventing someone from using Photoshop but the ideal of having basis features to an OS would not be or is considered a controlling move.  

Getting sued and taking to court is one thing.  Winning is another.  Anyone in the US can be taken to court that does not mean guilt.  Being a monopoly is not a crime or is it sleazy tactic as you continue to suggest.  Sleazy tactic would be MS actively preventing software from running on Windows or actively making competition software that run on windows run worse while their software always outperforms.  This is the point I would be looking from you to actually make, not that bundling internet explorer into Windows somehow is a sleazy tactic because one judge thought so.  

Bundling Explorer into Windows I would not consider a controlling move unless MS also made it so that no other browser could be run on the system.  While being the browser for windows, Safari is the default browser for Mac OS. Its expected by user to have a default browser for the OS more than it being a controlling move.  All OS have a default browser, so I still do not see your point.  Also Apple bundle pretty good software within the OS just like MS bundle basic software within Windows. Linux distros also bundling a lot of default software. No one would think paint is preventing someone from using Photoshop but the ideal of having basis features to an OS would not be or is considered a controlling move.