What's up with Microsoft?  Where is the Microsoft that showed Final Fantasy XIII at E3 2008?  It used to seem like they had their act together, but now how do they counter news of a big Sony pricedrop at Gamecon and show the world that the 360 is still the firebreathing monster of the hd console world?  They don't. 

     They don't announce a pricedrop of their own (as a matter of fact they announce a price increase in the UK).  They don't announce that they have gained rights to yet another vaunted PS3 game.  They just send Molyneaux out to talk about Fable III which just sounds like a more realistic Little King's Story.  No additional footage of Halo:  Reach looking better than Killzone 2, no Gears of War 3 footage, no we've secured worldwide publishing rights to Final Fantasy Versus XIII or our version of FFXIII will release day and date with the PS3 version in Japan.  Nothing.  They don't even recind the 360's price increase in the UK.

      I think the quandry they find themselves in now can be traced back to the very E3 where they announced that they were getting FFXIII.  If you look at that press conference in retrospect, a huge proprtion of it was taken up with things like Mii's, 1 vs. 100, and an attempt to begin to make their game linup more casual.  This continued through this year's E3 with the announcement of Project Natal.

     I think Microsoft thought that by getting FFXIII (even though not in Japan) that they would suddenly do away with all competition with PS3 and had decided to start to focus their efforts on competition with the Wii.  However, the 360 was never going to have the casual appeal of the Wii.  At the same time, the crew at Sony seem to have rededicated themselves to more than ever before bringing out the best pure games on the market Uncharted II, Ratchet and Clank Future 2, GT5, Final Fantasy XIII's Japanese release date as a PS3 exclusive are all set for later this year while most of the 360's big games have all been pushed back out of the holiday season and even with its developers saying Alan Wake is complete they say that they still have to polish it until Spring 2010 before they can release it.

     It appears that Microsoft has dropped the ball.

They are selling OK and have Natal at the end of the next year. Like Nintendo, MS has no reason to drop a megaton each month like Sony apparently has.

Anyways the Elite should see a pricecut soon.

you won't last very long methinks.

They have an absolutely massive year in 2010 in terms of software AND hardware releases.

well it appears youve picked up the ball that you were playing with earlier...you know the one that got your other thread locked.

Microsoft doesn't need to do anything right now and if memory serves me correctly, they didn't do anything when Sony cut their price last time and Sony didn't do anything when Microsoft cut their price.

Why do you think Microsoft have dropped the ball when they are just behaving as they always have, they're sticking to their plans.

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Ah memories. Remember when Sony cut $100 in 2007, putting SCE into irreparable billion dollar losses and MS did nothing 'til the following year, when a mere $50 off the price of a pro propelled them even further ahead then before?

Oh yes, MS should do something, but they have quite a while to do it.

     Actually Sony cut the 360's lead to close to 5 million in 2008.  And even after one substantial price cut that made the Arcade model cheaper than the Wii in Others, the PS3 was still beating the 360 there by 20,000+ a week until Microsoft was so embarrased by the situation that they had to cut the Arcade's price even more (to half the PS3's cost) to be able to be ahead of the PS3 and in most weeks since then they've only been able to eke out the slimmest of margins over PS3 there (9,000 last week at half the cost, etc).

Doesn't matter. He'll just make yet another alt.