I was thinking about the Game Cude, but it doesn’t play DVD’s. 
Cube even.:smack:
Well, if you want to get picky, it is possible to get a Cube that plays DVDs.
http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?category=77&products_id=1575&
No, it’s $250. The article you linked to is a year-and-a-half old and there has been a hundred dollar price drop since then, and potentially another drop in the near future. Furthermore you ignored all the money Microsoft spent on advertising, the initial budget for which was $500 mil and lord knows where it’s at now. Sorry, they ain’t sold that many Xboxs but they have lost a shitload of money.
Also Microsoft didn’t become a profitable business by concentrating on ventures that don’t make money. Just because the company as whole is raking in the dough doesn’t mean they’ll prop up a dying division just to save face or out of some longshot hope things will suddenly turn around. If the Xbox doesn’t turn a profit sometime soon (a year or two minimum), or at least stop losing so much money, I think Microsoft will drop it.
My overall opinion is that the Xbox will die eventually, but not yet. I think that for right now it is a solid buy.
Oh, and those frickin’ controllers could be used as jersey barriers. I placed one under a wheel of my car when I was changing a tire and my car didn’t budge.
I don’t want to get into number discussions (as I have no solid figures), but don’t forget that in the past year or so Microsoft’s cost of the CPU, HD, DVD, RAM, etc has almost certainly gone down as well.
I wouldn’t be suprised if MS was breaking even on the consoles now. Sony is reportedly turning a profit on the PS2 now after losing on them for over a year.
Good point, MS is probably losing less than $250 per Xbox, but even with the reduction of costs they’ve droped the price 33% already this year. In order for them to be making money off console sales they’d have to get production costs per box down to $150 dollars or so (number based on current price tag and slightly pulled out of my ass), and considering that it cost MS about $425 initially to get an Xbox on the shelves that’d be a hell of a reduction.
I’ll make this succinct as possibe…if you love computer games (with all their complexity and depth and features and things to remember), the X-Box is a great purchase. If you have young children, probably not. If you want plenty of variety in the games, definitely not.
Oh yeah, also: 1) depends on what you want 2) eyes and ears 3) don’t believe the hype 4) rent, rent, rent 5) did I already say eyes and ears? 6) do the research
Asylum, good point on the age of the article. I think that Microsoft can lose money on the console as long as they make more money in software.
Well KWIDJIBO, one thing you have probably learned in this post is people are rabidly devoted to whaever system choice they made. Also people on both sides of the debate are quick to qote any press against the other side.
Bottom line is do yoyu like the systems and the games. I really like my Xbox and enjoy the games. More great games are sleated to be out for Xmas and even more after Xmas. Microsoft has a very strong online offering (all 150,000 Xbox live kits sold out within a week of being on the market).
Is Microsoft losing money on the Xbox? sure, they expected it… but they are in for the long haul.
One figure a few people keep misquoting is MS sait they would spend 2 billion in promotion of the xbox. They didn’t say “we will only spend 2 billion” a some people have said. It is a recognized fact that MS might not hit their stride until Xbox 2 comes out.
Already the Xbox games are getting better and better. Splinter Cell for the Xbox is the best version of that title available (as rated by most every independant gaming magazine), Mechassault is highly praised and is offering downloadable content in january offering new game modes, mechs, etc.
As foir kids titles, MS has Blinx, Sneakers, and a few others that are coming out as well.
I would say, the best judge of a system’s meeting your needs is to play it.
On a side note, I have had no issues with my Xbox since it’s purchase back in July.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-976094.html?tag=fd_top
MS is pretty committed to this.
Synthesis said:
History has shown that when Microsoft commits, shit happens.
Yeah, I knew that would happen, but I counted on the fact that there would be a few folks that gave objective outlooks.
I think I’m gonna be happy with the XBox. I look forward to taking my 10 year old out on Unreal Championship. 
Yer getting me worried Lib. “Shit” as in ‘things get done’, or “shit” as in ‘nothing’?
For about a day, enjoy it while you can… my kids (12, and 10) whoop my butt in Halo all the time…
We’ll see. I’ve been playing FPS’s for some time now and am pretty good, but I am a bit worried because…well…so is my son. 
I’m surprised no one has mentioned this, but Xbox is now being packaged with the smaller “Controller S.” To me, this is a disappointment because the “big” controller is being discontinued. I’m glad I have two. However, most people prefer the smaller one and I guess the majority rules.
I bought one on the day they came out. I really bought it for a DVD player and it just seemed like a good idea to get one that also plays games. The best part is the hard drive, it allows you to play your own music during games, allows you to save games and game mods, and of course downloadable content. The drive is friggin’ huge, it has 50,000+ “blocks” of memory from the start and with all of my music, saves, and downloads, I still haven’t gotten it down to 50,000. And it comes with an ethernet card ready for online connection. If you have dial-up, too bad. But if you have broadband, you get to play with other people who have broadband. Yes this closes off part of the market, but it makes it better for those who have broadband (and I must say, Xbox or not, get broadband!).
I was a beta tester for Xbox Live. Even in that phase I rarely ran into any problems to report. All games support voice, which is phenomenal, and there is very little lag.
It seems that Xbox is targeted at, well me. That is, the over 20 market who sit at their computers being nerdy. It works great as a DVD player and even plays homemade DVDs.
I’ve also heard that a larger percentage of PS2s have needed repairs, but it probably all depends on who you ask. Regardless of how diehard a fan is of any system, I bought it simply because of the power of the system such as the processor, the hard drive, and the 1080i HDTV support (Dragon’s Lair 3D looks amazing). After owning it a year, I only own five games (seven if you count the live package). And I only had two until November, so the recent explosion of releases is working out.
Ranma,
Your claim was that
In your post you never meantion game companies profits. From your post the only thing I get is that you think the XBox was making a profit. I proved you wrong on that point.
At the same time I never counted MS out. I said that MS had an uphill climb.
I believe that Ms has a good chance at making the XBox profitable. At the same time I am not going to bet on it. The XBox is going to be around for years but there is a decent chance that it will die in a while.
Slee
It can go either way. You can get the very best mouse there is, or you can get Windows 98.
My son in college has access to both Playstation and Xbox. The Xbox is his; one of his roommates has Playstation. No GameCube because “it’s for little kids”.
(It’s no wonder his grades aren’t as good as they could be. I went off to college with a pen and notebook and alarm clock… he went off to college with not just an alarm clock, but also with Xbox, microwave, refrigerator, computer, television, VCR, stereo, and DVD player. Sheesh.)
The concensus amongst his friends is that they prefer to play the Xbox. I have to confess I don’t know the reasons why though. Just thought I’d share their “vote”. I can tell you that when he’s home on break, we play Halo on my widescreen HDTV with Surround Sound, and it’s awesome. I can also tell you that he was playing a baseball game on it last summer and the graphics were so realistic I thought it was an actual game being played (from the adjoining room I couldn’t see him with the controller).
We bought him Xbox Live for Christmas… there goes another tenth of a point in his GPA. :smack:
For those especially with older X-Boxes, check out the latest at www.arcadiandelsol.com, particulary the top coupld of stories.www.arcadiandelsol.com. Seems that Microsoft is using the same ideas with the X-Box that they did with XP, which is good when trying to stop cheaters, but bad when you are trying to get around being ripped off for lousy components.