I have made this thread in honor of Squilliam and his previous thread. here I wish to discuss the green future of the XBOX brand. Where will it go? will it fade? Will MS ever run out of money? Will they team up with ORANGE and make brighter future's for all of us?

As Sqill (I can't be asked typing Squilliam) pointed out, MS is doing a lot to make things right, but does at what loss? The price cut has taken place, but at what loss? The HD format has lost, and at what cost? Live was taken for granted thinking Sony will sit and watch in defeat, but at what cost? BR was and is being refused, but at what cost? Exclusives and times exclusives and exclusive content have been bought, but at what cost? FFXIII has been bought to go multiplat, but at what cost?

A lot of issues and a lot things that require some ancient greek style debating. The truth is no one can predict the future (not even Orange or Mr Sqill), but we can look at the hurdles ahead and see whether there is any light at the end of XBOX's tunnel. It may have started off with a bang, but it is growing momentum in the wrong direction as the bright future seems to becoming dimmer by the day.

well this tear is going to be the best selling year for the 360 with sales dipping or at best staying flat in 2009.

i really dont know what else they can do now apart from buy out nintendo and or sony.

the way i see it is, is it worth it to stay in a console market, if you are not making any money, have done more or less everything possible to try and gain popularity for the console. and still you end up last.

but i think microsoft only entered this market to keep sony out of the living room and they seem to be doing an ok job of it.

^^ agreed. It is a good business strategy. We use it a lot. We offer a lot of free services to gain a monopoly or take it away from someone else, and then, once we have the support and the numbers, we start charging. MS can only become better as time goes by, however, they will need to finish this gen at a good high instead of a low. If they start losing more and go into what they did with the XBOX, they will lose whatever trust they built. Similar to how PS3 had to rebuild its user base and is doing now compared to the transition from the ps1 to ps2.

Surely they were doing it to enter the living room in the first place. M$ had no place there, they are a Opertating System maker and a software developer. If they expect to try and move in on an area where Sony (and other electronics companies) rules then they didn't think this through.

In my view, they've done a bad job at it. The Xbox was a failure, it lost billions and the only reason they are ahead now is because the 360 was released early but with faults. Major faults that meant 1 in 3 broke down from being 'used'. Nintendo's GameCube wasn't as successful as the PS2 but they still made money, and we all know what a overwhelming success the Wii has been.

Their only success has been Live which sadly is dependent on something that could fail.

I do however expect them to be back next time but again to be last out of the next generation between the Playstation 4, SuperWii and 720. Before they launch the 720 they need to test the hell out of it, this isn't a piece of software tha you can just shutdown and restart.

Answering these questions: Where will it go? will it fade? Will MS ever run out of money? Will they team up with ORANGE and make brighter future's for all of us?

Carry on with what it's doing, and adopt Blu-Ray as disc device. No. No but that's why it will still be there and the only reason, I'm surprised board members haven't had a go at the department yet for losing billions. I hope so.

i think the next gen will be about how well MS does over all. if MS make any more losses, they will have less of a budget to sped next gen. then again, MS are not known to be quitters. More chance the company going bacnkrupt then them quitting!

Yes companies who make software don't belong in peoples livingrooms.

What did sony do when they entered the gaming market? Make the walkman, TVs...? WTF are they doing in my livingroom as my gaming device?

I agree, the 360's future is completely bright.

As for the rest of your questions, well, I enjoy the games they are putting on the 360 so am not all that concerned about the fiscal decisions you seem to be focused on. Let me try though:

- Exactly what was the cost of the price cut? I mean the system is 3 years old now?
- To what extent did MS base the success of the 360 on the HD format? Pretty sure they didn't. Do you have a cost estimate here?
- Live is still charging and people are still paying... what costs there?
- Related to HD, I'm not sure what COST not having a Blu Ray player is to the 360, maybe you have a guess here?
- I'll agree they spent money on exculsive content and games. Damn them for giving me MORE reason to enjoy my 360!!

Since you are a fan of the 360 I guess I could see why you might want to discuss this. Oh wait...seems like only PS3 fans are posting in here...interesting...

ps3 fanboys trying to get a raging epenis.

long live 360

The Playstation was an electronics device like any other, it attached to a TV to be used, it played CDs, all things Sony deals with on a daily basis. Sony made computers before then but never really programs and if it wasn't for Nintendo pulling out of the deal Sony probably wouldn't have ever came into the industry in the first place. Then Sony had to work on their SCE division, it acquired already existing game developers (Psygnosis) and in time developed it's own.