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Xbox Losses Double, Xbox Shrinks
seldo writes "According to ITWorld, losses in the last quarter at Microsoft's Home and Entertainment segment have doubled. From the article: 'The segment, which also includes Microsoft's TV platform and PC games, posted a quarterly operating loss of US$348 million, compared with $180 million in the same period a year ago.'" An anonymous reader
points to similar coverage at news.com, pointing out that the company also reports "profits for Office, and one small note about an undisclosed presumably Japanese company that Microsoft if propping up. So, the big question on my mind is, who is Microsoft secretly holding above water, and why? The fact that they are presumably Japanese, seems to point towards an XBox partner. Could this explain the sudden flood of Sega exclusive games?" Another anonymous reader writes "Microsoft will be showing a smaller sized Xbox at E3 this May. In addition to the smaller size of the hardware, the Xbox Lite will also be integrated with Media2Go allowing Xbox users to download digital content such as music and movies. Wonder what this means for all the current Xbox Mod Chips?"
Bill Gates shrugs it off as he burns hundred dollar bills while laughing in front of soup lines in downtown Seattle.
Working in Japan for one of XBOX's main competitors, the prevailing sentiment seems to be that XBOX's lackluster sales seem to be similar to those of American cars... big, bulky, typical of the American mindset that bigger is better. No one buys them (cars nor XBOX) in Japan because size is at a premium.
Whereas, with Nintendo, we have designed the GameCube from the ground up to reflect Japanese aesthetic sentiments of small size, symmetry, and fitting into the big picture without standing out, a fundamental tenet of Zen Buddhist philosophy.
Practically, the smaller profile allows GC to be used as a very compact embedded computer/processor unit in non-game applications. We have alreay begun some preliminary exploration with the Japanese Self Defence Forces on integrating GC into their Tomahawk missiles to provide enhanced imagery tracking, just like Iraq is using PS2 for their SCUDS.
Furthermore, and most excitingly, we have experimented with some preliminary projects on stacking the GC into clusters, allowing games to take advantage of more processing power as needed -- upgrading GCs for more memory and power will in the future be as seamless as putting LEGOs together.
We are continuing this trend with our future game consoles, and I would advise Microsoft to please to more serious market search if they wish to be a serious contender in the Japanese marketplace.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
If you say so... one of the big reasons that I didn't buy an XBox was that I didn't want a hard drive. Hard drives are unreliable as hell in PC's, and the last thing that I want when I'm sitting down with a beer and a bag of chips on the couch is to have to worry about whether or not the hard drive is starting to make a funny noise.
And, what's the point of a network connector? What is that for? Playing against other people? Ugh. No thanks.
I *love* the simplicity of the PS2.
Too bad slashdot got rid of the real moderators.
Slashdot 's editors are dickheads
Fisrt point: by modem technology is dead I mean a few things. One, there is no further progress to be made in the technology. Two, from a personal experience standpoint, I cannot use a modem to play games. It just does not work reliably enough to ensure an enjoyable gaming experince.
Is chess a modern game? Hence my clarification. We all know chess is a trivially simple game to play over the littlest of data links. Even that lame IP over Carrier Pidgeon could do it without the players getting anxious.
We're talking about games like Madden which feature 11 men per side that have to be constantly updated in order for the game to function properly. That takes a large amount of bandwidth when you compare it to hearts, no?
Furthermore the fact that the system requirements say something is a joke. Go get the latest game and run it on the "requirements" then look next to the requirements and find the "recommended hardware" instead. If you've actually done it and it works, say so. But don't make guesses and claims based on marketing information.