Of the 3 console companies, I only respect Nintendo. They stick to their guns, they get smug at times, but all 3 companies do that, but at least with their in house games, they are determined more to put out a good game when it is ready rather than put out a game when they need it (sony and MS are both guilty of that).

Personally, I don't see why PS3 fans could possibly respect sony, ditto the 360 fans. Sure they all have their good points (corporate philantrophy etc) but at the end of the day, they are in the business to make money, satisfying customers is only a means to get to that end, it's just that Nintendo is the best at making it look like satisfying customers is their ends.

About the some good points, I respect MS because of their stance on RROD, rather than ignore it like companies have done in the past with their machines, they were active in their response. Ditto xbox live being down in christmas, sure we only got a free game from it, but they didn't have to do that for one and at least it was a good game.

As for Sony, up until this generation and the "we don't pay for exclusivity" debacle, I respected the way they approach 3rd parties. Sony does right by them (or they did, not sure about now) which is why alot of them shifted to the PS1 (among other things i.e CD of course) back then. As for now, I like that despite being the most technologically advanced console and the highest priced console, they are still making attempts at attracting a wider audience (LBP and Buzz), which shows they are persistent.

As for Nintendo, well, they are the best PR company, no doubt about it. Rarely wil you see the head honcho's put a foot out of line to the ideology of the company. And of course what I mentioned above about the games they put out.

If MS did half the things Sony and Nintendo have gotten away with they would be crucified even worse then they already are.

I mean here we have a company whpo had to pay 800million to realnetworks because Media Player is included in Windows, a company that was fined several billions because they have a web browser integrated in their OS.
Why didnt Apple get sued for including not only Quicktime and Safari but a host of other apps as well that directly compete with what is out there?

If MS had killed companies like SCEI had(try to find out what happened to Park Place Productions) early on and just started buying companies to prevent them from publishing on other formats(Like Sony did with Psygnosis, they were sued by Sega as well as Nintendo BTW so Psygnosis had to fullfill its contractual obligations so some games were still released for Saturn and N64) or if MS had forced companies to only carry their products and no one elses and forbid developers from making games and publishers from publishing games on competing formats like Nintendo had done they would have been torn to shreds.

Microsoft is in a very difficult position, every move they make as a company is overscrutinised and things Nintendo and Sony have gotten away with MS would never be able to do.

Also, I dont get the Vista hate.
It does everything XP did while running better on my system(c2d/8600gt)while looking pretty and being more secure.
It doesnt lock up or screw up on me like XP and OSX did in the past and the pre fetching makes opening programs a snap(My Outlook 2k7 opens instantly while on XP it took about 15 seconds on the same system and since then the program because of the add ins and additional thousand or so emails has grown considerably).

Ive no problem with them once the good games keep coming.

Vista hate comes from poor driver support by 3rd parties mostly IME.

I like Microsoft myself.  It's a big corporation, makes oodles of money, and is more or less as evil as it wants to be.  Sounds like a fun time to me.  ^_^

 Couldn't have said it better.

I respect all of the companies but that also doesn't mean I have to like them. People are always complaining about MS wants your money etc etc. Well thats what a business is for really. And it's not like anyone is forcing us to buy any of the products from the big three. Oddly enough, all hardware issues aside, MS's gaming division has actually increased my respect for them. It'll be even higher if they continue to support the 360 into the next gen.

 Who would've guessed you would have the smartest answer.

 kinda off topic but do you think the other two companies are any better or worse than ms.

ot I have respect for them when my 360 went down there backup service was excellent.

i like microsoft

It's fine to not respect any of them.  Who cares about them right? Until they do stuff that affects you or something important to you in a negative way. 

Microsoft does this a lot.  Sony does it quite a bit too, but Sony is more fragmented as a company than Microsoft.  Sony BMG, for example, is pure evil.  Both Microsoft and Sony steadily insult their competition, despite being outsmarted in most ways. 

Look at Ballmer's comments about Google: Microsoft is far too big, dumb and slow to compete with Google.  Google keeps rolling out great services, and Microsoft gets dizzy watching Google run circles around them.  Then Ballmer has the audacity to call Google a "not a company, a house of cards" and then states that Google is only a one product company when you consider successful products only. 

And that is ironic indeed.  Microsoft has only Windows/Office and all they've done since establishing that monopoly is failed.  And they've done questionable things, at best, to maintain that monopoly.