Gates Makes Staggering XBox 2 Live Prediction

That said... why the obvious disdane for M$ in the video game market... despising them as a company because you spend alot of time on a computer isnt really fair in refference to their current position in the video game market... i for one do not one a sony made video game standard and loath the idea of having to buy soem updated sony thing every few years withotu any competition... "my enemies enemy i smy freind"... i know it makes for strange bed fellows but with the current situation in the market the only real hope we have of keeping soem kind of competition going is by backing microsoft.

if you want to put linux and firefox on your PC im with you a hundred percent but when it comes to video games M$ doesnt hold the same vice like grip on the market, sony does... in a strange and almost unfortunate sense M$ is the linux of the video game world (i think nintendo woudl be the apple... not really in direct competition, just content to make money in their own niche). IF you are against monopolization of markets then it seems to me you are shooting yourselves in the foot by pushing your obvious andti xbox agenda.
Being 24 and a full time 9-5er myself i am well beyond fanboy status so i feel we are on a similar level (mind you i havent managed to make a living with video games, i still have my eye out for potential oportunities), so i cant understand why you woudl be so against xbox... please explain your thinking?
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Speaking for myself, it's because they have obvious intentions to tie the XBox to their almost complete dominance of the computer market. Already the next-gen DVD standard looks to be going to Media Player codecs, money for MS for every DVD player sold, money to MS for every piece of encoding software sold and no chance of licensing the codecs for Open Source software. Probably means that DVD players will need to have a MS OS running them.

Same thing will happen with XBox as a media hub. Imagine if Apple had made exclusive deals with all the record companies so you can only get their music through iTunes store, on a Mac and only play it on an iPod. That's what MS want to do with XBox. When there's no Ninty Revolution 2 and no Sony PS4 and all you can buy is an XBox3, all because MS threw all their money into a new market in order to dominate it, they will be able to make that future come true.


But you would rather do the same thing with Microsoft? Who are you kidding? I'd rather be using an OS today that was based on where the Amiga OS was in 1992, with 12 years of development, than WIndows XP. However, I've had to endure using Windows all that time, with barely usable updates from MS every so often, without any competition.

I see the same thing happening with XBox if MS manage to "win" the next round of the hardware competition in the gaming market. By that time, I'll have to use an MS OS on my PC, an MS OS and MS codecs in my DVD player and use an MS gaming box, all wrapped up in MS DRM. Do you really want control of your entertainment to go to a company with a record like MS?


See above, that's the sure-fire way to stop having any competition. I'd much rather have the computer market dominated by MS and gaming by Sony than both by MS, wouldn't you?

I could go on, answering your points one by one, but this all comes down to one fact.

MS have a long history of stealing, buying or crushing all competition in order to gain a monopoly.

Sony do not have this sort of history. The reason the PSX took off so well was because of the games. The reason they had games was they were very good to the developers, providing good support and a sensible licensing cost structure. They entered the market in third place, extended the market into previously untouched demographics and came out on top after a few years. All done through hard work and savvy.

MS (and I'm gonna take heat for this) threw a PC into a big, ugly, black box, threw money at buying development houses and promised they were all about the games.

Admittedly, Live is a very good service, but it's the sort of service only a company with shed loads of money could set up. Sony's approach to online gaming lacks the cohesive feel of Live, but means they don't have to buy and run several hundred servers and the bandwidth to host them.

MS have added little to the gaming market, have pushed huge amounts of money into getting to where they are and have huge amounts to gain by becoming number one.

All that said, the reason we all hate Microsoft so much is that bloody paperclip!! :-)

Hmmm.. Looking around my living room, i have a HELL of a lot more sony products than microsoft products.

Why dont people ever say that about sony?

I'm sorry but that came across as if you were saying that Sony and Nintendo don't want a monopoly.

Microsoft was bound to enter the market, Sony were threatening to enter their market and so they came out on the offensive. The second you start to defend is the second you start to loose.

An Microsoft controlled future isn't the best out there but its a damn sight better than a 'nice looking s**te quality' Sony future or a 'You don't know what type of games you want to play, we do' Nintendo future... Microsoft could dominate and make more money than it could dream of from behind the scenes of the games industry if it 'won'.

Why? Because, they have already said they hate to produce the hardware, its a drain on them they don't want. The second they became the sole format, i can honestly see them offering out contracts to produce Xbox based game consoles much in the same way the DVD consortium does with DVD players, and the way JVC did with VHS.

