New topic! Is Sony too much of a monopoly on the gaming industry?

It was arrogance that lead to the design, well, arrogance and bad engineers.

Arrogance perhaps, bad engineers, I disagree.  All because they made something different doesn\'t necessarily mean it was bad engineering.  The PS2 is a technical marvel and ever since developers have learned how to use it, there have been quite a few graphical gems released for it.  I agree with you though, that has nothing to do with a monopoly.

When a company has a monopoly, they tend to try to make money the easy way. Microsoft has also showed very well what a monopoly can lead to: faulty and buggy products.

No, they do not.  When a company has a monopoly, they observe the innovations of the possible competition and integrate it into their own products for an even better product and call it their own.  Just take Microsoft as an example.  Take a look at Macintosh and the Mac OSX.  Now take a look at WinXP.  There are more then a few GLARING similarities between the two and yet XP still maintains that same plug and play mindset and user friendly enviornment.

However, this doesn\'t happen just with companies who are monopolizing a medium though and you should know this by now.  It happens with everyone.  Nintendo makes something new or Sega makes something new and it is innovative and it sells well, then expect everyone to follow suit in some similar way.  I won\'t argue about who was first with what, but each company saw advantages in particular things and those things were redesigned, refined, and improved upon exponentially over the years.  Just take a look at controllers and the mediums we use for our games or how many controller ports we have on our systems or the types of buttons on our controllers.  It\'s just evolution over time to make a better product, but companies do not solely make the same crap over and over again to turn a quick sell.

So long as there is that type of competition, then Sony can not be a monopoly.

I agree with everything Ryu said.  And I\'ll ammend my comment to say misguided engineers.

Fair enough.  I\'ll agree with that.

Watchdog, you are the ultimate spindoctor, you need to submit a resume to M$ ASAP beacuse they need your help in spinning the horrible sales in europe and japan

I, and many others, wouldn\'t pick Toshiba and Sony to design high-end chips--IBM yes--but Sony decided to give the lead to Toshiba. You don\'t see Nintendo or MS helping their chip makers.

Whats wrong with Toshiba and Sony desiging chips? Both are huge companies, both have lots of resources.

Anyway, Sony could have went with trusted archetecture, known designs and proven quality, but they went with Tosh\'s EE.

Yes, they could have.. but we would be stuck with black and white TV if everybody thought like MS and only went with whats availible never looking at the horizon. If people don\'t think outside the box the human race will never expand. Its a known fact the PC is not very efficent at producing graphics, sony and toshiba wanted to change that by creating a radical system that would be efficent.

An virtual unknown and a radical chip design. This infuriated developers, but Sony didn\'t care. Where else would they go? The N64 or DC? Sony knew they could do whatever they wanted and devs would come, they\'d have to.

It really pissed of developers? which ones? The ones like oddworld who were handed money by MS?

It wasn\'t the performance of the chip or the specs, it was the idea of it, the pure confounding nature of it that attracted Sony. If Sony would have went to press with a Nvidia chip and said "This is the Emotion Engine, it can create vast, detailed, populated worlds where each individual has his/her own unique emotions and desires!" People would have pointed and laughed and said, it\'s a Nvidia chip, not unlike the one I have on my desktop, sure it\'s more powerful, but it\'s not all that hype.

Let me get this straight, your saying the only reason sony went with the new idea and archatecture in the building of the ps2 is just so they can say "the Emotion Engine, it can create vast, detailed, populated worlds where each individual has his/her own unique emotions and desires!"

You gotta be kidding me, if thats the case then why did M$ with Nivida go and hype up the xbox even more then the ps2 claiming it was 4x (or was it more) powerfull then the ps2. By your logic people would have "pointed and laughed and said, it\'s a Nvidia chip, not unlike the one I have on my desktop, sure it\'s more powerful, but it\'s not all that hype.

How can you base an argument and not have it effect both sides?

With Tosh\'s design, people took so long to figure it out, that there was no time for a dissenting viewpoint because the hype machine was in full swing and everyone was obsessed with Sony.

I won\'t even comment on this, its just too pathetic

If they wanted to please developers and customers they would have went with known archetecture and not alienated their developers.

Once again, your the type of person who would be happy with a black and white TV, unwilling to expand and look at new ideas. If it were not for companies such as Sony we would never advance. MS on the other hand is content with copying everyone else and using whats avaible instead of trying something new and, god forbid, spending money on building new technology. For as you know Sony spent a small fourtune buliding the EE and the ps2 technology, while MS spent basically nothing.

It wouldn\'t have taken almost 2 years for the machine\'s potencial to be realized. But Sony didn\'t care because they knew the devs and the public would come because where else would they go? This is arrogance (and burgeoning on monopoly).

This is not even close to a monolopy..
A monolopy would never think of trying something new an innovative, they would just release something close to the original and call it new.. something that would cost the company virtually nothing yet people would still buy with cause they had no other choice.

