Madden Revolution – Throw, Kick, Shove

"But, but... By your argument, people would never invest in non-profitable companies. They do though. They invest in anticipation of future profit - companies can run for years and years and never make a profit but continue to keep on going.

NTL is still making losses (http://www.thehollywoodreporter.com/thr/business/brief_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002076559), certain divisions in Sony keep making losses but they're still support - hey, even Nintendo made tehir famous loss one year (quarter?). By your thinking, shareholders would simply pull the plug on companies as soon as they show any signs of a loss, or wouldn't invest in them in the first place."

I never said that... where did i say that? In no way did i ever typed this kind of logic down, better question is, what made you ever read that kind of logic in what i posted since it doesn't say it anywhere (i said 5-years which is still a long time). Companies running for years and years... bank loans or not paying their debts (because the one who they own the debt to is butt a small company, this happens a lot), Sony still supporting it loss-making divisions... probably because their income still cover up their fixed costs and therefore do contribute to a possible profit, it's a econ thing called profitcontribution (i'm translating it directly from the dutch term, i have no idea it's the correct english term), a loss-making division or product isn't always good to scrap if the revenue that it creates still covers up it's fixed costs and then some. Also there's a difference between companies doing a restructering plan to get them out of annual losses and the Xbox division.

Besides, you also completly ignore the context of what kind of company MS is in shareholders eyes. Like i said, shareholders of Coca Cola will not accept the board of execs to be paid any fee if the profit of the company doesn't go up 25% this year... MS is the same type of company when it comes to shareholder perspective, it needs to make profit and every year more... Xbox-project is a billion dollar dumpwaste in their eyes that can be a hassle of increasing annual profit, again, Xbox was threatened to be unplugged in 2003 by shareholder pressure, this did happen! It probably will happen again by 2007 or 2008 if Xbox isn't profitable by then, no matter what kind of plan the board has in store.

MS Windows XP Media manager and the new Origami are in that regard (of convergence) not positive because they share the same goal as the Xbox-project (and in a way actually compete with each other in that regard) and one of those three could be perceived to be a blocking element towards the other one from making a profit by shareholders.

I'm sure that all MS projects are routinely evaluated. The xbox division is slightly more special, in that its getting into homes, reaching a market which other MS products don't and has a lot higher brand awareness then either the XP media manager or the Origami (which although a media convergence device isn't really going after the same market as the 360 and lets face it, is a kinda joke). I cannot see the 360 being pulled within the next few years, barring a complete f**k up on MS' behalf. They have a lot of enthusiastic people working for them (check out majornelson, if its back up, each new post there gets a couple of thousand hits within a couple of hours) and are generating strong links to the community (lots of bloggers are consistently invited to check out their new stuff). They are working very hard to make the 360 a success for them and I believe, in the west, it will be.
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I agree that its pretty futile to debate the unknown, but I would assume that the controller is the main reason that developers are interested in the Wii, rather then the failings of either MS or Sony. Which is the main issue I had with your first statement.