actually i think they need to be more agrressive if they wanna succeed in japan( like cutting an exclusivity deal with one of the big japanese developers, buying one or two small japanese devs). The upcoming mistwalker games are a good step towards building a broader, more diverse portfolio of games but at this point, xbox still is mainly a western gamer taste centric product. Sony has psygnosis,naughty dog,insomniac , nintendo has ips such as mario,zelda,pokemon which are higly popular among westerners, what does ms has in japan that its competitors don't have? Just couple of exclusive games from some high profile dev won't cut it, they need to be a substantial part of japanese gaming world to not be ignored by japanese gamers.scooby_dooby said:
Ken Kutaragi:" I can produce the PS3 anytime"
- Thread starter mckmas8808
- Start date
Powderkeg said:
When you buy a house for investment, do you consider that a loss? When a company aquires IP do you consider that a loss? I'm not saying that a large part of the $2B was spent on buildings and whatnot, but an investment is not consider a loss, until you cash out.
And to this I agree with you. MS's plan to enter your (and my) living room for the longest time. When MS aquired WebTV back in 1997, I knew where they were going with that. So, the question is how much determination do they have. And so far, they have proven that persistence and thick skin* is the name of their game.* Considering how badly they were beaten in Japan, they're back for more of the same.
On topic I actually remember Tom Kalinske saying the exact same thing that Kutaragi said in EGM in 1996 about the Saturn...
Anyway, the real question is considering Japanese console domination of Japan... and the fact that MS is the only western console maker since the 3DO and Atari got demoed in the early 1990's... shouldn't they really focus on capturing and dominating the biggest markets? North America and European tastes are different and MS understands those tastes... why not lock those markets up sooner than later and go after Japan later... Japan can be made irrelevant since they dont buy the console anyway......
Anyway, the real question is considering Japanese console domination of Japan... and the fact that MS is the only western console maker since the 3DO and Atari got demoed in the early 1990's... shouldn't they really focus on capturing and dominating the biggest markets? North America and European tastes are different and MS understands those tastes... why not lock those markets up sooner than later and go after Japan later... Japan can be made irrelevant since they dont buy the console anyway......
winstonsmith1978
Newcomer
expletive said:
I would prefer just to have Microsoft make XBL work on Windows, or atleast just XBL Arcade.
Mintmaster
Veteran
PSOne entered a market MUCH farther from saturation than it is now. PS1 and PS2 attacked the adult (and late teenager) market, which nintendo didn't go have or even try to go after. Sony didn't have to take much marketshare from nintendo to make playstation as huge as it is. What's more is that Sony was the top brand in consumer electronics back then, so their brand could be leveraged very easily. Videogames were even more niche when Nintento took the market from Atari.Nick Laslett said:
Microsoft's task is waaaay harder. They have to take marketshare away from a very powerful brand that has nearly saturated the market. When Intel trampled Apple, the latter didn't lose too many sales. They lost marketshare because Intel worked hard with oems & microsoft to widen the appeal of computers, and took all the new customers. Now that the market is nearly saturated, AMD is having an extremely hard time breaking 20% marketshare because Intel is such a powerful brand. Since the Athlon came out, they've had superior performance and value (except for about a year before Athlon64 came out).
What Microsoft was up against when XBox was launched (or even now) was not even remotely close to Sony's task in dethroning Nintendo.
mckmas8808
Legend
Mintmaster said:
So doesn't that just show how great Sony has and is doing with its Playstation brand? Shouldn't your conclusion be applauded for, for Sony's sake being that it shows how hard they are working?
Here's my mistake: I thought when you said it was "unfair", you were saying it should be illegal, because that would actually be an argument - a patently ridiculous one, but at least it'd be an argument. But you're not making an argument. You're just making meaningless observations. This is why it's driving me crazy trying to show you why you're wrong - you're not actually saying anything at all.Nesh said:
I know you'll probably take exception to me calling your observations meaningless, but they are. As I've already pointed out, no two companies in the world have the same resources. Therefore, any and all competition is "unfair" in the sense that you've described it. If you meant "unfair" as in "against the rules", that'd be one thing - but as we already established, you aren't saying that at all. I could just as easily say it's "unfair" that Nintendo owns all this fantastic original IP that they can use on the Revolution; or that Sony is a hardware company and can therefore leverage their Blu-Ray production capabilities while MS and Nintendo cannot. It's just as true as your statement, and equally as meaningless. They're all tautologies, they're all "unfair", because no two entities are alike.
