May 14th, 2012
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At a Northwest Entrepreneur Network event in Seattle, former president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, Robbie Bach, spoke about the success of the Xbox business, and how Microsoft capitalized on mistakes made by competitor Sony with the PlayStation 3.
“Sony mismanaged its 70 percent market share,” Bach said [via GeekWire]. “The transition to PlayStation 3 was really, really bad. And really hard. They mismanaged their partners, they mismanaged their cost structure. They made their next platform so complicated that developers couldn’t develop for it.”
Bach says Microsoft’s ability to strike up strong partnerships with publishers like EA and Activision is another reason for the success of the Xbox 360.
“It turns out we were able to convince retailers and publishers like Activision, Electronic Arts and others, that it was a good thing for Microsoft to be successful, because if we were not successful, the only game in town was Sony. Being dependant on somebody else was bad for them, and so they supported us disproportionately to what they should have, mathematically,”.
But it wasn’t all cherry at Microsoft. Who can forget the infamous RROD disaster? Bach certainly doesn’t . He calls it “the most painful thing in my life,” but, “the company persevered through that.”
This is interesting seeing how Microsoft, or at least Bach working at Microsoft was thinking when the “console war” was first starting. He also talks about how Apple does business extremely well and why the Microsoft Zune failed.
Read the full in-depth article at GeekWire.
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As much of a playstation fan i am, i can respect this guys comments about Sony… in fact, i respect the fact that, his views are alot more realistic than, most spoke personnel. I still think the PS3 is a better console than shitbox, despite Sony’s errors… 0.01% graphical difference mean nothing to me when it come to accessibility on my console and PS3 has that advantage over 360; perhapes that should have been another topic this guy should’ve tried to fit in his rants…
the graphical differences only relate to the multi-plats due to all the developers M$ have in thier back pockets (among other things).
When it comes to exclusives, the PS3 truely shines and is unbeatable. The PS3 exclusives really expose the xbox as out-dated PC technology in a compact cosole box. Hell, the original Xbox was simply a condensed Pentium 733Mhz!!!!!!
The fact that everyone is thumbing down Money and Samchez is sad. They both exactly right. The hardware contained in the Xbox is so simple, which is why the PS3 was getting treated like shit because people didn’t wanna go the extra mile. And multiplatform games are literally the same shit, the only difference is that Xbox is darker and PS3 is lighter. We aren’t in 2007 anymore people.
they both are* sorry for my typos. -.-
Thanks szubakable. But I expected that. This is predominantly an Xbox fanboy/girl site.
You call XBOX a shitbox..how about I call your PS3 a PSshit..and the graphical difference is 10%..there are already a lot of people who enjoys playing on their XBOX 360 and enjoys their life..
I love both my systems, but I do have to agree Sony did drop the ball with the PS3.
If you think about it Sony should of capitalized on the RROD, but instead they did not and Microsoft took over the North American market.
Ah yes, so typical of a microsoft spokeperson to boast about success through a competitors mishaps over thier own endeavours. Quite amusing and expected. It’s not what M$ did right, its what the others did wrong. Pathetic really.
I can promise you sony has learn’t from thier mistakes and the Xbox tyrany will come to an end eventually.
Sony didn’t capitalize on RRoD as it is not the way they do business. They focus on thier own strengths, not taking advantage of the misgivings of others.
So sick of M$ and thier American “little d*ck” syndrome.
Except Jack Tretton.
Personally i think you overrate the ps3 exclusives samchez.
Apart from uncharted’s high quality visuals, i see very little else that makes ps3 exclusives games stand out compared to say gears of war 3 on 360(visuals wise).
Infamous, resistance, killzone all look nice but aren’t that impressive.
The fact that in 6 years of the ps3 i can only think of the uncharted series that has really impressed me, shows you how overrated(imo)these so called exclusives have been.
Only the gears of war series has really impressed me on 360 as well, it’s in the same boat as the ps3.
The sooner the new consoles come out and are capable of playing games in proper full hd, then we’ll really see visually impressive games.
I’m fed up playing console games at a res lower than what i was playing 8 years ago on pc.
Roll on the new hardware
I think you purposely forgot to mention God of War 3 on your little list there; seeing as how, God of War 3′s graphics absolutely mops the floor with gears of war 3…
God of war 3′s opening scene was excellent yeah, after that it was the usual corridor gameplay/graphics from all the other games in the series.