Originally posted by Watchdog
Firstly, the arrogance question.  How many here know who developed the EE?  The usual suspects include Intel, 3Dfx, Nvidia, ATi, but it wasn\'t any of these, it was Toshiba (with help from Sony and IBM).  Strange but true.

I, and many others, wouldn\'t pick Toshiba and Sony to design high-end chips--IBM yes--but Sony decided to give the lead to Toshiba.  You don\'t see Nintendo or MS helping their chip makers.  

Anyway, Sony could have went with trusted archetecture, known designs and proven quality, but they went with Tosh\'s EE.  An virtual unknown and a radical chip design.  This infuriated developers, but Sony didn\'t care. Where else would they go?  The N64 or DC?  Sony knew they could do whatever they wanted and devs would come, they\'d have to.

[/b]Sigh.  Watchdog, I remember the days when you weren\'t a fanboy... or at least, you weren\'t just an anti-fanboy for the sake of it.  Your opinion is just that, an opinion, and one, that I think is in the minority.  My opinion on this matter is that sony went with a radical design because they didn\'t want a games dedicated PC sitting in front of the TV, they wanted a console that will provide things different than a PC.  I think they succeded.

It wasn\'t the performance of the chip or the specs, it was the idea of it, the pure confounding nature of it that attracted Sony.  If Sony would have went to press with a Nvidia chip and said "This is the Emotion Engine, it can create vast, detailed, populated worlds where each individual has his/her own unique emotions and desires!"  People would have pointed and laughed and said, it\'s a Nvidia chip, not unlike the one I have on my desktop, sure it\'s more powerful, but it\'s not all that hype.

With Tosh\'s design, people took so long to figure it out, that there was no time for a dissenting viewpoint because the hype machine was in full swing and everyone was obsessed with Sony.  If they wanted to please developers and customers they would have went with known archetecture and not alienated their developers.  It wouldn\'t have taken almost 2 years for the machine\'s potencial to be realized.  But Sony didn\'t care because they knew the devs and the public would come because where else would they go?  This is arrogance (and burgeoning on monopoly).
Now about the whole monopoly thing.  People are free to choose, competition isn\'t impossible, Sony isn\'t a monopoly.

DISCLAIMER: I am no expert on economics, anone who is feel free to correct me.

[/b]This is not arrogance or monopoly.  The devs did have the simple choice of going to other consoles.  Having \'no choice\' because Sony is a well known name and they know people will want the system is not the same as having \'no choice\' because Sony is the only console maker out there.  Unless you are now willing to concede that the Xbox is defeated, and the NGC is going nowhere (both of which aren\'t true), you can\'t say Sony has a monopoly, or is burgeoning on monopoly.

Why is it that business and economics majors always, at some point, study MS?  Why is it that most introductory B&E courses start with MS?  Because they are a smart company that has made wise decisions and conducted business in a way that makes complete (business) sense.  MS is not unlike Time Warner, Viacom, United Airlines or Central Pacific (well CP was a coercive monopoly, aided by government sanctions, so they\'re not the same type of monopoly as the others).

When Viacom absorbed CBS (making it the biggest in the industry), no one said a word.  When MS bought Bungie--everyone cried bloody foul, forgetting the fact that Bungie approached MS to be bought.  Forgot about that didn\'t you?

[/b]Yeah, Bill Gates definitely made some good business moves at the begining.  Backstabbing leech that he is.  Unfortunately, honor and ethics have little to do with moden succesfull business.  Bill Gates was just knew that sooner than his cohorts.  They may teach the beginings of MS to students, but they don\'t teach MS over the last four years... because eventually MS is going to pay dearly for it\'s anti-competetive practices.

We live in a capitalistic society and MS (exactly like the companies above) is only playing by the rules of our society.  The market will regulate itself.  Netscape was out first and was offered free to anyone.  IE was introduced later and was also free, but was vastly inferior.  Then NS started to charge $20 bucks for the browser and an email  client.  MS bundled IE with Windows, then improved IE.  NS started to lose its mindshare and quickly dropped its price to zero, and filed a lawsuit stating that MS was using unfair pricing tactics.  It seems to me that NS tried to exploit its marketshare by charging $20, and MS released a superior product, charged nothing and won marketshare.  The market chose the best deal for them.  The OS market is no different.  Apple was out first, MS though they had a good idea, tailored it, improved it and offered a deal to OEMs to distrubute their OS.  OEMs looked at the prices on the market and went with MS.  

[/b]Actually, the problem was that at the time, MS\'s OS had such a market share, that in most defenitions, they were a monopoly on the market.  By bundling their explorer, their explorer won the battle easily (we won\'t get into the fact that netscape started having magical crashes apear when you ran it on MS OSs).  At the time, netscape was the far superior product, but they couldn\'t fight explorer and Windows as one (now of course, netscape sucks).

Seems like good business to me.  A capitalistic society allows anyone the freedom to make as much money as he/she can and price whatever, he/she wants.  Linux is out there, it\'s basically free, but it\'s not generating a market share outside of server admins.  Why?  Probably marketing and MS\'s mindshare.  Why is Sony selling 30 million PS2s?  Probably marketing and mindshare.