I'm so done with this discussion. I won't challenge your insightful and enlightening observations any more. Carry on.
Sethamin said:
I wouldnt have spent time and effort talking about it if MS didnt have an abundance of accumulated capital reserves.A result of a monopolized market.
Thanks to this a non-rpofitable product, a product that is not doing well in the market forces itseld and gets market share.The market has similar laws to what we call natural selection.The "laws" of the market come to play to keep the most efficient products for us much optimality as possible.
But this is an exception which goes against it.
I hope you understand the difference.
The example of Sony being able to promote BR through market strategies is not at all the same.
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Sorry, one last point. Monopolies are not illegal, only abusing that monopoly power. Spending money is not illegal either. In house expertise and IP are resources to be used, same as cash. They can all be used as competitive advantages. None of them are illegal. So no, I don't see the difference. All I see is your bias and your blatant MS-bashing, trying to paint Sony as good and MS as bad, when neither of these two companies even deserve your value judgements (in this particular area, at least). It's just business.Nesh said:
Sethamin said:
No, I'm sorry but you are wrong. Monopolies are illegal in most cases. The only time they are not illegal is if a "natural monopoly" is deemed necessary for an industry to properly carry out business--like utility companies, and even then, they are closely monitored by a regulatory body such as the government. It would not make sense to have middlemen that would have to lease out an infrustructure owned by one company...it would just add costs that would have to be passed on to the consumer and the quality of product delivered would basically be the same regardless who of who delivered it. Deregulation of power companies has generally failed for this reason.
Microsoft is not involved in an industry where a "natural" monopoly has been deemed necessary by the government and/or other regulatory agencies. If there was no competition, MS could very well be classified as an illegal monopoly.
Yeah MS is playing fair this time, at least they don't distribute Xbox 360 for free like IE and don't force PC manufacturers to give up Netscape.Tap In said:Fair? unfair?
so what.... if life were fair, there wouldn't be wheelchairs.
I fear for our society when we want everything to be "fair". You know, since I'm not a communist.
BTW, why not distribute Xbox 360 for free with a Xbox Live subscription? It'll work greatly just like Phantom.
TrungGap said:
One could say that Sony are in their position because in the last few decades they have worked hard and produced some really amazing hardware (TVs mainly), so people started associating the Sony name with (overpriced) quality equipment. They worked for it. And now they have to work for it again cause the quality of their products has gone down lately. Still people associate them with quality products, for which they are prepared to pay a bit more than the average.
The name MS made for themselves.. really needs no explanations really, but it certainly didn't come from producing quality products. In the last decade or more most people have really had no choice in the OS they use. Today they can choose to buy a Mac, but in the PC space you pretty much have no choice (and Linux really doesn't matter here). Ms have worked hard to put themselves in a position to do pretty much whatever they want and price themselves at whatever point they want, and still release crappy products, by cutting the choice of the consumer and use their near-monopoly position accordingly.
So i think it's quite natural that, based on that difference, people will be more willing to buy a Sony thing for their living room than a MS thing. It's only natural. At the same time, most people would rather buy a MS thing for their PC than a Sony thing, simply because MS knows PCs better than Sony does, and mainly because people tend to believe that a MS thing will work better with buggy Windows than any non-MS thing does, which isn't true but that's not the point here.
Let me make it clear that i think that could very well be a bad thing, because as we've seen Sony got complacent lately and their products quality went down a little bit, simply because they probably felt they could live on their name (which is still true).
All companies need to work hard and keep the quality of their products very high without feeling they are in the position to "let go" for a while and release crappy products at the same price as a high quality one, and this is valid for everyone, from Sony to BMW...
