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The Next-Gen Odd Couple
1up.com is running a lengthy piece talking to Microsoft VP J. Allard and Sony Computers of America President Kaz Hirai about what exactly the 'next generation' of consoles are about. The article is informative and varied, with talk about Xbox Live, the launch of the Xbox and PSX, and what past efforts from Sony and Microsoft will mean as the newest front in the console war heats up. From the article: "OPM: What are the benefits of being first to market, much like the Dreamcast was? What are the pitfalls? JA: Good question. I'd say one of the pitfalls from a competitive point of view is that you don't know what the other guys are doing, and to be frank, the guys over at Sony have been very good at not telling anyone what they're doing. It's tough to tell where they're going with the PS3. The other tough thing is that you're under the microscope [when you're first]. [Sony] shows two movies and a product that you can't touch behind a piece of glass, and that's what you get to write about on them."
The "Benefits of first to market"? Well, maybe Microsoft should ask Sega about this one. Only the hardcore gamers bought the dreamcast.
There hasn't been a proper next generation since the Sega Saturn. Everything else has just been an incremental improvement in graphics and storage. The XBox 360 has all these fantastic specs on paper, but in practice, you'll see the same games, with the same sound, the same online capabilities and the same premise but with a few more polygons and a higher resolution. All very nice, I'm sure, but hardly a revolution in gaming.
Another interesting interview
it seems to me the general public don't want anything new and interesting in gaming, all we see is rehashes of old genres, which while tried and true, bring very little new to the table the nintendo revolution on the otherhand could bring a lot new to the table, if they play their cards right. Although I fear, no matter what happens, sony and microsoft teenagers may never get rid of the anti-nintendo stigma that has been around for quite some time.
I think we should really be looking at the third player in the next gen of consoles. Sure XBox 360 and PS3 look to have really fast hardware, and look really pretty, but the Revolution actually looks like it will be doing something new and interesting. After reading about how the new King Kong game being put down by it's own developers for being not so good on the 360 unless you have a flashy new TV, as few people do, It's beginning to become apparent that maybe graphics won't matter all that much in the next generation. With the last 7 generations of consoles, we've seen graphics get noticable better every time. I'm not sure people will notice or care that much about the graphics this time. Most people still have a standard TV, and probably won't be able to tell the difference. Instead, I see many people, looking for something fun, which Nintendo has always provided. Not to mention that the Revo will be around 1/2 the price of the PS3 or the Xbox 360.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
what exactly the 'next generation' of consoles are about.
They're about making apple embarassed to have dumped bridges with IBM. triple core 3.2GHz G5... take that!
Stop trying to make them an all in one box that will do everything from play games to media center to feeding the cat. All in one boxes teh suxxor, as the young 'uns say today, not to mention a single point of failure and all that jazz.
The next gen consoles are about getting the console gamer to the on-line money trough through a drm locked down metered revenue stream.
Really, a lot of the ooo's and ah's with the consoles have more to do with their on-line abilities, supposedly better graphics (jury is in lockdown) and such that PC gamers have used for ages. The difference is that they can get the console gamers (which outnumber PC gamers) to fork over a lot more in on-line fees than PC players will tolerate. Plus, a lot of console gamers don't even know where to begin when it comes to modding their consoles to bypass their schemes.
The PC also has more options when it comes to free gaming on-line. A lot suck, but a lot are very good. Yes, the graphics on the new consoles will be better once the developers get the hang of programming for them, but gameplay is another matter.
Frankly, the new consoles have a bigger upside for the manufacturer's as a vehicle for metered gaming than they do for the gamer in terms of better games.
Sorry but that really is bull. That is coming from a company that thought the internet was a fad. Business @ the Speed of Thought
/. is good for you.
I'm just wondering what the general opinion on this is - I got the feeling that the interviewer asked J. Allard a lot of easy questions, almost putting words in his mouth for most of them. By contrast, Kaz Hirai seemed to get quite a grilling on Sony's rather more megar online offerings, among other things. PlayStation magazine certainly couldn't be accused of pro-PS bias anyway.
I haven't noticed anything revolutionary with this new xbox 360. If anything you might call it evolutionary with enhanced graphics but aside from that the games don't appear to be any different from the long line of games that preceded them.
