The "Wii60" term was an excellent marketing stroke from Microsoft. It made them look like they weren't competing with the Wii while pumping their price advantage over the PS3.

This is a baiting almost trolling statement especially considering how off-topic it is.


On-topic:  I think killing the xbox was probably a good choice for Microsoft in the long-run even if a frustrating one for xbox owners at the time.

I have said it before and I'll say it again: Peter Moore is a genius.

He said from the beginning that he didn't mind if people bought a Wii just as long as they also bought a 360. For the hardcore gamer who follows such things, he turned it into "choose between the 360 + Wii or the PS3." Obviously almost anyone would choose the former (aside from "the 5 million PS fanboys who will buy the PS3 even if there are no games" that Sony spoke of).

There's no way it was a mistake -- look at the situation with Sony's PS3. They are specifically removing BC on their 40GB because their own PS2 is cannibalizing sales of PS3 software. And the situation was vastly different for them because the PS2 was an outrageous success. They were still making a lot of money off PS2 software because of its astonishing userbase. However, even the massive success that was the PS2 is starting to run out of steam. Sales of PS2 games are sliding off the charts but the people who used to buy them are not committing to adopting PS3s. So now their current system is in a hole and their old system is on the way out.

The original Xbox, on the other hand, was not making money. They were not selling enough software to make the system worth the risk that potential buyers might hesitate to move on to the 360. The result is that now the 360 is making money and it's making it by selling truck-tons of software. There is no one at MS looking at their bank sheet thinking, "Hmm... I wish we had kept that money sink around a little longer!".

 Also, MS and Nintendo are not exactly competing.  In fact they're sort of helping each other, at least in the opening of this war.

 MS is out to block Sony from building a living room platform that would compete with the PC.  Nintendo is purely interested in gaming, so Microsoft, a microcomputer software company, is only competing with them on one non-core market.  In fact, Nintendo helps them to block Sony more effectively.  Without Nintendo, the PS3 would be the top console in Japan and probably not quite as far back in Europe and the U.S.

 Nintendo has put themselves into their own league.  However, without MS, Sony would have the entire HD gaming market and again would probably be in striking distance.

 It's sort of a team up that took out a common enemy that was threatening both of their core businesses.  Of course, once Nintendo and MS have clearly beaten Sony they'll be competing for the same market, but for now they are indirectly symbiotic.

People have strange beliefs.

Reality called and it wants to get back in touch with you ...

In "The Long Run" Sony would probably benefit from not having competition from Microsoft or Nintendo but today they would still be facing their slow sales. The PS3 is so far beyond the traditional price range of a console that it is foolish to think that anything except for a massive price reduction would have had a dramatic impact on its sales; as has been pointed out countless times, 75% of PS2 owners spent less than $200 on their console (and 99% paid less than $300) how many of these people do you think were begging to spend $600 on a system?

The only (real) benefit I would see from the PS3 not having to deal with the Wii is that it would look less stupid when Sony tried to brag about how 'well' they were selling ...

What? You don't think that some of MS's business would have gone to Sony if they had a monopoly on HD consoles? And "striking distance" can mean a lot of things. I'm saying that in a 2-way race Sony would be in 2nd, but they wouldn't be supremely dominated like they are now. To make a wild guess, in a 2-way race:

Wii: 14m-16m (capped by production, but assume it would be increased faster)
PS3: 8m-10m (depending on how many XBox 360 titles went to PS3 instead)

Keep in mind that total console sales since the Wii launch have been about 25m.

Nintendo is capped by production meaning that with Wii sold out Sony would be the only console out there. Would those XBox 360 owners simply not buy any console? Would the 3rd party games on XBox 360 not exist?  Microsoft got into the business to block Sony, so they must agree with me.

killing the original was a great idea but i just hope they dont do that to every console they put out or they will become the new sega quick.. thats why the dreamcast died because sega put out so many consoles back to back to back..

 Naaa, Dreamcast died young because Sega ran out of money.

Sega ran out of money because they mismanaged their previous system : with Genesis they focus too much on competition with Nintendo ( losing too many money on R&D. ie : Sega CD and 32X ) and with Saturn they failed to understand the market changes of that time.

Obviously MS has an huge quantity of financial resources.