Gnizmo said: mztazmz said: cattmanndann said: wow dude i wonder why there adding a blue ray player..... maybe because HD died hmmmm there not going to be making those anymore for it... kind of a dumb thing to knock them off for doing... if they do that its going to force the ps3 to drop prices... and if they add a motion sensor remote it will force wii to lower prices so i dont see why your complaining. i'm knocking them because they talked so much shit about sony for putting bluray in the ps3. they look like hypocritical asses now.   got it?   So the Xbox 360 is now going to come standard with a blu ray drive and all older models will be discontinued? Oh wait, no thats not what is happening at all. They are contemplating making a blu-ray add-on like they said they would when they released the HD-DVD add-on. Further, they critisized Sony for forcing consumers to buy the blu-ray feature. Since the add-on will do nothing but let you play movies (if it even exists) they will not be forcing their consumers to buy it. They will be giving their consumers the option to buy it. Your irrational fanboyism is annoying, but hopefully you will soon get banned for it. Why hasn't this thread been locked yet?

The mods take a cat nap between the hours of 1pm-2pm eastern time to rest their weary eyes. They'll be back in 10 minutes to lay the ban hammer like the God of Thunder would.

 

actually MS did have a win strategy this generation.... 360 was out a year before to get market share, the PS3 barely offers better performance despite being a year younger and the price is higher.

If I were a publisher, I would have gone 360 instead of PS3 : bigger user base and basically the same possibilities. Imagine if japanese publishers (FFXIII, MGS4) had gone for the bigger userbase instead of the japanese console....The 360 would be flying.

You should really complain to sony for the originality.... even their controler's shape has not changed in 15 years and it's far from perfect.

Apart from their brilliant online component and world-class developer support you mean? I mean I hate MS like any other guy but why must everything be "original"? How about providing a great platform for developers to make great games? Which they definitely did. They had and still have the best game library out there. This didn't happen because they are incompetent but because they pulled in PC game developers.
This has definitely improved the game selection for the 360 (and I think also for the PS3) which is the most important thing in gaming. The platform they provided in online functions, downloads, hardware, development tools etc. has been the gold standard for quite a while and Sony has been playing catchup (I think they succeeded quite nicely though).

So after having lauded MS for two paragraphs I now have to wash out my mouth with soap and make some obligatory remarks about their completely awful quality their complete lack of any style .

unoriginal? xbox live? custom soundtracks? first console to have an inbuilt hard drive?
2 pc's disguised as consoles? what does that mean? i laugh at this kind of stuff...

ha ha ha

rasone77 said: Anyone remember the Genesis? That was a really sweet system that entered the race well before Nintendo and had a clear lead in the console war. Then Nintendo pushed out some heavy hitters, (Donkey Kong Country in particualr) that showed how much better their hardware and therefore their software was by comparison. So what did Sega do to counteract this? They released two garbage peripherals (Sega CD, and 32x) that were designed to make the Genesis seem more powerful. The problem was they inadvertantly reinforced that the SNES was better out of the box because it didn't need 4 or 5 hundred dollars worth of add ons to compete. Thus the console war was lost by Sega (not to mention the Millions of dollars wasted developing the two failures) when they could have done much better just sticking to their guns and holding out for the next generation. I can see MS fucking up big time here if they don't stick to their guns. With all the newbie gamers coming into the hobby I can see many of them turning their nose at the system just because it would look like they have to buy extra stuff that competitors already offer for free with the console in order to get the best gaming experience.

 Actually the Genesis came out when the NES had 99% of the 8-bit market.  They got a huge head start for the NEXT GEN, and the SNES didn't come out for 2 more years.  Then the SNES came out and pwned super hard with Mode 7 totally dominating "Blast Processing."

The difference between the Genesis and the 360 is that the Genesis almost won, and had a very decent 2nd place showing.

I agree with the OP.
And I'm still amused when I see someone starts to discover what MS really is.
Well, I'm not surprised, because unless you're affected by MS (which is always in a bad way when it happens), why would you look for information on this company?

No need to wonder why MS entered the console biz. It's pretty clear.
Basically MS succeeded a disruption (with BG cheating and screwing his own friends, blatantly stealing from others) at the IBM mainframe time, and since then, never got anything right anymore (except dirty business tactics), they never ever invented anything anymore, they just blatantly steal the work of other companies and put them out of business, and sometimes just buy them.
So now, they've maintained the status quo through several dirty ways (like buying the law, which is most sad for the countries in which it happened) but the nature's forces are such that even if you make dirty alliances, they'll finally fall with you, as you will fall if you can't innovate.
So they're attacked on all fronts, and they're losing badly since years.

