What's sad is that some of the fanboys out there see the elimination of competition as a good thing.

This. They want to do decent in Japan and make money, but it is far more important for them to keep sony from doing well. By taking those jrpgs, they have done just this. I believe more PS3s would have been sold overall if MS did not help pay for some of these games.

Whats wrong? Sony and Microsoft understand the concept very well.

Microsoft has been specifically targeting certain niches and titles in its moneyhatting. This generation, it went after as much RPGs as it can, particularly JRPGs. I will say RPGs in general, because they DLC for Fallout 3 I believe is 360 exclusive, and Mass Effect has Microsoft's name all over it. Throw in also the whole JRPGs under S-E and they are going for competitively there. And they did what they could with GTA4, which was to get exclusive DLC for it.

There is a strategy here with what they are doing, to be able to hold their own against Sony. It has worked for the most part.

You don't understand the idea of competition improving quality? Competition is always a good thing. It's what drives progress.

That, my friend, is EXACTLY why they did it. Why else would a company that makes huge profits from software(windows) decide to get into the much more risky business of hardware(game consoles)?

Is this a joke topic, or is the OP seriously asking this question? It's simple logic if you think about it, nothing to make a thread about. Tsk, tsk, tsk, probably just wants more vg$.

That's incredibly interesting (I didn't know this, nor had ever really thought about it that way).

But the way I look at it, they're indirectly helping the Ps3. Making a multiplat on Ps360 is now just as viable as making a Wii game. If X360 wasn't there, it might not be that way.

On the other hand, it might not be helping Ps3. Some of these games would be bound to be Ps3 exclusives, and then they might sell a lot more. Microsoft is really rather hurting the Wii than assisting the Ps3.

(I know that has little substance added to what you said, sorry).

Exactly, and when MS entered the gaming division they made competition, if MS wouldn't have entered to the gaming division the PS3 wouldn't be as viable as it is and you probably had to pay 600$ to play many games that would be exclusive of the PS3, without so many First party titles.

Because if Sony went bankrupt, then Sony wouldn't make Vaio laptops, and Microsoft would sell less copies of Windows.