Kevin Bachus Talks Next-Gen Console Wars

conq writes "In a piece on BusinessWeek, former Microsoft exex Kevin Bachus, who was part of the team who pitched the XBox to Bill Gates gives his opinion on the Microsoft/Sony gaming war: '...I believe that regardless of who comes out on top this time, the margin will be the closest it's been since the heady days of Nintendo and Sega. And as always, the winners will be the consumers and the publishers.'"

War?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, there is no 'war' between Sony and Microsoft.

Microsoft is nothing more than a company that came in last place in the current gen console race behind Nintendo. And Microsoft's second entry into the console market is doing roughly two to three times WORSE than the first Xbox.

The 360 is:

1) Completely dead in Japan
2) Almost dead in Europe
3) Sold a pathetic 190k consoles in March in the US - five months into its life and it is getting outsold by the six year old Sony PS2

And there are 360 sitting unsold on store shelves in every major US retailer for over a month now. The 360 is on track to sell no more than three million units this year. That's one dead console.

The 360 is a marketplace failure. No one outside of the most diehard of Dreamcast and Xbox fans gives a damn about the system. Notice the major switch to pushing Vista gaming recently by Microsoft... They see the writing on the wall for the Xbox project.

The next gen race is going to be brutal between Sony and Nintendo - with Nintendo standing a good chance of actually outselling Sony in Japan this upcoming console cycle and selling probably around N64 levels in the US and Europe. Microsoft is no longer relevant to the console market.

Re:War?

[ooze]

You know what? I never owned a console. I haven't even played any computer games in the last years apart from the few weeks until WoW bored me. I'm seriously considering to get myself a Revolution now. It looks interesting and fun. And now I finally can have it all! Playing games with one hand, having the beer in the other. That controller could even make real time strategy and 1st Person shooters playable on a console. Not my favourite kind of games, but just the fact that you have a comfortable pointing device on the console now opens up so many possibilities.