"supposedly better graphics (jury is in lockdown)"
I dare you to take a 360 and hook it up to ANY tv with a native resolution of 720p, 1080i, or 1080p (the new Sony SXRDs for example). The image quality of a 360 is breathtaking when it is used correctly.
When you play a 360 on a regular TV the image has to be squished and makes it look horrendous. This console just isn't made for a non-widescreen non-HD tv.
"A newer console that is widely agreed to have better sound and graphical capabilities than its predecessor and offers new tricks that the old system could never do."
seems wrong.. a new and or different term is needed, publisher, host, host..
the manufacturer just stamps the cd's and prints the boxes....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
That's the most in your face webpages I've ever seen (based on how much screen real estate their portraits take). Sorry, I can't take ego cases seriously enough to figure out if they have anything significant to say.
is a live subscription a broadband service, or do you need a broadband connection in the first place?
just interested, either way I'm getting the Revolution. I don't buy MS or Sony products, partly because I hate those two companies' practices but mainly because they just don't make products that I'm at all interested in. the Revolution is the only console that offers something genuinely new, plus I like Nintendo games.
plus it's the cheapest and my gamecube games and controllers will still work (for "conventional" games). I don't know how the internet connection will compare but that isn't important to me since I don't think my home connection would be up to standards.
I am sorry? Exactly when was did MS get involved with flight simulator (first a non-ms game but now firmly owned by ms) vs Sony involvement with games? I spot it as MS being almost a full decade earlier. In 1982 MS licensed the program from sublogic to be released on the IBM-PC (before it had been on all the other platforms of the day but NOT that new fangled thingy). The playstation doesn't make an entry until 1994. (Oh and it even seems that MS flight simulator as it would become known was no fluke but actually commisioned by Bill Gates himself wich would explain why such an odd product would keep being developed)
Or do PC games not count as video games? When an article doesn't even do basic research how worthy can the rest of it be?
So for your info. MS has for a very long time had a game division for its operating platform and continues to do so. Sony wich became a game player much later in live also has a big PC division, almost all of its MMO titles for one. MS of course already had experience with the ancestor of live, MSN chat and similar software. Sony of course did not. MS was late to the internet and the whole online idea but not as late as sony so it is no wonder that the x-box was the first console to have a large online component.
Argh I am bored with this. Game journalists should be shot.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What the next gen means? Easy - more/much_more expensive to produce games = more "suit" decisions, less variety, fewer titles, more "cool" factor, less fun factor. Same shit basically as happened with PC gaming (if you remember early-mid 90's and today).
There was nothing wrong with the Dreamcast system! Of many of the same games made for it and the PS1 were better on the Dreamcast. For example: The Gauntlet Legacy game. The DC had nice controllers and a wide selection of games, including Shenmue. It just got swamped by the competition, which had more money to play with and could afford to lose more.
If you poke around online, it is not hard to find emulator programs for the Dreamcast so that you could play Genesis or even SNES games on it. How cool is that?
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
I was just reading a blurb in Game Informer magazine, about some 'patented' process Sony is working on with PS3 to undercut the used game market. Something to do with tying your game disc to your specific console. This and the reported Blu-Ray DRM which can disable your machine makes the Sony rootkit fiasco look tame by comparison.
Microsoft has been moving full steam ahead with Xbox Live, offering downloads for sale right into your 360's hard drive. I think it is both interesting and embarassing for MS that one of the most engaging Xbox 360 titles is a $5 download called Geometry Wars. But again, this is about locking in your customers, so you can nickel and dime them to death. I find it ironic that Microsoft touts media freedom with the 360, but you need a pricey MCE2005 PC setup to use it and it still doesn't support xvid nor divx MP4 videos.
If this is what they are offering customers this time around, I'm much more interested in seeing what Nintendo has to offer.
{ - Generic Guy - }
I just find it hilarious that it is the old boring IBM that is making all the upcoming consoles while AMD and Intel are churning out boring old desktop and server cpu's. Yawn. Old iron exciting, hip new trendsetters yawnville. If you had predicted this 10 years ago you would have been a laughingstock.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
When we launch a PS3 online service, we certainly want to take advantage of the PS3, the technology it brings, and offer a great online experience for PS3 users, but at the same time, we want to make sure we bring along the huge install base of PS2 users and the install base of PSP users and have them be able to take part in the online experience as well.
