Actually they did buy it. And not only was it announced for Macs it was also announced for the Ps2. When Microsoft bought them(Bungie) they were also working on a new IP Oni which became an PS2 exclusive. they had to sell that IP because Take-two owned 20% of them

And it was later released on Mac anyways

They really, really, need to make a family or house hold Gold subscription..

Like the petition I made..

@OP

I see one mjor problem with your ideas. Where are they going to get all this money? They will be throwing away millions dollars if they get rid of XBL fees. As welll as the fact that they will need to have a competitive price for the slim and Natal. Not to mention the billions that they will have to spend to pick up Valve and Epic

They aren't losing or gaining customers from charging for Xbox live, so that's not an issue. They just need to stay competitively marketing their system and come up with some new ways to attract gamers. I really, really hope that they don't think they can sit on their laurels until NATAL comes out, because by then the lead may be down to 3-4 million.

A couple of things here. I don't think Microsoft "has to" acquire the close third party partners like Valve and Epic. These developers are essentially producing exclusives (please do not start arguments about what's an exclusive) for them out of their own volition. The only advantage for them acquiring them would be to probably kill the PC version of whatever Valve does, but I just don't see any real advantage in them buying either one of those two at the moment. If the Wingnut studio would announce their freaking game already, then their first party lineup would stack up better with the other two companies.

Also, Microsoft makes way too much money off of Xbox Live to the point where I never see them making it free.

I agree, because why MS charge $50 for each individual that would like to have thier own account on one console, at my house we have three separate accounts at $50 each..  $150 a year,  Thats not cheap its f#%ing redicules ..

The ideal way would be make a one time $50 payment for XBL gold and have multiple accounts, max four accounts tide to that console..

I'm not so sure how many Live users are, but last I heard was 10k to 13k subscribers , but my question is how many are those gold accounts..

I bet that outta 13k live subscribers maybe 6% are only gold accounts..

Ms should do a family gold package like Sega4life said if they want to appeal to the casual market before talking about Natal..

As is the Xbox 360 is mostly aimed for the hardcore crowd if not only for the hardcore gamer...

Free online, built in WiFi, better reliability - sounds like a PS3! Doing so will increase costs for the console and MS seem more interested on getting quick returns rather than building a solid gaming experience.

Well they certainly made me decide to buy a PS3 over an XBOX 360 by charging for online. I buy a game for all of it's features, if a game's main feature is online multiplayer then I don't wanna be paying extra for it.

They really need to have some first party studios, they are the main reason (in Nintendo's Wii case the only reason) to buy their console. If they wont, we'll see more and more games to go multiplatform, as Sony lost Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Resident Evil and Tekken, so will MS lose Mass Effect, JRPGs and more. If we look at the top games for each platform, exclusives are present in more than 50%, now only real decent exclusive that MS has is Halo 3, the rest can be played on PC.