I'm looking back and my jaw is on the floor, I can't understand it but Microsoft is an amazing company.

I've always understood video gaming as an industry of entertainment and retail; depending on which end your on.. with that consumers place an investment (like many other purchases) in that product to entertain them and in the case of video games sometimes their friends and family. 

I look back this year and the year before, and the year before that, Microsoft has the most million seller titles on their platform, they have a 8 games that are Million sellers and the other 33 are 3rd party games. They have Xbox live that has two versions, but the gold(pay to use) version attracts apparently has 6 million subscribers - that's a revenue of around 60 million a month on just XBox live - they also have XBLA - which turns them roughly 70% of the software sales. (They addressed that recently.)

I normally don't like to talk about platforms I honestly know little about - but from what I do know as skewed as it maybe... I stand up and applaud them. For they have an install base of almost 20 million, have sold amazing amounts of software, can charge their install base wads of cash a month, can get that install base to accept paying even more to buy XBLA games all while giving them a system that burns current up the wazoo, isn't as online friendly as it could of been out the box (wireless) and doesn't come with hdmi but boasts 720p native.

But that's not really why I'm in awe of this company - I'm in awe that they are still around after RROD, Ring DvD kill, and an XBL that can crash without any contingency plans. This in terms of time and charge actually cost their install base upwards of $2 million when it happened last time.

I'm hoping no one really assumes I'm bashing the Xbox360 though - I'm more in awe of Microsoft as a company than the and Xbox360 just happens to be the Xbox360 the needed catalyst. Their support team must have a short life expectancy with that much stress.

I consider this company amazing, as they managed to minimize their loses and maintain their business values - that is amazing to me.

Well, I'm not going to stick around for the hellhole this will turn into. I look forward to returning to this thread from my mod job list.

I just re-read the 2nd paragraph and thought there might be some confusion as to what I said about them having the most software on their platform to sell over 1 million, I'm taking into respect the PS3Wii million sellers.

Interesting ...

Wow. Just wow.

lol...interesting post.

My amazement for the 360 comes form the fact that everyone hates microsoft with a passion and Japan is not buying it at all and they haven't had a price drop in a long time and there are huge piracy issues with the system, and a paid online service, and the RROD...yet they still manage to keep up in software and hardware sales with the other 2.

That leads me to believe that games for it must really be good.

Backhanded compliments FTW...or FTL...depending on how you feel about those.

Its so hard to be a sheep when noone will clearly lead.

This can be said for any of the big three, though. How does Nintendo continue to dominate in such a visual medium with the least powerful hardware, paltry online, and lack of quality 3rd party support? How does Sony stay in the game, despite losing money on each console, lack of exclusives, and starting one year behind it's competition.


I guess we gamers are a forgiving bunch, and we dwell more on a console's strengths, than it's shortcomings. All three consoles are strong for different reasons. That's why they're still here.

Nothing back-handed about it, I wasn't exactly complimenting anyone either - strictly observing the company of the last 3 years since they essentially started off with their best leg showing, they currently have their best leg showing still.
Even after the events that normally would cripple any other company, this is where they are – their install base is amazing.

I didn’t making anything up here – the numbers are all based on news articles and posts I’ve seen from this very site, most of those numbers are as simple as multiply this by that – no real research is needed to find revenue in what I’m referring to; which is just the monthly revenue of 6 million people at a rate of 10 dollars a person, (The 6 million people number came from another thread that’s actually still on the front page.)

This was more of a comment, amazement at someone’s achievement isn’t a compliment from the person in awe – it just means they didn’t expect that: To be quite honest, going through it I didn’t even realize that’s what they were facing, looking back I’m in awe.