Sony understands that they make the money in the games, not the hardware. If many of the 100 million PS2 owners don't need "next generation", fine for Sony - and fine for the game developers, they will continue to make and sell PS2 games for several years.
Microsoft on the other hand, sells the XBox like they sell MS Office: In very short periods, they try to upgrade as many users as possible to the "newest" version.
That's just wrong: First, many console users don't want to upgrade so often. 4 years for the XBox is pretty short. And if you bought your XBox last year because of Halo2, will you upgrade just after one year?
Second, the more hardware Microsoft sells, the more losses they make. So IF they ever want to break even (or - gasp - even make a profit), they somehow have to pay for the hardware losses by higher game-prices or tricking more people into paying monthly fees.
But in the end, I think XBox360 will make as much losses as XBox1. I seriously doubt that XBox360 will ever make money for Microsoft.
Granted, I don't think having a bundled Blu-Ray/HD-DVD player will have quite the same effect since DVD's are just fine for everyone with a non-HD TV.
If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times ... it all depends on what you do with the hardware.
Guessing by your wording, you know what I'm talking about when I talk about the Revolution controller. Just how radically different it is from the current paradigm ensures that there will be great changes in gameplay coming from the Revolution. This is something that I'm looking forward to.
But does the X-Box 360's lack of "innovative" (i.e. trend-bucking) hardware necessarily mean that it won't lead to innovative gameplay that wasn't previously possible? Think about how powerful that CPU is. What kinds of things could be done with physics on it? What could you do with AI? Look at the large (for a console) ammount of memory. How large can levels get? How could you ever fill all that up? Look at the powerful GPU. What can you draw now that you couldn't before? Are there game concepts that people were looking at before that were simply impossible because previous consoles couldn't draw the output?
So, while the hardware is nothing earth-shaking or radically different, it opens up possibilities to developers that simply weren't available on the original X-Box. We just have to hope that (a) developers take advantage of the hardware in that way, and (b) we gamers actually buy the innovative games to support the trend.
-=-=-=-=-=
I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
Well, you know the old saying ... Jack of all trades, master of none.
-=-=-=-=-=
I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
"But in the end, I think XBox360 will make as much losses as XBox1. I seriously doubt that XBox360 will ever make money for Microsoft."
360 is currently averaging 3.9 games/console sold. Add in the monthly revenue from Xbox Live and the controllers and you have a great business going.
Microsoft is an industry leader for a reason, they know how to sell a product. The Xbox1 was just a last ditch attempt to gain some market penetration setting up the 360.
Like the class-action suit about your overheating power bricks?
These words from Allard, repeated throughout this gutsy interview, are the proof that the limited availability is more about public beta testing than production shortages, the hype machine or any thing else.
(Also: Allard was on form with his 'I'm so excited I could *POP*' attitude.)
I think this is part of sony's move to muzzle in on microsofts market. Only fair isn't it? Ah the two evil empire's battling it out. Joy! Remember the cold war, it gave us the intenet and free PORN!!! Eh I mean the internet and a way to communicate easily with our fellow man ABOUT FREE PORN!!!
Oh yeah I would buy one. The first non-handheld console I would own but a legit 300 dollar multi-core linux machine would be too sweet. No need to fear rootkits either, I don't remember any articles were sony was found not to be 100% compliant with the GPL so they could hardly rootkit the kernel. (Would a hacked kernel still be considered a rootkit?)
300 bucks for a genuine IBM grid machine.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
PS2 was first and dominated that last gen market, but then, Sony had taken over the market with the PSOne long before MS decides to enter the fray.
Its about games, pure and simple. Xbox failed simply because there were not enough exclusive titles, and not any gaming franchises established to help drive console sales. I never bought an Xbox because I could get the same titles for my PS2. What few exclusive titles for the Xbox, like Halo, eventually made it to PC.
Micosoft is setting up the XBox360 for the same fall. The problem know is that many "new" Xbox360 games will also see Xbox and PS2 versions. Not just are there no exclusive titles, but these titles are not even respecting console generations, being downgraded to sell on previous generation consoles.
