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How IBM Out-foxed Intel With The Xbox 360

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the beat-them-to-the-punch dept.

xcaverx writes "Learning from failure is a hallmark of the technology business. Nick Baker, a 37-year-old system architect at Microsoft, knows that well. A British transplant at the software giant's Silicon Valley campus, he went from failed project to failed project in his career. He worked on such dogs as Apple Computer's defunct video card business, 3DO's failed game consoles, a chip startup that screwed up a deal with Nintendo, the never successful WebTV and Microsoft's canceled Ultimate TV satellite TV recorder. But Baker finally has a hot seller with the Xbox 360, Microsoft's video game console launched worldwide last holiday season."

1 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Dollars in the short term... by rseuhs · · Score: 1, Flamebait
    When you are not a fanboi, why are you parroting this nonsense?

    First of all, 20% is not "amazing marketshare". You could argue wether 20% is acceptable when you want to coexist among your competition, but it's certainly not "amazing". And when you want to become number one it's neither amazing nor acceptable.

    Secondly, it's irrelevant wether it's the "first round" or not. AFAIK every "first round" console, be it from Atari, Sega, Sony or Nintendo managed to get more than 20% in the "first round" - actually those companies didn't have billions to waste, so there wouldn't have been a "second round" with such a bad launch.

    Thirdly, doing well is no guarantee to do better in the "next round". Just look at Sega or Atari. So how is XBox1 marketshare going to help XBox360? Especially when backwards-compatibility is far from perfect?

    When we look at the figures, XBox360 had the worst launch of any console in recent history: It launched worse than PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, Gamecube and (gasp) XBox1. So much for "setting up for second and third generation". (If XBox1 was "setting it up", shouldn't XBox360 sell better than it?)

    Isn't it funny? When XBox1 was released the fanbois were boasting about how Sony is doomed. A couple of months after the launch it was just "setting up for the second generation."

    Now, a big deja-vu: First the fanbois claimed how it will smash PS3, a few months later (when XBox360 can't even outsell 6 year-old Playstation 2) they say it's "setting up for the third generation".

    Yeah, right.

    Oh of course, it's all a supply problem, I forgot.