And before you try to rebuff that, Microsoft would control the codecs, licences, software to run the Xbox software on licenced machines and so on and so forth allowing them to make massive amounts of money without the overheads creating hardware causes...

thats what i'm saying!

just cause sony didn't make windows and becaome the richest company in the world doesnt mean they dont have plans for world domination... i woudl liek to reffer you back to the Beta Max, mini disk, memory stick blu-ray discusions... are these not attempts at controlling a market! Do sony not make computers? (that cost to much and arent that great might i add). Its easy for peopel to sit aroudn and bitch about how bad xp might be its another things to make somethign better... and as much as linux is a great thing it will not beat out windows for overall quality... the easy of use for most peopel is what will keep them with windows from here to forever. XP is incredibly complex compaered to linux in the things that it does... one window can browse the net compress a file play a slide show or burn a dvd! now they may seem liek little things but gettign it to all work together in tandem as moothly as it does (sometimes) is an impressive feet... and M$ ability to fix any bugs that it find in a matter of hours is means you have a constantly evolving OS that dapts to new threats and problems.
Sony on the other hand has a rep for charging to much for low quality hardware... if i did have to pick one company to rule my life atleast i know M$ is willign to go the extra miel to get my effection (taking an almost 200$ hti on every xbox when ti came out was not the sort of thing that any company would do.) If sony shows me in the next round that they are willing to fight back in a similar fasion i will very possibly buy a ps3... and if at soem poitn M$ starts to over take them i woudl put more suport in sony just to do my part to kep things level.

You said xbox live is a great service... but the only reaosn its so good is cause M$ has the mula to make it work... you think sony doesnt have thta kidn of cash? or maybe they just lack the vision and drive required to inovate!

As is M$ is still the undedog... and your backing the evil empire thats already in charge!

Perfect world = Nintega! a joint venture to create the best purely game related device! of course they woudl have to fire all the idiots at both firms that think cute cartoons make the best video games!

i'm rambling... and off topic.

so i will sumerize... i think your discriminating against americans, you bloddy w****r! ;P j/k
actually i think you are still (4 years into it) having a knee jerk reaction to M$ touching somethign you love against your will. They know what they are doing and they know how to make quality... they didnt invent video games so they will have to win this one with quality and inovation... unlike how they just sort of fell into owning the computer biz. If M$ ends up on top it will be because of superior product... plain and simple... and there is nothing wrong with that.
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as long as they let me use pirated mp3's!

they might always use their tried and test aproach of bullying and underhand business tactics

like how they bullied Rockstar into making GTA3 (and is sudo sequels) exclusivly for the xbox?
or how they bullied Square enix to only make games for every console in existence but theirs?
or the underhanded way they conviced big name companies like konami and capcom to give them second tier games and put their best stuff on ps2?

their pockets are indeed deeper than most but they are not bottomless and this is still a buisness, if they cant make sufficiant money with something its not worth them buying it... the price they would have to have paid to get rockstar away from sony woudl have been more than the profit would have been worth... so they obviously arent just strong arming their way into this... they still have to be somewhat selective with their purchases and what games they get behind (bungie was a good move... studio gigante was not)... and mistakes have been made... kakuto chojin springs to mind... They are NOT incapable of loosing this fight... they will stick it out for a few generatiosn and if they cant beat out sony they wont ever be able to turn a profit from it and they will just give up. They could have strong armed alot more than they have but its not worth the expendature to them.

if im wrong please let me know... otherwise... please thank me for enlightening you ;P

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I'm sorry, that wasn't my intention. I wanted to point out why I distrust Microsoft's intentions when it comes to the games market. I wanted to point out why them trojan-horseing a media centre into living rooms is a bad idea.


I don't know where Sony gets this "s**t quality" tag from. I have a PS2 that I reserved an collected on day 1 on the UK launch. For a while it was used as the SPOnG grabbing machine and was ritually abused in that role. It has been plugged in and unplugged more times than I can count. It works perfectly, no problems with the laser, no problems with the case, no problems with the connections.

And as to your 'You don't know what type of games you want to play, we do' future. Nintendo? That's where MS is going with games, music, movies and TV.

I'd much rather be "ruled" by Sony or Nintendo, companies that have worked hard for their positions, producing quality products that people want to buy. Rather than MS, who were handed the keys to the world by IBM and who have more low-down cunning than programming skill and more money than games market savvy.


Once they have used their money and monopoly to claim the home entertainment markets, they won't care about producing the hardware. They'll do what they have always done and produce the OS, but this time they will set the standards for the hardware and it won't be as open as the PC.

Remember Microsoft's Palladium initiative? Hardware keys to ensure only "trusted" executables can be run on a PC? Sounds like the copy protection on XBox? What this would mean is that MS would hold the keys to what software would ever run on the PC platform. Linux? Nope. Firefox? Nope. Not "trusted" you see, they can damage your computer! Same thing with movies, music and the like. You must get an MS license to use the keys that enable your content to play on an MS home entertainment centre. Can't afford the keys? Can't publish music. MS doesn't like the movies you publish? License cost goes up. Can't afford that any more? Tough!

