Damage control?

HD-DVD vs BluRay was never a priority for MS like it was for Sony. Sony had to use its biggest gun, the playstation, to win this and MS didn't do anything besides a external HD-DVD-Drive for the Xbox360. Toshiba / MS and who knows who else supported HD-DVD paid 150million USD to Paramount / Dreamworks to be exclusive for 18 months. At the same time MS offered yahoo 45 billion USD. Now you can see where the priorities of MS were. MS always focused on VoD.

Besides that the Blu uses a MS-codec.

And why the hell are you talking about PS3-features that don't have to do with anything? If those features would be as important as you describe, the PS3 would sell better.

MS did an awesome job to prevent Sony from getting too powerful and they established a Xbox Live community with 17 million UNIQUE users worldwide. They made more than one billion Dollar since Xbox360s launch on the marketplace. I doubt Sony will see such numbers on the PSN.

Ok, but people are dying and we are using billion and billions of everyone's tax dollars to fuel a war.  Not exactly the same.

It's ironic that he was almost right, only to be made wrong by Nintendo.  I always likened this gen to the awakening of the sleeping dragon before the generation began.

Actually, he was focusing on mission accomplished, not the quagmire in Iraq.

If you look at it, think about the facts. The U.S. has the biggest military in the world. The U.S. didn't heed prior warnings about Iraq and decided to go in and just knew they'd be "greeted as liberators." However, there has been an additional 4,000 soldiers were killed since "Mission Accomplished" was declared, the U.S. doesn't support this war and the presidential winner won the Democratic nod based on his opposition on the Iraq - and basically the insurgents will hide in the shadows and wait for an opportunity to pop a bomb just to let the U.S. and Iraqi forces to know 'we're still here.'

No, MS made mistakes, but they are winning the HD console war. It could be more like Korea - the U.S. won some battles, the North won some battles, but the war is on pause - no one won, no one lost. That's where we are right now. No one knows if MS will run out the clock and exit and claim the 2nd place crown. So what Ninny won - MS wanted to pay Sony back for whipping the Xbox like a stepchild.

As I see it M$ main objectives were;

1) Stop Sony having the "do every thing box" in peoples living rooms, taking importance away from pc's.

2) Be the dominant players at getting a "do everything box" in people living rooms.

Being a force in the video game console race was only means to do this and was a secondary to their main objectives.

They have had great success in their first objective, even though it was not all their doing. Sony made so many terrible mistakes with the ps3, that if set out to kill the playstation brand, you would have a tough time doing a better job at than Sony have.

Meanwhile Nintendo have done M$ a big favour by taking the dominate position from Sony. Much safer for them having Nintendo #1 because they are firmly games oriented, they cant even be bothered with dvd playback in the wii.

They just leaves M$ and Sony fighting over the remainder and M$ have done well, they seem to have a lock on 2nd position but more importantly ps3 sales will be luck to break 40 million this gen.

So they really have achieved their prime objective of destroying Sony's dominance in the industry, got a nice share of it for them self and can slowly plug away at their other plans.

Well their goal was to be number one after three consoles. We'll have the answer next gen ...

link or it didn't happen

How is nabbing key franchises a win?

It's a nice feather in the hat, but I don't know what kind of mission you accomplished by making games go multi-plat, especially in DMC4's case which still sold better on the Triple.  And yes, they hav exclusive JRPGs, which were all outsold in 2 weeks in JP by one PS3 JRPG. I'm just seriously calling them like I see them.

Microsoft did expand support from the XBOX, but there was nowhere to go but up from that, so that's a hollow victory.  I will congratulate Microsoft on how they were able to rise above RRoD, and still net a second place finish, and how quickly they were able to get the price of the system down to increase sales.  Both were done in good time, and it goes to show that MS is in it to win it. 

And it doesn't matter if you beat the reigning champ if you're still in second place.  That's like if someone went and beat Tyson right now.  No one would care, since there is someone else on top.  The fact of the matter, is that they finished in second place again.  And now they have to try to beat Nintendo next time.  And they could be so busy doing that, that they may lose to Sony again.  Beating one person, who made a litany of mistakes isn't the biggest accomplishment, and I don't feel the need to congratulate someone for doing something so easy, given the amount and severity of the mistakes Sony has made since 'Five hundred and ninety-nine dollars'.  I think it's more of the fact that Sony beat themselves, and MS just capitalized on this.  Which is fine, but like I said, finishing second place is hardly worth congratulations. 

No one remembers second place in races, it's all about the Winner, and the loser.  Second place is pushed to the wayside.  It's like being the Vice President.  Congrats on second place though, at least they didn't lose.

I laughed

Their mission was not to outsell a Sony console, their mission was to stop a Sony console having home media dominance. They were afraid the PC would become obsolete, which is stupid, because PCs will never become obsolete. Not till the day when my console can use Firefox, Microsoft Office and various other programs, while not requiring installs of any kind.

Which will never happen.

So, I suppose they succeeded in their rather odd mission, but they did well for themselves. They improved on the less-than-great Xbox, and made the 360, better in pretty much every way except hardware reliability, which is now a lot better than when the 360 launched. They got third party support, plenty of sales, and a strong exclusive lineup. That's something to be proud of.

But, in the end, the best case scenario for the 360 is second place. Is that something to be proud of? Sure, they're not last, but they're not first either.