So they feel threatened by several disruptors, and Sony was one of those threatening their only cash cow, the one that originated on their one and only disruption : Windows and the services around it. Sony was talking about a computer in every living room: what a mistake to do when MS is a competitor. MS felt threatened, and had to react.

They know they are a poor hardware company, and that's why at first, they decided to partner with Sega on their console. That's the day I knew Sega was dead. No MS partner ever comes out well from such a deal. They pretty much all are destroyed (or at least their product, which means the end for small companies with only one product). Hey, the latest I predicted was HD-DVD. As soon as I knew HD-DVD was MS' last hope to sneak in their poor codec as the main one for everyone, I knew HD-DVD was dead. To this day, I'm still wondering how come noone of these companies see what MS always does, it's as if they don't want to see what happens. But the game industry is starting to make me understand why this happens.
BTW, XBL actually started as the software for the Sega console, when MS partnered with Sega. So like always, they stole what Sega made with them, and Sega died. And like always, "people" all forgot about where the technology originated from. And then we have thread like these where all the praise is attributed to MS for something they actually didn't invented. But that's not a first. A lot of people believe that MS invented lots of things in their OS, when nearly everything was actually stolen from elsewhere or bought (and the inventor destroyed).

And they didn't lose $4 B, but actually $6.5 B in the XBox brand.

I was also rather amused to read someone on this thread, for whom what gave value to his XBox purchase was that he could install XBMC, which is actually Free Software (or at least Open Source, but it's based on Free Software). So basically, XBox had value by the addition of something made by people that MS hate, that they see as their greatest enemy: Free Software. That was hilarious.

Another example, is someone was saying that Halo was intended for the PC! WRONG! Halo was a Mac product before MS bought them so that they wouldn't make the game for Mac.

MS is an amazing company really, they even copy dirty business tactics, like what they copied from the old IBM (IBM changed since then): vaporware, astroturfing, and shills.

So I'm not surprised of the outcome for the XBox brand, really. Like I wasn't surprised about the Tablet PC, the Zune, Game for Windows, ...

 

Gamers are a special case though, and fortunately. Because gamers helped make Windows the success it is. At least, the Windows for desktop, as the others are failures too.

But gamers are special, they can't let them down. They push the hardware, though now they can't push it enough anymore. So MS has a problem with Vista. But the console was the salvation. Consoles are less prone to piracy, but the problem MS had, was that with Sega dead, there was not a single console that used MS proprietary technology, Direct X. That would have made no sense, when free standards existed (like OpenGL, that MS nearly succeeded in killing, but once again, salvation came from Free Software), and when Free Software libraries existed too.

So XBox brand is far more to MS than most people think it is. That's why they have to support it, even if they lose lots and lots of money. That's why Harvard's Christensen (who wrote universally and critically acclaimed economy masterpiece books like "The Innovator's Dilemna" or "The Blue Ocean Strategy") himself doesn't understand the business MS has with the XBox brand, which in his understanding is bound to fail, as it can't be sustained.

MS has become a company whose move you can perfectly predict, as long as you observed them long enough, have some basic economy sense, and have some knowledge of the field they try to enter.

mztazmz said: Borkachev said: Who cares? They offer nothing to us gamers. 18.5 million people disagree. I'm starting to wonder why M$ is even in the console biz. To make money. Why else? And they're starting to do that now. did you even read the post? they lost 4 billion. they are just starting to profit with 360 and have barely begun to make up for the 4 billion lost. they have a looooooong way to go.

 So is your theory that they're not in this to make money?

 Losses on the Xbox and 360 have been in line with Microsoft's expectations. They may well make them all up this generation, but that's not really even the point. The point is to establish a brandname that will give them a place in the living room, so that they can make tons more money in the future on things like downloadable HD movies. To do that they don't need to be the ultra-innovative company. They just need to deliver a polished, competitive platform that interests consumers. They've done a pretty good job at that.

