...oh, well my explaination is that people are idiots.

Mysteroius Voice: "...you...you're probably right."

Mysterious Voice: "No. It's all about customer satisfaction. Microsoft FAILS on all levels, due to poor quality control, active attempts to extort users, and a poor line up of games."

Oh, really? Well let me me tell you something right now...you're wrong, Voice. Companies are all about moneymaking. That's all there is to it. And if you had to think like an executive, you'd realize that games like Halo are not as bad to the industry as you claim.

Let's look at the facts for a bit, shall we? For whatever reason, FPS' are popular. There's just something about them that appeals to the audience. The first Halo was quite sucessful on its own. It selled a pretty good number of copies and garnered good reviews from the community, albiet with a few naysayers here and there who aren't really fans of the FPS genre. Once Halo 2 came out, Halo had become a household name, and many considered it a killer app. With that in mind, selling Halo 3 was rather easy. They had a name that generated numbers, and a pretty good hype machine. When Halo 3 was released, sales popped up and the cash continued to flow. Sure, some of the audience may have been idiotic, but their ablitity to manipulate the idiots gave them a pretty good headstart.

And keep in mind that when it was first released, the PS3 had some shortcomings of its own. A hefty price tag and a low number of notable titles to compete with the 360 plagued the system, and they've had to play catch up for so long until they've reached a pretty good footing with a lowered price tage and a decent range of games. Besides, familiar territory can also greatly affect the situation. Most people I know tended to have an Xbox 360. It seems to resonate with the viewers. Selling games for it is easy since a lot of people own one. Even Sony falls prey to the general marketers idea to make money, as shown by removing the backwards compatability on the PS3 to sell more copies of the PS2. A corporation is designed to create money. It will do what it can.

Now, as everyone knows, there are two ways to sell a game. Familiarity of name, or quality of game. A franchise like Halo or Sonic has been along for a while and still has some dedicated fans. If a game proves popular and becomes a franchise, then mention of the franchise is a rather easy way to sell things. Of course, a game can also be sold through the quality of the title itself, which is a much more difficult thing to do. However, much like the head of the Oil Refinery Industry who gives their money to charity, this often ends very well. In some cases, a sequel to a great game can fall under the first method. And who said those two concepts were mutually exclusive?

So to summarise, companies need money to surive. To get thier money, they must rely on the consumer. To draw the consumer in, they need good methods. Even if you guys don't like Halo, there's no denying the numbers it generates, a major boon for Microsoft. Besides, if they fail this time, there's always the good sport of one-upmanship.

Sorry if I came off as long winded or confusing. Once I writes something this big, it's probably not a good idea to stop!

Mysterious Voice: "Then stop writing big things and wasting our time!"

The Xbox still outsells the PS3, maybe not for much longer but it still does.

Point - Xbox

The Xbox is a much easier and user friendly system to code for, which is why unfortunately xbox users get screwed with "beta" games like vesperia and star ocean, but they still get it first. Being easier to code for attracts companies like ValvE studios.

Point - Xbox

While paying for a service is never as good as getting a service for free, there is no doubt that Xbox live has a huge community and game to system integration is usually a priority making the ease of use remarkable. In addition Xbox live also offers home entertainment solutions for people looking to expand their entertainment value beyond the scope of just gaming. 50 dollars a year is nothing for this kind of service. PSN really offers just a gaming platform to reach out to other players and PSHome is a failure.

Point - Xbox

Xbox software is dated and is unreliable, although microsoft did offer replacement consoles with free extended warranties, something they didnt HAVE to do. PS3 does have superior hardware and reliability and just recently it comes at a reasonable and affordable cost.

Point - PS3

Games generally make or break a system and the only thing keeping PS3 afloat is the fact that so many Japanese game developers have such Xenophobia. How would the PS3 stand is MGS 4 and FFXIII versus decided to go to XBox instead? Unfortunately the PS3 tries to live a solely console lineage which makes the games for it relatively limited in scope. The games look great for it and play fine, but games like Halo, L4D, GoW, Lost Odessey and so on are developed on the Xbox due partly for ease of development (L4D) and paid exclusives (Halo). Xbox tries to blend console ease with PC functionality and does a fairly decent job, which also extends the amount of games the system can recieve, and more games is always better.

Point - Xbox.

The PS3 is black, which is cool. The Xbox is mostly white (some come in black) which shows its ugliness.

Point - PS3.

So what is your point exactly?

All i have to do is enjoy my games that are appearing for both the PS3 and 360, and i win!

blah...

Seriously, when has it not been annoying or tedious, and how will Natal change that? It's *all* useless marketing drivel.

If a game is good, it doesn't matter which platform it comes on.

"In the next few years, you’re going to start to see us separate from the herd."

Lol, you've always been "separated from the herd", being dead last and all. Actually you're now closing the gap a little.

"Some of the other platforms are going to look very dated because their life spans are so much shorter than ours."

I think it works both ways. ATi has already confirmed that they're working on the graphics chip for Microsoft's next console, so by the time the PlayStation 3 gets some speed they'll probably release the Xbox 720 and Sony's Blu-ray player will surely look dated in comparison. Boasting about superior technological prowess some good three years after the system's launch is just slightly retarded.

"The brilliance of PS3 is that it’s not a dead, dumb terminal like other machines. We can throw layers of firmware into that box and always be contemporary with technology. We can reflect and respond to how people are using entertainment."

NXE, Netflix, Facebook/Last.fm/Twitter/Zune video support going against achiev--err, trophies/wii remote rip-off no. 1 (a.k.a. SIXAXIS)/wii remote rip-off no. 2 (a.k.a. glowy wand)... you get the idea. Sony is the corporative equivalent of a parrot, the only way they know what people actually want is by looking at their competition leaving them behind.

"If you’re a competitor I’ve got bad news for you because we’ve got some absolute blockbusters that are in the works, some of them new IP, some of them existing IP, that we’re building specifically for the PS3"

You better do, all your "absolute blockbusters" have so far failed to even compare to Halo's or Gear's sales numbers. The days of Gran Turismo breaking sales records seem to be long past.

The last paragraph is OK, though.