OléGunner;210685428 said:
Hmmm a bit harsh.
They've successfully cultivated a decent brand in Xbox (albeit now limited in worldwide appeal) and created some good IP for themselves in Halo, Gears and Forza.
Could always spin the division off if ever needed but that'll likely never happen.
I don't feel like I'm being too harsh. They had the cash to do it, and it was a decent enough gamble to make (PCXL thought otherwise though), they just haven't gotten the traction they needed. I'm not sure what other ways you could break into the console gaming market these days besides throwing buckets of cash at it...
To be fair, over 80 million xbox 360 sold was mighty impressive and thus it was one of the most bought home consoles ever.
Yeah, they certainly had some success. Jumping into a crowded market and hitting that number on your second entry is impressive, but after 15 years (good god they've been in console gaming for 15 years now!) I feel like they need to justify the effort and expenditure to investors and just haven't gotten the numbers to do that. It's impossible to know how much they've actually earned/lost overall on XBox, but clearly it hasn't been a boon for them.
For Nintendo, even though the WiiU was a commercial flop, the as a whole is a gaming company through and through, so they sorta have to make it work somehow or die. Sony is a hardware company first, so jumping into the console space (especially in the manner they did) was viable, and they've been able to do well enough every cycle to keep it going, though I wonder what would have happened if they hadn't turned the PS3 around.
Losing XBox as a console brand would suck some, if for nothing else than having three major players is nice. They could turn it around, Sony/Nintendo have turned it around in the past after all, but it's more a question of 'Is it worth it' than 'Can we do it'.