Nazulu said:
CrystalShadow said:
Nazulu said:
I wonder what they would really say if they weren't rolling around in money. If we're so important, how about making everything really convenient, including for those who don't want to use certain features? Can they do that?
If they weren't rolling in money, xbox would be dead. It's been making a loss since it started. You can't sustain a game devision that's been making a loss for 3 generations running without having deep pockets.
Really? The first Xbox wasn't even successful? I was sure they were doing great back then with the rise of Halo. I know they weren't doing as well with the 360 because of the red ring, but it was still loved by many. And we know all about the Xbone.
I guess they were pinning it all down to their dream innovation, which couldn't have been executed more poorly.
No, say what you will about it, but gamers have a habit of viewing 'success' of consoles in terms of their market-share.
Problem is, if you are making a loss, it doesn't matter what your market share is, you're still going to fail eventually.
That's for instance why Nintendo was never in trouble even though both the N64 and Gamecube 'lost' their respective generations.
Because, in spite of that, they made consistent profits the whole way through even when they were supposedly 'losing'.
Xbox meanwhile, has been nothing but a massive cash sink for microsoft up to this point.
The Original Xbox cost them much more than they ever made from it.
The 360 wasn't as bad (perhaps made worse by the red-ring fiasco), but it effectively was still a financial loss to Microsoft.
The Xbox One has probably been a loss so far, but that's neither here nor there, because it's still early in the generation, and many console launches start out costing more than they bring in.
But... Basically, making a loss so consistently for more than a decade would have killed a smaller company without the resources that Microsoft has to hand...
Sony on the other hand, is in the opposite situation. The playstation division is very profitable, but much of the rest of their company is anything but.
It's ironic that in financial terms, a specialist gaming company (Nintendo) was for a while arguably a bigger, more stable company than an international electronics giant. (Sony).
But that has nothing to do with Playstation, because that's going great. It's the rest of Sony that's a complete mess.
Xbox on the other hand, costs Microsoft more than it makes.
It's clear they're trying to work on some kind of long-term strategy, but it's also clear they need the rest of Microsoft behind them to ever get there...