Again, why would I buy an Xbox360 when, for the time being, many of the popular titles will be released for the PS2 as well.
I am a gamer that prefers gameplay over style and graphics. If a game is fun to play and entertaining for a long time, I could care less if the 3D graphics are not cinematic quality. I won't pay $400 to play a $40 game I could get for a system I already own.
If MS thinks that by getting there first is going to make the Xbox360 shine, then they will loose once again to gain market share. Without exclusive titles, and allowing game developers to release games for other platforms AND older generations, Microsoft is doing nothing to spur sales of Xbox360 hardware.
Sony has a number of platform specific titles that don't exist on any other platform, and I am sure when the PS3 is released, they won't be releasing the same games for the PS2. This is still why the PS3 will outsell the Xbox360, because MS inisist on whoring themselves and their game developers to anyone willing to buy a license, rather then forcing stronger commitments from game developers for exclusive titles.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Wasn't Nintendo's online service supposed to be free?
Clever signature text goes here.
I dare you to take a 360 and hook it up to ANY tv with a native resolution of 720p, 1080i, or 1080p
You're right on the first two resolutions, but not on the third.
The Xbox 360 hardware doesn't support 1080p --- its highest progressive mode is 720, whereas at 1080 it supports interlaced only. In contrast, the PS3 is categorically stated as supporting 1080p in its hardware. [<but insert vapourware alert here>]
Of course, this doesn't currently mean much in practice, except to those interested in spec wars. And it's also somewhat relevant to those who want their future A/V equipment to display computer data in the more rock-stable progressive format to which we've become accustomed in the computer world.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I mean, because of their new 3D input device, the gameplay will be vastly different . Like, in nintendo's teaser video where you saw a dude using it to control a sword, as if he was holding the sword in his own hand swinging away.
t _tgs05_quick.zip
Check out the vid here if u haven't: http://zdmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/1UP/revolution_con
No console have ever offered this kinda gameplay before, so i think its fair to call it revolutionary.
About Microsoft : "whose number of years in the videogame industry can be counted on a single hand"
:
So, I have 17 fingers!!!
From Wikipedia
"Bruce Artwick left subLOGIC to found Bruce Artwick Organisation to work on subsequent Microsoft releases, beginning with Microsoft Flight Simulator 3.0 in 1988."
Yeah, another FPS... racing... more sports games... great. Whatever. I'm really looking forward to the Revolution. At least Nintendo is trying to do something new.
I'm a consoles fan, I like both the Xbox1 and the PS2 (and have earlier generations of PS as well), and I intend to buy both the new gen consoles.
Yet, I agree with you. The only ones bringing something radically new to the table in terms of gaming are Nintendo.
On the technical front, the PS3's Cell will also be revolutionary, but new tech is not the same thing as novelty in gaming. And as for MS, the Xbox 360 brings nothing new to the gaming table at all. Sad.
Nintendo++ !!!
401 - Attention span not found
I've heard some vicious rumors that none of these next-gen consoles are going to offer support for my extensive collection of Atari 2600 games. What are they thinking? I'm sorry Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo - no Combat or Air-Sea Battle, no purchase. You've lost a potential customer.
-I like my women like I like my coffee - tied up in a sack and brought to me by Juan Valdez.
Why is Nintendo never considered a player in any of these interviews. I mean, without them, we wouldn't even have a lot of the console features that we have become accustomed to. Innovation does not start at the videocard; Innovation is a mentality. Nintendo has brought us the D-pad, shoulder buttons, analog sticks, the rumble feature and probably more that I'm leaving out. I'm not trying to sound like a Nintendo zealot, but I'd like to see interviews where this is taken into consideration. Sony + Microsoft Innovation. Sony + Microsoft = $ + Marketing + throngs of sheeple.
You people are missing the point. Why would i want any of these companies/systems to fail? i'd wish they were all ELITE in their own way. What if i could care less about using the new revolution controller? What if i have more fun using the old gamepads? Then *i* would get either a Xbox or a PS3...but if joe schmoe likes the rev, so be it! and vice-versa... Seriously...i'd wish we could love 'em all for the right reasons, embrace the fun/grafx/interfase/whatever and just select what we want...last time i checked, i didn't play games to be hip or trendy or high tech...i played to be entertained, and have fun...wether it's revolutionary or evolutionary...