I'm not saying any of that will only happen with MS at the wheel, I'm saying it's much more likely to happen with a proven law-breaking, cheating, stealing mega-corporation in charge of the whole entertainment market.


I understand the business model, it's the one they've used successfully on PCs to get a cut of every PC sold since MS-DOS 1 came out.

Now I'm not saying that MS are the only evil company around, nor that Sony wouldn't love to be in the same position. I'm saying MS are 60% of the way there already and Sony are only 20-30%. MS can control the means of digital distribution much more easily than Sony can. They've already had a few goes at taking over the Internet.

Not so long ago it was just Nintendo and Sega, and they had a reasonably balanced share of the market. Then Sony joined in, and they hit Sega and Nintendo hard. The sophistication and aggression was at a level the old school was simply not prepared for.

Sega held on for a while, but their marketing wasn't at Sony's level, and even with quality 1st-party software, they couldn't compete. Not having a fat pile of cash on which to sit (unlike Ninty, who have massive reserves of capital due to the complete dominance in their NES days, and the Gameboy) they have no option but to drop out (boo). Ninty soldier on, but, in reality, the Playstation brand is way out in front, and seemingly unassailable.

Ok, so what would happen if M$ never ventured into the home-console market? Well, since crystal balls with the power to tell the future/alternative pasts are hard to get hold of, we can only guess. My personal stab-in-the-dark (oo-er) is that Ninty, without a major corporate overhaul, would persevere with a gamecube, and a revolution... and maybe one more. That's it. We would then have a VHS video-game system (i.e. a common standard, not literally VHS media, imagine the loading times!).

Now, I'm not an M$ fan. But their participation was almost inevitable. They are pretty much the only company with the cash and industry know-how who could compete with the PS juggernaut. I'd prefer another mega-corp, but does one exist that could offer a serious challenge? Their 1st attempt hasn't levelled the playing field, but their wealth means they can have several bashes at it.

I suppose the question is: Would you all be happy with Sony being the sole home-console manufacturer? Since the GBA carried the GC, surely, unless the Revo pulls it's weight, Ninty's home market looks doomed (dearly hope I'm wrong).

Another question is: Will M$ ever crack Japan? Surely this territory is vital for dominance? But I can't see the Japanese (being proud folk) choosing a Yank over a native machine. In which PS will most likely be the strongest brand for the foreseeable future. My fear is that we will have an East/West divide, with the US dominated by XB, and Japan by Sony.

That would be a nightmare outcome.

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First in reply to the news post I think I can see where Mr gates is going with all this. As well as the world domination bit MS also want to get into internet phone calls and video messaging etc. You'll see this area grow in the future so Xbox Live is perhaps aiming there early on.


I'd have to say that GB is the bigger brand than Playstation. Playstation is the bigger home brand but not overall, and I'm damn sure all versions of GB have sold more than 80m to date. It's tha last 15 years of GB money that has given Nintendo all the cash they need to continue further (combined with Pokemon money) with Revolution. Had the GB series not sold as much then Nintendo might not be here now. It's for this reason that Nintendo know that losing the hand held biz to Sony isn't an option. Perhaps this might be one reason the DS might outsell the PSP.

I don't think MS will crack japan. I said this from day one that Xbox entered. Japanese folk like certain types of games and would rather support their own economy than fill u.s pockets (while the u.s suck the planet dry) when their country is in a recession (are they still or not?). Quite right too, why should they? MS were not sensitive enough to the japanese needs quickly enough and when they did act it was too late. It could have been so different. Either way I'm sure that be it Nintendo or Sony, the japanese would prefer the dominance hails from their country (as would I, because I know good games (Viewtiful Joe, Metal Slug, Ikaruga, Wario Ware, Ico, DDR etc you'd most likely never see these types of games from western devs) will follow that appeal to more people than fraggers and speed freaks. Still if iPod managed it in japan anything is possible.

And looking around mine, I see a hell of a lot more Pioneer. In a friend's house, almost everything is Panasonic. Another friend likes Philips. Others like Arcam, Nakamichi, Bose, Tag McLaren...

But in every office, Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft. There has been no effective choice.

That said, considering the £400 price of the new Mini Mac (yeah I know, it's Mac Mini, but Mini Mac sounds so much more Austin Powers), things might change.

But plenty of people will still buy PCs on the grounds of compatibility with work, with friends, with existing software. A monopoly is difficult to break.



Because it's fatuous! Sony do not have a monopoly in home electronics, and there is a lot of market choice, and competition.

It's possible, though IMO unlikely. My biggest fear is the East\ West divide outcome. If the East rejects the XB outright, and the West ends up with a market share of 90% XB, 9% PS and 1% Ninty, we'll see hardly any (PAL) Jap games - it just won't be in their interest to translate them (costs).

This extreme outcome is also a possibility. But, as we all know, the PS brand is very strong worldwide, and there are no signs of it drastically weakening any time soon.