Slashdot Mirror
XBOX 360=Dreamcast 2.0?
Tenken writes "1UP has an eye opening article on the many similarities between the XBOX 360 and the Dreamcast. It's actually pretty scary, case in point: both consoles launched a year before their major competitors, and even their logos are incredibly similar. The article also goes on to mention why the 360 will not fail miserably like the Dreamcast. "
They don't care if your mods help sell consoles. They lose money on the consoles. They make the money on the software and accessories. So, by you modding the console, and buying nothing else (save for maybe a memory card to perform the 'raincoat mod' or something) they get nothing else from you. How is this good for them? Why is Microsoft happy that they sold more Xbox's to people when they lost so much money on each one? If you don't get Xbox live, don't buy games, and never get the latest greatest accessory, then they lose money on you. They couldn't care less that you are running Linux on it, or playing homebrew games that make them no money...
The only possible benefit is that if you modded their console, you are probably more likely to have modded the competitions console as well, and thus their competitor also lost money on you...
Now DRM is a little different, I find it annoying in most cases and believe that it doesn't really help stop piracy in most cases. And I am a software engineer, so I can relate to not wanting my stuff pirated. I know a lot of musicians who also beleive DRM is not the right way to solve the problem, we're all just waiting for a better alternative unfortunately.
"Microsoft is not coming off an abysmal failure of a console"
I guess that depends on how you define abysmal failure.
Microsoft lost $4 billion, equivalent to 10% of their profits over the last 4 years, to come into a very distant and very sloppy second in a market with only 3 competitors.
Microsoft literally gave the Xbox away. Divide the 4 billion they lost by the average price of the Xbox over the last 4 years and you get almost 20 million consoles - which accounts for almost every console they "sold".