Nice start to the game but it never maintained that impressive opening throughout the rest of the game.
did you ever really play god of war 3?
its not just the opening fight is epic ok
every boss fight more or less were as epic as the opening
and all the cutscene through out the whole game were link with the gameplay with no loading is what most impressive about this game
I played and completed god of war 3. The opening section was the strongest part for me in the entire game, sure the boss fights were good(as they were in the ps2 GOW games), but after the opening scene it seemed to settle into a predictable formula.
It was a good game though, i won’t deny that.
Because i’m very pro xbox 360, some people think i hate my ps3(which i’ve had for 5 years), but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
I’ve enjoyed certain games on it but still maintain that the exclusives are overatted on it(apart from a couple of titles).
You don’t hate the PS3? Yet you bash the system every time it lost a head-to-head acting like it was their fault.
I may over-rate the PS3 exclusives a little, but the main point still stands. While the leap from multi-plat to exclusive (quality wise) isn’t all THAT huge, it is still significant and proves which machine is ultimatley more advanced when a game is developed right.
OK!this comment from this guy is just stupid!both companies have made mistakes in the past but whilest everyone is thinking nagative about it actually its not all been bad’on sony’s behalf if they didnt make it so difficult to program for then we wouldnt be seeing such awsome games like uncharted and god of war games as the thing just wouldnt be able to pull off games that needed that power to run them”this is why people like sony because they pull things off that only microsoft can dream of doing,OK!dont get me wrong the 360 has some great games but nowhere in the league of the ps3 exclusives,I have both machines and i do thing the ps3 is better’and theres meany out there who will agree with me on this one,so this guys comments mean complete shit to me lol.
This is really true. Facts is that PS3 sold more on launch day than the 360 did. But due to the high price, the sales dropped down pretty hard after few days. And that’s when people started finding out about Xbox 360. Well… I was one of them. The price of PS3 now is really boosting up PS3 sales. PS3 total sales is only a mere million below the total of 360 sales.
u r 100% right, but when you take into account the fact that ps3 was a great blue ray player, a ps2, an ps3 an dvd an cd player, with blue tooth an a great media hub, with web browsing an another o.s feature you can see why the console at launch was great value for money, also if you take away the boost in total console sales for xbox 3FixMe due to the dreaded red ring of death, an people buying multiple consoles, iam sure the ps3 total sales would have left the 360 total sales in the dirt by now, an factor in the whole 1yr advantage of sales the 360 had, an its easy to see ps3 is by far the leader in the hd consoles dept, i game an own all consoles an have a decent pc too, but every 360 i have owned has failed at some point where as my launch fatty ps3 works to this day flawlessly, an i even bought a slim recently to lighten the load on my fatty ps3, the old boy has given me many hours of gaming pleasure! unlike with my countless 360s, as soon as i would get into a game, WAM!! rrod!! an it knocked my confidence in ms,hell my original fat xbox an crystal xbox works to this day, so what the hell happened? i tell u what it was cos the 360 was rushed so ms could get a years head start on rival sony, at the cost of the gamers!!! shame on them, i vowed to never buy a ms console ever again! shame cos i did love my 360s, but as soon as i got my ps3 there was no contest, my bravia tv, my surround amp,my sony Eriksson phone, all are built with quality!
360 is the best console ever. John Carmack
John Carmack is an irrelevant idiot who can’t develop a proper game.
Thumb me down. Even though you know RAGE still sucked badly.
Yeah, John carmack is reeeeeaaallll credible. The fact I saw the PC version of RAGE for $13 in a chuck out bin at most games stores around here already, is testament to that. it really made me LOL.
Oh yeah for sure, Rage did REAL well. Most games that just come out remain at the 50-60$ price tag and RAGE hit the bin for 20$ just like that. John Carmack is so credible.
rage is just a test of the IDtech5 engine, it still pushed consoles to new limits that anyone would highly doubt 2 years ago.
Yeah I agree with what this guy says. Sony dropped the ball hard. They could’ve released a console that was better in every regard to the 360 and easy to develop for but because they wanted to promote new tech like the Cell (which forced use of expensive RAMBUS ram) and Blu ray, most developers were put off having to develop for it first due to it’s complex architecture and the results were inferior ports for the first few years. Also MS did a really good job at marketing the 360 as a worthy alternative and getting strong 3rd party support on board. Combine with the Wii winning a lot of the casual market while 360 got the hardcore gamers, PS3 faced an uphill struggle.
