what i am BUYING is the fact that time and again, microsoft has shown their "business model" to be successful: enter a market with a substandard but cheaper or free product, choke off competition, say that your product is "standard", game over for competition.
GUARANTEE: microsoft soon lowers prices on XBox to bring them in line with GameCube, XBox takeover begins.
i said gamecube was dying, not dead. i am aware that nintendo is a major player with a great reputation and great games.
BUT, microsoft will continue to lower prices because they can take the loss which is something other console game companies can't do. they will realize the sad reality that the money is in their game titles and they will move to developing games for other machines once microsoft lowers console prices so low that it wouldn't make business sense for Nintendo and to a lesser degree Sony to keep taking losses on the console.
i am also aware of the marketshare numbers.
do me a favor and save this e-mail thread and look at it three years from now. i'm not happy about it. in fact, as applied to the portable audio device, i'm rather p1ssed about it but i give the iPod another 3-5 years until the "standard" is some kind of "good enough" player that uses .wma (you know, the "standard" audio codec), apple's superior product (iPod) is once again on the sidelines relegated to the niche Mac market where Mac users will pay the premium for the better device.
call me a pessimist but i'm just using history applied to the future...
