gotta love stuff like this..

if it turns out to be true that Microsoft will be announcing Blu-Ray, than that may be the beginning of the end which these analysts are predicting.

The analysts are a joke.

"The Xbox 360 must make a profit"



Uhhh......Have they not read the recent Microsoft financial statements in the past 3 quarters? The 360 has made cash each quarter...What can MS do? Make more?

Skeeuk said:   Analysts predict bad days ahead for the Xbox 360 Microsoft need to find a way to profit, say experts. Various analysts have put on their boxing gloves and have gone straight for the jaw of Microsoft's Xbox 360, predicting a sharp decline for the console over the next twelve months. A panel in Sweden for the Nordic Game 2008 conference full of all sorts of analysts were asked their opinions on the industry, and all predicted a rather bleak future for the Seattle giant, Eurogamer reports. "The trouble with Xbox 360 is it hasn't managed to shake off this urban, irreverent adult male feel; so it hasn't gained traction in the more casual gaming markets of mainland Europe such as France, Spain and Italy, where it's stalled," said Nick Parker, boss of Parker Consulting and a former employee of Sony. "And there are already rumours of Xbox 360 being delisted from certain retailers. I think they started off badly with the Xbox itself: blood and breasts. This alienated it immediately to a lot of consumers around Europe, and they never got over that. The brand image never went away. And although Halo 3 is a big game, it just emphasises again what the Xbox is all about." David Cole of DFC Intelligence had some equally harsh words to say, predicting a last place finish in the console wars. "When you look at an installed base basis, the Xbox 360's going to come in third place when all's said and done. The concern I would have with a company like Microsoft is, one of these days they're going to have to make a profit on this business otherwise why are they in it?" Despite this, Cole did note that publishers could have plenty of success on the 360 in certain genres - namely shooters, unsurprisingly. "If you're doing a first-person shooter title, you're clearly going to want to be on Xbox 360, and that's for years to come. [But] their efforts at marketing outside of the first-person shooter crowd have been disastrous." Cole suggested that Microsoft needed to find a way for Xbox to be profitable if they wanted to re-enter the market next generation. "They will have to assess their position after this round, and clearly they were very committed to saying they were going to stick with this business through another console system. They haven't really talked much beyond that and I know that really at some point they are going to have to figure out how they're going to make money out of this business." Thanks to the console's head start, the Microsoft has managed to shift 19 million Xbox 360s to the PS3's 12.85 million. Of course, Nintendo is miles in front with a staggering 24 million consoles sold. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- although i firmly belive 360 will come last at end of generation, it still should be able to compete with games. but what i wanted to know is how come analysts claim bad days ahead for 360? what bad days are they talking about?

 VG overtracking Wii?

Ever since many analysts predicted the Wii would come in third it's hard to take them seriously anymore.

Also the fact that the head of a successful third party asked the panel in Sweden if they were crazy should also make people wonder if they're just talking out of their asses.

Yup, very old shipment numbers defenitly tell us that the Wii is overtracked in sales.

Over-dramatizing the situation I would say.

It is true that MS is not going to obliterate Sony this time around, like it was looking like in 2007, but MS should be fine. The next step for them would be to figure out mainland Europe.

Cranking out the jRPGs may finally give the signal that they aren't all about Bald Space Marine America F*ck Yeah games to regions that doesn't like them as well.

well i think it will be making alot of profit soon from the software sales,but i dont think they will get are there losses until the next xbox(if they dont lose anymore there)

Wow. MS is seriously screwed if the top industry analysts are.... wait a second...

*checking archive*

Yep. Here it is.

"Analysts predict bad days ahead for Nintendo"
-2006

Well... that's that then.

Why is it that fanboys but not professional analysts seem to know that

1) MS is supposedly making money on the 360 now

2) MS has long term goals beyond making money this year

3) the XBox is projected to finish with at least twice the userbase of it's last console - not as good as Nintendo, but better than Sony, who is expected to lose more than half it's user base.

I agree wholeheartedly about the image. It seems that uit is a mature console and it never once doubts this. Of course, I do beleive Microsoft is trying to get out of their shadow in the same way Nintendo tried. Like Nintendo though, they never really tried hard. Look back at their E3 07 press conference and you'll see their idea was stupid at best.

Of course, this isn;t to say Microsoft is doomed. They managed to sell nearly 20million units so I wouldn't see the future as incredibly bleak. They need to fallow up. They had Halo 3 and that did amazing, but they failed to fallow it up. They need to get another big hit, and they need more in house developers. I think they can pull though but they aren't trying hard enough.

I think MS will finish the genration with 40-45 million fanbase which is about 1.8 times the last generation (26 million).that's very good for MS.

Sony wanted to win Blu-ray format with PS3 instead of breaking PS2 sales records ,,,,,let's see if it goes mainstream by 2010.I think Sony actually will support PS3 for 10 years(or very close to that )with PS4 launching in 2011-2012.hopefully this time it will have similar(improved) architectures to PS3 so that developers would know the system.