I also think Sony dropped the ball with PSN. It took years before it caught up with XBL. But the worst mistake imo was not taking advantage of RROD. Kudos to MS for extending the warranty FOC by an extra 3 years but Sony should have mercilessly attacked the 360 as an unreliable console by use of clever advertising. They could have sown seeds of doubts into millions of gamers minds who had yet to buy into the gen but alas it was not taken advantage of. Sega made great strides against Nintendo by making fun of them during the SNES/Mega Drive era. “Sega does what Nintendon’t”.
I think the fact Sony didn’t take advantage of RRoD was very credible and respectable. Focusing on the mistakes of others over your own strengths is really bad form. Good on Sony for not lowering to that standard.
sony was to busy digging that multi-billion dollar hole that their playstation department is in to focus on taking advantage of microsofts RROD issue (like ANY other “stable” company would do)
“Sega does what Nintendon’t”
which is why all of their consoles failed. And when they finally got it right with the Dreamcast Xbox and PS2 kicked the shit out of it.
man I remember the Sonic and Mario feud.. Now who ever would of thought that Sonic would be on a Nintendo console?
We all know who won that one.
Actually that’s not true. The Master System did very well in Brazil and Europe while the Mega Drive/Genesis did really well in the US and Europe. The ‘Sega does what Nintendont’ advert helped Sega sell more consoles.
I’ve been on this site for a while and haven’t commented much. But as far as I’ve seen Android is probably one of the most biased people on this site.
Android: Oh the PS3 won, but the game is terrible.
On the Prototype head-to-head he stated that the PS3 has won rubbish games. The Xbox has had it’s win of really bad games. If you claimed that you actually liked the PS3 you would be glad that it actually won something. And I’m just saying looking at this site is just for view, if you really wanna get into detail and compare you would go to Digital Foundry where they state both the pros and cons of each game. Like how you Xbox fanboys praise that the 360 has better shadows yet all the blacks are crushed and lose detail like @ Mass Effect 3. PS3 may have looked washed out but at least you could actually see the blacks. PS3 also has superior lighting and the AA technique that blurs all jaggies. So just because the Xbox looks more appealing doesn’t mean the PS3 isn’t as equally good. They both are good just in different ways. And this is coming from someone who owns both consoles, but it’s common sense on what the better system is in terms of the hardware and capability.
At least he isn’t Buying..
Android is biased
Buying is a troll
Androids alright. his passionate about his machine of choice and has always stood his ground. I can’t criticize him too much, I’m just as bad……sometimes worse!!!! lulz.
This site is full of fanboys. Your clearly a PS3 fanboy, so why get worked up by other fanboys?
Btw 360 ME3 also employed FXAA and is of a higher quality to boot. Biggest advantage of 360 ME3 is the frame rate.
First off, I’m not a fanboy if I’m using both consoles and like them both. I just prefer the PS3 to Xbox 360. it doesn’t take common logic to realize which system is the more powerful one.
microsoft admitted their faults and takes care of its customers by extending their warranties and having a frustration-free customer support line where the person on the other end actually speaks english and doesn’t have an accent as thick as pea soup.
sony on the other hand negates its customers and tries to buy their loyalty back with 2 ps3 games from a choice of 5 (that everyone already has) then sneaks a lawsuit protection “contract” agreement in the next ps3 update to cover their ass from the class action lawsuit and force the psn hack victims to sue them individually (which sony wold most definitely win)
so if anyone wants to look at the big picture of what a companies intentions are you will see that microsoft wins in the quality of its support and this is not a biased statement.
also microsoft has all the developer and publisher support for free because not many developers want to devote more time and money out of their budget to focus on the ps3 which is not only much harder to program for but the ps3 usually sells much less copies of multiplatform titles than the 360, not to mention the royalties that go into each copy of ps3 titles both exclusive (which are all subsidiaries of sony anyways) and multiplatform games.
