^ Sony repeated Microsofts mistakes better. Who could make the Xbox 1 again and make it fail even harder? SONY!!!

MS want to rescue those pathetic gamers who had been suffered under sony's rule

ukeatdabian said: MS want to rescue those pathetic unfortunate gamers who had been suffered under sony's rule

I think that works better.

 

PCs and PC gaming have been increasing at a vertiginous pace (especially PC gaming). If consoles were thought as a threat it could be specifically about living room dominance, which unexpectadly is where we see modern PCs moving to more and more frequently.

 

whatever the reason, MS has done quite well. It's always good to see a fresh face on the market

Guess it's the same reason as Sony and Nintendo they want to make money.

MikeB said: 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.

So, so wrong:

1) PC gaming is increasing FASTER than console gaming! Last year we saw China's Online Games Market grow over 75%, Digital Distribution services such as Steam and Gamersgate were up 100%, subscription-based MMOs up 22% in western countries (the hardest markets for subscription MMOs to grow), etc...

2) All markets are lucrative, however it definitely isn't the most lucrative anymore, as we see so many developers and publishers sutriggling to make a profit.

3) HDTVs are the reason why PC is stealing living room space from consoles. This trend will keep continuing, and this is a chance that PC could completely take over the living room and consoles stop existing (as supported by many analysts).

4) Why are you talking about old software emulation as a point in favour of consoles? I still play over 10 year old games on my PC, and many people can easily play over 20 years old games with a bit of knowledge.

5)Dude, Microsoft is the only one getting the money from their Xbox Live fees... they never give anything to developers. So your point is stupid since developers DON'T benefit from subscriptions like the Xbox Live has.
If you're talking and MMOs - MMO PC gamers are as hardcore as they come, so obviously a hardcore gamer WOULD pay monthly subscriptions to play games with hundreds of times the amount of content available in games like Halo 3. And new non-WoW MMOs have increased more than WoW did last year, which means that PC gamers are receptive to new subscription-based games and to change.

MikeB said: @ 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.

Once you factor in monthly charges, it's actually really expensive. Having said that, it gives you as much play time as you are willing to invest in it. And it's addicting.

And believe me, it's nowhere near the hundreds of millions install base. Last announcement was 11 million, I would imagine it's close to 12 million by now, but then the GameCube sold more than that, in the same time period, so...

Nah, I kid. 12 million for a game (particularly one that makes you pay every month) is amazing, and 2.8 million first day for an expansion pack is more amazing.

Final-Fan said: liquidninja said: When Microsoft came out with the XBOX I think allot of people were thinking (some still do) that they were just attempting to expand their PC monopoly into the living room. Depending on your experience with the company's products this might excite or scare you. My theory however is that they saw the the home console as a threat to their home computer monopoly. Which would leave their income to the mercy of their buisness computer monopoly which is being threatend by linux. For many who may be unfamilier with Microsoft's OS monoply on IBM compatible PC's. They have been blocking competition to their OS's with what's called the "applications barrier to entry". New OS's can't gain marketshare because they have little applications made for them, while symultaniously software vendors don't develope for new OS's because they have little marketshare. Another way competiton is blocked is through pressure on Original Equipetment Manufactorers (Compact, Dell, HP, Sony etc.) to only include Microsoft's software (this has included Internet Explorer and MS Office) in their computers and exclude their competiton. Failure to comply with their terms would result in higher license fees (of Windows) and in turn would result in loss of competitive pricing. How could a home console threaten to break MS's home computer monopoly? Home consoles are essentially home computers that are dedicated to playing games. But as they've evolved they have taken on many of the features of IBM compatible PC's. Most notably the abillity to connect to the internet. With that evolution it was only inevitable that they gain the ability to browse it. With more Web Applications becoming incresingly capable while more popular than Desktop Applications the applications barrier to entry starts to crumble. When IBM compatible computers are being made obsolete by set-top-boxes and video game systems in the home computing space so to will the standard PC OS be made irrelevent to home computer users. "We sees the "game system" (PlayStation 2) as a threat growing upward Into the PC space." - Microsoft's Michael Porter "computer monopoly which is being threatend by linux" I doubt that.  "Most notably the abillity to connect to the internet." This explains why the 360 is the only one without a browser ... wait.

Linux is a massive competitor to Windows. It has a whopping 1% marketshare, while Windows has only 88%!

If anything, Mac is a competitor to Windows, and even that is a stretch, with 9%. Windows XP, an 8 year old operating system, is still the most common OS in the world.

@ shio

That's not the perspective of developers who work on major game releases:

Epic blaming integrated PC chips:
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=184431

EA/Infinity Ward/Crytek blaming piracy:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/05/next-up-to-blame-piracy-for-pc-gamings-decline-peter-moore.ars

In 2008 according to the NPD PC retail games sales was again down again 14%, totally $701 million, in 2005 it was $1.1 billion, not good if you take into account inflation and the growth the gaming industry is experiencing.

I am not sure if the World of Warcraft figures are inflated, does a 1 month subscription count as a full game sale? I also don't know how much relevance the Chinese market is to our gaming preferences, what type of games are popular there?

I do think the opinions and perspectives of major game publishers are to be taken into account.



I doubt that, other than a few students with very small and messy appartments I know of no family interested in this (noisy and bulky PC with lots of cabling in the living room).



The point was that with a console you have less such worries supporting legacy bagage. You can introduce radically new technology more easily (the industry isn't sticking to x86 because it is such a great architecture, it's vastly obsolete an unelegant. If we would have to start all over again, be sure all new PCs would use radically more modern architectures.