Old news.

Cougarman said: COKTOE said: Yes, I know. But...He's right though, and not everyone has thought about/ knows this stuff. No harm, no foul.   i never said he was wrong

 

 I'm going to swim out of this whirlpool of circular logic. Cheers.

mztazmz said: @liquidninja Thanks for the insight. And to the 2 above me, no, most people either don't know this or don't want to believe it. Especially 360 fanboys who want to believe that M$ is such a great company that has the best interests of their customers at heart, LOL. M$ don't give a shit about console gaming or gamers for that matter. So Sony and Nintendo have consoles that to some degree threaten Windows. If M$ was confident in their OS they would simply work hard to make sure it stays ahead of the curve of anything the consoles have. Healthy competition is good for consumers and it drives companies to innovate and make quality products. Unfortunately M$ will never see it this way and will waste billions of dollars trying to stomp Sony and Nintendo into the ground instead of spending that money making quality products. At this rate, M$ is losing 5 billion $ per generation. Maybe after a few generations, they will finally back out of console gaming and let Sony and Nintendo do what they do best:)

Sorry but the only company losing 5 BILLION this generation in SONY.

Also, just making quality products is NOT ENOUGH to be successful.

Why did SONY BRIBE Warner Bros with 500 MILLION $$$$ to go blu-ray exclusive instead of just "making a quality product?

Why do you think ALL MAJOR CORPORATIONS pay lobbyists to buy off congressmen.

Welcome to the real world.

 

A good theory you have there - a pity it's pretty old, though it's probably correct.

Which leads us to the question: what should be considerd success for MS in the console market?

Sony should release the next PlayStation with a very open operating system - a Linux distribution - that has been over-simplified so it's easy enough for dumb casuals to understand. That way it act as both a console and a PC, you see, it would get software support etc. Of course processor architecture could be a problem... But it would probably be one of the smaller problems (sort of).

I think there are several reasons.

1) Schrinking PC gaming market, this amongst other reasons due to piracy, inefficiency and incompatibilities. Being uncomfortable (for example no standard wireless gamepad, bad support for multiple controller gaming)

2) Lucrative console market (PS1 selling over 100 million units).

3) Advances in home cinema technology, past SDTV vs monitor (advantage PC monitor), today HDTV vs monitor (advantage usually HDTV for gaming and crisp movie watching). Great surround sound setups. Broadband internet has become wireless, easily usable from anywhere in the home without ugly cabling.

4) Consoles can leadfrog with technology without having to make sacrifices for extensive legacy support (old hardware and software, on a console due to long lifecycles this can be taken care of through emulation). For example, millions of consoles all using Blu-Ray and a super fast 8 processor configuration.

5) PC gamers are harder to make money from, no hardcore PC gamer would accept to pay extra monthly or yearly just to play a game online. It's near impossible to introduce something like that when people are used to better (online gaming is relative new for consoles).

There are many other reasons, I think Microsoft sees it in their best interest to slow technology advancements as much as possible. For example x86 is an awful architecture, the jump to more pleasant and powerful CPU architectures is way overdue. But leaving x86 behind would mean a lot of legacy software support would be dropped and Microsoft's monopoly is entirely built around this. However if the same amount of R&D would be spend on advancing better foundating technology, we would see a lot more progress (more engergy efficient, smaller, more powerful and cheaper to make).

Just imagine if the entire gaming industry would have gone full force supporting the Cell and Blu-Ray, that could have been a near deathblow to Microsoft gaming. Now multi-platform games will be very similar on 360/PS3/PC, the Wii is probably less relevant as such technology is not a threat to traditional PC gaming that much. A PS3 can already run a fully featured OS pretty decently (running on just one of its 8 CPUs and lacking direct GPU driver support, utilizing the Cell with awesome results for newly written scientific tools ), who knows maybe in the future a PC partner would get the idea to build a PS4 into a full PC rivalling computer some day.

@ Zkuq

Personally I think their goal is the weaken Sony's progress (a company in fierce competition, while still being successful in many technology related segments).

Just looking at just Microsoft products, although many fans claim they are hugely successful as a console maker, I don't quite agree. Many of their advances have come to the expense of PC gaming (many Microsft published games hitting the PC late or even not at all, the games are primarily built around the 360's strength and weaknesses) and their reputation as a company (mass hardware issues due to lack of testing and cheap manufacturing).

@MikeB I disagree with point 5 their are more people that pay to play WoW every month then people that pay for X-Box live the rest of points are somewhat valid.

Which is why Microsoft won't back down from the console industry, and with the Xbox 360 making a nice profit and continuing to make more money, Microsoft is just getting started.

@ Chris Hu

Good point, however War of Warcraft provides a free trial period (free download) and the game is well cheaper than a console retail game. It's still amazing though (what is the number of active monthly accounts?), I think relatively low hardware requirements allowed this game to tap well into the hundreds of millions install base.

wfz said: No offense to you or whoever wrote this, but it's gotta be at least the ....wait..... Congratulations! You're the 1 millionth customer person to write this article!   You win a free Apple iPod Mini!

 

No he won an IGAME.