Easily discredited. Sega clearly planned on using the Hitachi processor in the saturn for basic 3D, witness Virtua Racing for the Genesis (it's got a 20mhz hitatchi in it that slaves the main Genesis processor). And it's patently absurd to imagine Sega would design a console they couldn't port their arcade hit Virtua Fighter to. It is true Sega underestimated Sony's console and rushed to deal with it. Still, you've got to remember that console games had traditionally lagged _way_ behind the arcades. It was unusual for Sony to build such a powerful console (the psx tekken 2 for example is generally considered superior to the arcade).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It's simple: Nintendo is the only true next gen machine. You could even argue they are leap frogging this 1.5 version generation entirely.
THAT'S why.
I'm not scared of anonymous cowards.
You talk a lot about the "sense of immersion".
About knowing what a battle is about.
So yeah, Medal of Honor and Call of Duty look like REAL battles alright. Are they re-enactments of 18-year olds shitting their pants, barely out from their mother's arms and into an indiscriminate rain of bullets coming from other 16-to-18 year olds? Being bombed upon by your own army to force you to go forward? And any other ACTUAL tactics used in both world wars? No, eh? But hey, look at the constant glorification of slaying your fellow man. Actually, I'm pretty harsh, because usually the devs throw in a touching scene in which a rookie pulls out a photograph of his girlfriend, and swears he will marry her after this war is over. Yeah, that's pretty original, too.
But it certainly looks badass. Throw grenade this, dodge that. "Immersion", my ass. LOL WAR HAS NEVER BEEN SO COOL!
Enjoy your mindless drone brainwashing, and sign up for the army today, my young lad! A golden future awaits you!
I'm not a "let's censor violent games" drone, it's just that asshats who speak about "immersion" in a WARGAME, but know as much about the army as Rambo told them make me laugh.
tl;dr : Can't you use a sports game to exemplify the immersion effect? At least you'll know what the fuck you're talking about, and you'll have less nightmares.
Google wasn't the first search engine, Lexus wasn't the first luxury car make, and iPod wasn't the first MP3 player. But who owns those markets now? I don't think many folks think of Lycos, Ford, or Creative first for search, luxury cars, or music players. The whole idea that the winner is the one who gets there first with the most may work in war, but I'm skeptical about it's use as a business best practice. In the longer term of the technology game, say more than 6 months, better often wins. (I'm aware of anecdotal counter-arguments)
Do something interesting and cool, do it well, and charge a reasonable price. Your console will be the top seller. Sell the same-old same-thing and you'll lose out to an innovator.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
In this sense it's completely appropriate to categorize consoles in terms of "generations". Of course in the video game business you are at least (usually) assured of improvements, if only incremental and of a non-revolutionary nature with each new generation, while the term when used in other contexts may not have such a generally positive connnotation.
The XBox360 seems to be conditioning the public to get used to paying more than the standard $200 for a console. To me, a next gen console means including new features and staying in the $200 price range.
Now, I have no idea what the costs are associated with the 360, or if its even possible to keep it in that price range, but it seems to me that $399 would be pretty difficult to eat for many parents wanting to get this thing under the Christmas tree. Maybe M$ just didn't make cost one of its priorities when designing the system...who knows.
It will be interesting to see what the PS3 pricing schemes will be in comparison to the 360's.
I got nothin'
Forget personality conflicts. Interracial couples are old hat. Cross-religion? Easy. PC vs Mac? Getting more interoperable all the time.
He's an X-box guy. She's a Playstation girl. Can they reconcile their differences, or are they doomed to an early breakup? Find out in our 6-part reality series...
Polygon rendering is going to be overtaken by raytracing. Tracing eliminates the problem of occluding geometry, or "overdraw". Ceteris paribus, occlusion speeds up a tracer by ending computation on the occluded ray. Tracer threads will run very quickly on an architecture like Cell, where a thread can yield as soon as it requests a load from main to local memory. As long as a thread typically uses less memory than (local memsize)/n, where n is the number of threads (on that SPE) necessary so that by the time the other threads hit a memory access, yield, and come around again, the thread under consideration's memory request has finished, then the algorithm will be very efficient, because it will be as fast as if it were running out of the local store (like a cache) exclusively, but it will be able to trace immensely complicate pointerlinked structures in main memory. The threads are completely independent, of course. Mail me if you want to see an mpeg of an experimental tracer running on x86. If you want a big movie, send me an ftp or ssh address where it can be uploaded.