No, Microsoft was forced to offer the three year warranty to cover there asses for the 50% failure rate. They were also hacked back in 2007-2008 and was down for two weeks while peoples credit card information was being stolen! If i recall correctly, Nobody’s credit card information was stolen or used when PSN went down.. After Xbox live came back up all they offered was 1 stupid Arcade game that i can’t even remember but it was so lame i never even bothered to download it. Sony handled there end very appropriately offering a lot of free stuff including 2 Free PS3 games 2 free PSP games and a 30 day trial of PSN+. That was a lot better than anything Microsoft has ever done for there customers..
Actually I got 5 PS3 games and 4 PSP games lol
I have lots of PSN accounts.
I got 3 platinum trophies during that time too.
In my honest opinion, the PSN downtime was hell worth it.
Lulsez were just a trolling hacker group. They “stole” Credit cards and IDs from PSN, Facebook, Paypal etc. but they never really used any of it. They were just trolling for the “lulz”
I think the MAIN reason they got targeted was over the George Hotz scandal. the genius was first to hack the PS3 and open it up for all the pirates out there. Sony shut that down very fast and pursued Hotz. This upset the majority of the hack community. No more free games. So they struck back.
Microsoft doesn’t care about shit. I bought a warranty for my Xbox 360 and when it got the RROD the stupid bitch over the phone told me they couldn’t repair my console and that even if I did send it out I would have to pay for the shipping. They want you to pay for everything which is why XBL is like 10$ a month now. You had the 100$ HD DVD add on and the 100$ wifi add on. At least with Sony, they offer a free online service just as a good as XBL. PSN Plus saves you hundreds of dollars with free games and good discounts on some of the best titles. I got tired of paying like almost 20$ a month for XBL and Netflix. When my PS3 broke Sony shipped it out for free and got it back in 3 weeks.
Honestly, I’m a huge Sony fan. I lived my PS2. But I can’t help but feel my ps3 has been dissapointng on the whole compared to my 360. It breaks my heart because of how much I loved my ps2, but alot of it had to do with multiplatform this gen. See, I can rarely in good conscious buy the ps3 version of a multiplatform game because I know the 360 version will be better somehow, even if it’s minor. If I have both systems, I’m going with the better version, I’m sorry.
I’m really hoping thing turn around for ps4. I would love to love my playstation like I used to.
Then why didn’t you buy all of your multiplatform games on the original Xbox over the PS2?
Yeah… threw some logic right at you.
I’m sorry sir. But logic has no place on this site! Please take your intelligence elsewhere.
lulz
@cernaml: I did buy all my multiplats for original XBOX over ps2.
Yet you still loved your PS2 oh so much. Why should multiplats suddenly affect your enjoyment for the PS3 now? Especially considering they’re a HELL of a lot closer than they ever were compared to last gen?
More logic right at ya.
Alot of it I admit was due to the fact that majority opinon does not favor PS3, which has gotten to me. but also PS2 had alot more exclusives which made it better. This gen theres not nearly that many exclusives, so now it comes alot more down to multiplatform. and Multiplatform still favor 360. Air go 360 is better this gen.
Air go?!?! O_O
I really hope that was some auto correct typo.
Also, multiplats are hardly better on the 360 anymore. Besides a couple few a year, there is no way to distinguish them at all when comparing both platforms. Now unless you prefer Xbox Live then that’s a different story. But for someone such as myself, paying a subscription fee for an experience that is hardly any better over a free one but also inferior to another free alternative, it simply isn’t worth it. Not to mention the DVD format is really showing its age lately.
Um, no. Quite a few, If not most, multiplatform still favors 360. Look at skyrim, rage, mass effect 3, and etc.
Actually RAGE should be a tie, due to the fact that it was clearly stated that the PS3 is superior to the 360 unless installed.
Skyrim? Don’t even get me started on Bethesda. Until they can develop a proper game that is ruined by a bug of some sort then we can talk.
We aren’t living in the Genesis/Nintendo era people. Cross platform released games are basically the same this generation.
If you think this is bad you would have been crying when Mortal Kombat had no blood and PG friendly fatalities on a Nintendo console.. lol
that isn’t ruined by a bug*
Basically they guy admitted yet again which is the Microsoft real way of doing business: we may not make good quality products, but we have the power (read: money) of raping the market turning in our side corrupting (or even blackmailing when that is not enough) the 3rd party players.
Once they started failing this strategy in the home/office computing market against Apple, because quality DOES matter and Apple became a much stronger opponent, they changed battlefield and went attacking the videogame market.