Quote:
Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse
Q: How many times does an Xbox 360 unit have to be sent in and repaired before they will replace it with a completely new unit?
That's not how it works. You send in a broken box, you get back a working box (hopefully). So there is a rotating stock of the original units that get repaired and returned to service. Plus, they keep finding these cashes of launch units here and there and using them too. Didn't you hear during the holidays that bundles were found with units made in 06? Those were pulled back from the retail channel last spring when the new heatsink was done, and had the new heatsink placed on them and then put into the shipping flow like any other box.
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In Canada, customers get brand new xboxes as replacements.
And all the talk about Sony or Microsoft dropping out of the console race is patently ridiculous and uninformed. Microsoft had profits near $5 Billion last year. They have WILLINGLY lost millions every quarter since the original XBox came out because for Microsoft, it is their in-road out of the computer-room and out of the office and into the living rooms which has been a clearly stated goal in releases and reports since the late 80s - to get Microsoft in systems in every part of the home.
Sony is a home entertainment giant and the PS3 is the core of their biggest push and only success since the mid-80s in getting their format into living rooms, as part of the royalties they get as part of the Blu-Ray consortium, the PS3 being one of the bigger factors in getting Blu-Ray adopted. Most people don't realize what Sony has to gain from this, Sony lost in 1983 with Betamax to VHS. They lost out on royalties on two generations of home video in VHS and DVD. If Blu-Ray succeeds, the consortium and Sony get royalties from every single Blu-ray disc sold if it becomes the new generational standard.
Neither the PS3 or Xbox are strictly about making money as gaming systems (although Microsoft turned a profit for the first time in 7 years in the game division last year). They are about getting Sony more integrated into their entertainment business and to cement Blu-Ray as a standard successor to DVD so they get royalties from every single disc sold. That kind of money pales anything the PS3 could ever make on gaming. Microsoft's XBox gets them where they always wanted, on top of the TV so they can have further influence and reach and sales for their software and products as well as marketing, they are already a multi-billion dollar company where most of their profits come from offices around the world and they can afford to lose money year after year on XBox simply to work on the brandname and to get into the living room.
Out of all of them, Nintendo is the only true videogame company left, that utter commitment into pure games and the novelty and freshness of gaming is what it took for Nintendo to survive as an underdog against the big two where most others just couldn't compete years ago (Sega). Nintendo realized they never had the money to compete (or lose) on high-tech hardware so they did the smart thing and remembered that gaming should be about fun and thusly the success of the Wii and DS. Most people seem to forget that the N64 and Gamecube were relatively poor performers and Nintendo subsisted for many years on the strength of Gameboy and their handheld dominance...Sony tried to leverage the handheld market as another way to sell their media products (UMD Sony movies) but that was pretty much a disaster, another failed format...Blu-Ray however, probably will succeed.