Is "Online! Online! Online!" Allard's version of a Ballmer rant? And why's he always 'J' Allard? Does he have an embarrassing first name?
You must think in Russian.
The only thing worse than statistics is statistics pulled out of thin air. http://www.simmtester.com/page/news/shownews.asp?n um=8484
Last year, 17% of US households had HDTV capable TVs. This is expected to increase to 22% this year. And exceed 55% by 2008. Given the lifetime of a console, it seems that it is better to have HDTV capabilities now than to wait for the next-next gen.
The GameCube for the most part is on par with a Xbox, and in some areas better. But being "naive," you wouldn't have known that bit of info.
We got to see it in Game Informer magazine recently, and now it rears its ugly head once again here on Slashdot. I have a suggestion for you disgruntled gamers. Give it up. Get a life, get a job, get a degree, get a shrink, get a significant other, most importantly get off your asses and do something else if the games are really so unbearable. And while you're at it, you can spare the rest of us your whining. The game industry doesn't revolve around you, it revolves around people who are realistic enough to simply buy the games they like and not buy the ones they don't like. They're just games, not a religion.
Would love to read and comment but the site seems to be slashdotted. Anybody cares to post it (all or part) here or post some cache link?
The Dreamcast failed because it was starved of third party support, in particular EA (who's sports titles are huge sellers) and Square/Enix. Launching first was the only chance Sega had, and the odds were already long at that point.
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
I'll confirm that, but I find XBox has a slight graphical edge. ...so tell me again why lower power, which apparently won't be that noticable anyway, is going to doom Nintendo?
Still, pl1ght, XBox had the best graphics of the current generation, but the worst sales. PS2 looked worse than a lot of Dreamcast games, but won the fight by a long shot.
I got online the other night to play PGR2 with a guy who just flat-out demolished me. I haven't taken that disc out of the drive since the day we shipped it. I probably have around 800 hours on this thing. A situation like that-well, gee, if a kid spends 40 or 50 bucks on a title and then 50 bucks on a subscription, he or she's in for 100 bucks, but they've also played it for over a year. That's enormous value. Typically, a gamer like that would go out and buy five racing games to get a fix.
That has got to be bullshit. I don't think I've logged anywhere near 800 hours even in Warcraft, and I lived in that fucking game for awhile. His math looks a little RIAA to me.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
If you're concerned about load times on the PS2, then I'd highly suggest that you buy one of those disc copier programs that let you rip games to the internal hard drive. Not only are load times nearly eliminated, but you can just turn your system on and have access to a hundred plus games. The only downside is that it can take an hour or so to rip a large DVD game. For the record, no I don't pirate games, I have a very large collection of video games that were amassed over the past twenty years.
Whining about your hobby is a lot less pitiful than whining about other people whining about their hobby.
First of all, there is massive forced bundling right now. That raises attach rate (games sold per unit). Second of all, there are large numbers of people who preordered machines from places like Electronics Boutique and still haven't received their console, although they received the games on November 22nd.
These two factors raise the attach rate significantly. It simply won't stick as the consoles actually become individually. Especially with the awful launch titles.
I bought my 360 standalone and only bought two games. And I wish I hadn't bought one of the two (Kameo)! I think that two games will become more normal when you can get machines without bundles.
Additionally, I think you overstate the case with Xbox 1. Many people might say that MS was willing to lose money on Xbox 1 if necessary. But your statement makes it out as if MS sold it with the intent of losing money on it. I don't think that's true. I think they intended to make the platform a financial success and they just failed to do so.
360 sales are poor so far due to supply constraints (except in Japan where people don't seem to want it). We'll see how things go after Xmas, when units are actually available and the true quality of the launch titles is better known by those thinking of buying one.
I have to say, I like the 360 a lot, and I like MS' attitude on this whole thing (esp. in the interview this article references). But I'm not yet convinced that MS is going to make a financial go of it this time around.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95