Pendragon9 said:
Well, this shows Bill Gates was not only greedy, but stupid as well.
Why? Well, he should've just let Sega games have online. They'd still be on the XBOX, and those would make him millions, maybe billions. It was pride that lost him the chance to make the XBOX nmuch better. but he's so rich, he didn't care. :/
Oh well. Can't change what could've been.
Bill Gates has built a multi-billion dollar company that's still going strong. You don't accomplish that by being stupid.
The DC was a great platform but at best it had a niche audience. I think that getting Sega on board with them exclusively might have strengthened Microsoft's platform, yes, but they -did- get a lot of Sega exclusives that weren't big sellers. (Jet Set Radio, anyone?) And as another poster pointed out, if they had split their online user base that would have only harmed them by this point in the game. Xbox Live is one of the defining features of the console and it wouldn't have achieved that status had their execution been less-than-perfect.
Sega still makes some good games. Some damn good games, even. But are all of them critical successes? And of the ones that are, are they all financial successes? Fun=/=sales and gaming is a business. As much as I wish developers would churn out niche titles that equate to my wet dreams, they can't ignore the bottom line.
Sega is lucky to be around at all after the flubs they made in the 90s. In all honesty, if I were in Bill Gates' shoes, I probably would have made the same decision.
