I'll note that basically the same thing happened with the 3DS, and then it started to recover after a) a price cut and b) finally having a decent library. Now its sales trajectory is quite healthy. I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii U follows the same pattern.

It was an unqualified success from Nintendo's standpoint, in that it moved tons of units. It didn't move lots of third-party games, a problem that Nintendo has long had and continues to work on, but the console itself made lots of money for the company and certainly sold beyond their wildest expectations.

Good thing I didn't make it the "entire explanation," then.

It's hard to know where to begin in shooting down that idea. Nintendo and Valve have massively different company cultures, to the point that I think attempting to merge them in any meaningful way would be a complete disaster for both. Valve also depends on open platforms--Nintendo's entire business model revolves around closed ones. It would be hard to find two companies who are more complete opposites.

Yes, they say opposites attract, but that's an insightful sounding cliche, not a fact of life. The reality of trying to merge such vastly dissimilar companies would be a nightmare for both.

Yeah, Nintendo's handheld units print money. The 3DS had a rocky start but it's doing very well now.

Likewise, I suspect Nintendo will turn the Wii U ship around. It won't be as popular as the Wii--the Wii was a one-time blip that I doubt anyone will repeat--but the Wii U will probably do fine once it has a decent library and gets enough household recognition. I hope Nintendo learned a lesson there: don't launch a console that causes naming confusion and don't launch one without a good set of launch titles!

If standing up for your principles was always easy, it wouldn't be notable or praiseworthy. Yes, the day might come when you have to weigh standing by your values against putting food in your mouth. That's generally what it means to really believe in something. If you believe in something but are unwilling to sacrifice anything for it, how much can you really say you believe it?

Yeah, I get a lot of job leads from LinkedIn, too, and they're almost always unsolicited. It's usually not shot-in-the-dark stuff that I'm not qualified for, either. They're targeted inquiries. I like it.

Indeed. AMC's official stance is that this is one season of 16 episodes. For Apple to make the decision to consider it two "seasons" as far as "season passes" are concerned--well, I hope they've got some good fine print on that, otherwise they're boned. To me, "season pass" means "season pass," not "half a season pass." If Apple doesn't like it, they should take it up with AMC.

The problem is that, in a country lacking a strong democratic tradition (i.e. Egypt), the democratic process is likely to be (and was being) subverted by whoever fills the power vacuum, in order to prevent ever being dislodged. The Muslim Brotherhood is radical and uncompromising. They were not interested in sharing power, nor are they interested in sharing it now that Morsi's government has been deposed. It's their way or the high way. Unfortunately, blocs that want power-sharing and compromise represent a minority of Egypt's fractious political allegiances.

It is difficult, to say the least, to have a country with a new democratic process actually stick with it long-term when such a form of government and civil society is not in their cultural DNA. It takes time to build that tradition to the point where you have stable, orderly transfers of power after elections. Look at the US: no matter how chaotic our election campaigns are, no matter how confused or bizarre, people do not end up taking to the streets to kill each other over them. At worst, we call upon the courts to resolve them and then live with that decision. We are invested in and believe in the process, even if we don't always like the results.

I'm not saying the coup (and it was a coup) was a good option. It may, however, have been the best of limited options. I suppose time will tell. You could argue that Egyptians should have waited until the Brotherhood outright canceled or rigged future elections before taking action, but then you and I are not the ones who have to live with the consequences of it, either way (unless you live in Egypt, in which case I apologize for speaking for you!)

It may be a long while before Egypt finds stability and reconciliation as they attempt to transition from one-party rule to plurality and compromise.

GET OUT

I'd rather be a K-Mart. Nobody would even know I exist.

Correlation != causation.

Countries with much more regulation of healthcare than the US have lower prices (and better outcomes!)

Explain that, if you can.

The next-gen consoles being offered by Sony and MS hardly touch what's available for high-end PCs today. They are a modest improvement over the 360 and PS3. They aren't going to win back people who've jumped ship to high-end PCs. The main reason they can't compete with PCs is cost. No one's going to pay $2000 for a console with high-end specs. Even a $500 price point is viewed as too expensive by a lot of people.

In other words, Microsoft's problem over (at least) the past decade is that they're no longer a market leader. They no longer get to dictate which way the market goes. Used to be, whatever they put out the door--Windows, Office, etc.--people snapped it up and got on board. Now? Windows 8 sparked rebellion. Their mobile operating systems have been aborted and reborn so many times users are gun shy about giving them another try (to say nothing of how ultimately saturated the smartphone market is anyway.) And now they've managed to burn up much of the goodwill they built with the Xbox division by having such a disastrous showing at E3. Again, they were left following what a superior competitor put on the table, rather than anticipating what the market would want and offering it before anyone else did.

Admittedly, that's a very hard thing to do, but you'd think a company as large as MS, with so many talented people, and with such vast resources, could do a lot better than they have. But then vision and leadership come from the top. It's what made Apple work so well for so long. As noted elsewhere, Ballmer is not and never has been a visionary. I have no doubt he's a competent manager and salesman--he might even be great at those roles--but a CEO has to offer a clear, unifying vision to motivate everyone under him, and MS' vision has been so disjoint and erratic over the past decade or more as to be no vision at all. It's become a company of "me too"-ing.

I'm not aware of any, and it may not be something that is done except in some very fringe cases. I'd certainly want to see more evidence that this is a thing that happens, I'm just saying it's not totally outlandish that it could be done.