 And have we forgotten that last gen the Xbox was easily the most inspired of the 3 consoles, while the Gamecube was easily the least?

ookaze said: I agree with the OP. And I'm still amused when I see someone starts to discover what MS really is. Well, I'm not surprised, because unless you're affected by MS (which is always in a bad way when it happens), why would you look for information on this company? No need to wonder why MS entered the console biz. It's pretty clear. Basically MS succeeded a disruption (with BG cheating and screwing his own friends, blatantly stealing from others) at the IBM mainframe time, and since then, never got anything right anymore (except dirty business tactics), they never ever invented anything anymore, they just blatantly steal the work of other companies and put them out of business, and sometimes just buy them. So now, they've maintained the status quo through several dirty ways (like buying the law, which is most sad for the countries in which it happened) but the nature's forces are such that even if you make dirty alliances, they'll finally fall with you, as you will fall if you can't innovate. So they're attacked on all fronts, and they're losing badly since years. So they feel threatened by several disruptors, and Sony was one of those threatening their only cash cow, the one that originated on their one and only disruption : Windows and the services around it. Sony was talking about a computer in every living room: what a mistake to do when MS is a competitor. MS felt threatened, and had to react. They know they are a poor hardware company, and that's why at first, they decided to partner with Sega on their console. That's the day I knew Sega was dead. No MS partner ever comes out well from such a deal. They pretty much all are destroyed (or at least their product, which means the end for small companies with only one product). Hey, the latest I predicted was HD-DVD. As soon as I knew HD-DVD was MS' last hope to sneak in their poor codec as the main one for everyone, I knew HD-DVD was dead. To this day, I'm still wondering how come noone of these companies see what MS always does, it's as if they don't want to see what happens. But the game industry is starting to make me understand why this happens. BTW, XBL actually started as the software for the Sega console, when MS partnered with Sega. So like always, they stole what Sega made with them, and Sega died. And like always, "people" all forgot about where the technology originated from. And then we have thread like these where all the praise is attributed to MS for something they actually didn't invented. But that's not a first. A lot of people believe that MS invented lots of things in their OS, when nearly everything was actually stolen from elsewhere or bought (and the inventor destroyed). And they didn't lose $4 B, but actually $6.5 B in the XBox brand. I was also rather amused to read someone on this thread, for whom what gave value to his XBox purchase was that he could install XBMC, which is actually Free Software (or at least Open Source, but it's based on Free Software). So basically, XBox had value by the addition of something made by people that MS hate, that they see as their greatest enemy: Free Software. That was hilarious. MS is an amazing company really, they even copy dirty business tactics, like what they copied from the old IBM (IBM changed since then): vaporware, astroturfing, and shills. So I'm not surprised of the outcome, really. Like I wasn't surprised about the Tablet PC, the Zune, Game for Windows, ...

hehe, Zune..... I wasn't awre of the Sega part, but I do know MS didn't make 1 penny off the original Xbox and are just starting to cake on the 360 now. Sega is only living really because of the Wii/DS, not saying other games didn't help them though.

obieslut said: weather microsoft is doing well or not competition is healthy for the market and its only the consumers who truly win in the end, just think what things would be like say if it was just Sony doing consoles or nintendo or just microsoft, we would be paying for them out our ears with probably crap games.

 This is ONLY true in a free market econonmy. In a free market companies make rational decisions to enter a market based on market demand and profitability potential. MS has disrupted this, and your argument that 'if it wasn't for MS we would have worse' is false. MS loves this argument ("if it wasn't for us there would be hundreds of incompatible desktops systems! We did you all huge favor! You OWE us $199 for Vista!"

 

We don't know what would have happened w/o MSFT in the games business. We DO know that the market would have decided whether the PS3 was worth that much more than Wii on it's own? How about sony pressured to compete with the Wii, not content to sit back and compete only against the X360? How about $299 PS3 at launch? How about Sega, who don't have a bottomless cash pit, never had to leave?

MS relies on you believing they are 'helping competion', when in fact they are artificially damaging it by throwing the whole game system eco-system off balance. That HURTS consumers and keeps prices UP. and quality DOWN.

There are, literally, hundreds and hundres of examples of a cash rich player (usually the government, a rail road, microsft, etc) screwing stable up markets that other wise were working perfectly.  Research how the US government 'bio fuel' policy has driven up food prices worldwide. Someone with tons of money (US governemnt) wanders into the grain market and starts throwing billions around. Price of rice doubles. Price of wheat triples. Price of rice doubles again. price of corn goes up 10x! How are consumers benefiting from this new 'competion' ? they aren't because it's not a rational market anymore.

 We can be pretty sure that we would have cheaper HD systems, and better quality HD games if MS had not entered this market!

 

ToastyJaguar, how is all those things you listen original? the ps3 has all of those. do you think the ps3 started its development when the 360 came out?! i would bet money on saying that sony started developement on there console before microsoft. even if they didnt thats embarrassing, sony would have had less time to make the console yet the failure rate is super low. lets face it, microsoft cant make shit for hardware. haha i love it when people say sony isnt inovative when look at all of the media features the ps3 has.