MS is not unlike IBM years ago.  MS can be toppled, but it\'ll take a keen company and some luck--it took Intel and MS to dethrone IBM.

If you take business or economics courses, you will hear about Central Pacific, a coercive monopoly that allowed for no competition.  You\'ll also learn that MS, Time Warner and Disney aren\'t coercive or in the same category as CP.  CP was not built on smart business practises, sound decisions and free economy--they were built on a mixed economy model.  They had legislative leverage, that being government aid in terms of legislations/sanctions, that allowed for absolutely no competition.

MS can be beaten--Sun and Oracle proove that (and NS too until they changed tactics)--and MS doesn\'t stop competition, actually Apple and Corel wouldn\'t even be around if not for MS financial aid.  The problem is that most people think immediately that monopolies are evil--coercive monopolies are--but standard monopolies like Time Warner, Viacom and MS are merely examples of the economic market working well, by smart people.

All this antitrust and monopoly started with "The Wealth of Nations" published some 200 years ago.  And if you read that book you\'ll realize that today, the term monopoly, is a misnomer.  {Author} coined the term monopoly to mean a business running with government assistence and exclusivity (CP).  Today, it\'s any successful company, usually MS.

[/b]That\'s probably true, I won\'t check your source, but 200 years ago, they weren\'t dealing with companies that had resources greater than many small countries.  Resources in MSs case that they use often to buy or put out of business the competitors which begin to show the least bit of market grabbing innovation.  Therein lies the antitrust cases, and the problem with allowing any one corporation to dominate utterly.

Legislators often quote this guy in support of anti-trust laws, but he was very much against them.  Infact, if not for politicians, who have no clue about anything let alone economics, the anti-trust laws would be long gone.

[/b]Again, 200 years ago, the problems of allowing even big companies to try and dominate were small scale.  Welcome to 2002.  Read a moden textbook.

Whew!  So is MS a monopoly?  Yes, but under the rules of a capitalist society, MS is playing fairly.  The only hitch people have is that they play the game much better than anyone else right now.  Another OS can come out, people can shose to buy it if they want and MS can do nothing about it.  Hell, Linux is free!

Is Sony a monopoly in the console world?  In a word, no, but it\'s not far off.

It\'s not a monopoly yet, and hopefully will never be one.  MS is not playing fairly, they use their money in ways which no company can realistically get around.  
"Offer.  Oh you refuse to sell?  Millions will be put into destroying you then.  Ok, I thought you would see it our way."

Linux is never going to be the \'windows\' killer, it is a superior product in many ways, based on Unix, it\'s faster, more secure, and more stable.  Unfortunately, like Unix, it is also difficult to master, and hard to learn - so 95% of the computer world isn\'t interested.  If the software and drivers began supporting linux, it still couldn\'t dominate, because it is just not easy to use.  Sure, everyone who \'knows\' computers would switch, but it would still amount to probably around 10% -> just like the mac world.  Because of MS\'s clout, money, and practices, the only way their OS is going to be removed is if some other, huge multinational decides to write a simple, but better OS, and takes them head on... something I don\'t think anyone will do anytime soon.  MS is not going to be destroyed like IBM was, by a few guys writing a \'DOS\' system... remember, DOS was 2 floppys worth of coding... A modern Windows killer would be many millions of lines, not something 9 guys can write alone.

Firstly, the arrogance question. How many here know who developed the EE? The usual suspects include Intel, 3Dfx, Nvidia, ATi, but it wasn\'t any of these, it was Toshiba (with help from Sony and IBM). Strange but true.

I, and many others, wouldn\'t pick Toshiba and Sony to design high-end chips--IBM yes--but Sony decided to give the lead to Toshiba. You don\'t see Nintendo or MS helping their chip makers.

Anyway, Sony could have went with trusted archetecture, known designs and proven quality, but they went with Tosh\'s EE. An virtual unknown and a radical chip design. This infuriated developers, but Sony didn\'t care. Where else would they go? The N64 or DC? Sony knew they could do whatever they wanted and devs would come, they\'d have to.

So, If I follow your logic, just because Toshiba isn\'t known by the casual consumer in chip-design, Sony is arrogantic  for choosing them? Sorry, but I don\'t follow your logic and I won\'t even speculate why Toshiba got the lead for the Emotion Engine chip-design. Fact is though, Toshiba and Sony made something that is obviously well accepted. Just because it\'s not a chip by Nvidia, IBM or ATI doesn\'t mean it\'s infiriour.

It wasn\'t the performance of the chip or the specs, it was the idea of it, the pure confounding nature of it that attracted Sony. If Sony would have went to press with a Nvidia chip and said "This is the Emotion Engine, it can create vast, detailed, populated worlds where each individual has his/her own unique emotions and desires!" People would have pointed and laughed and said, it\'s a Nvidia chip, not unlike the one I have on my desktop, sure it\'s more powerful, but it\'s not all that hype.

With Tosh\'s design, people took so long to figure it out, that there was no time for a dissenting viewpoint because the hype machine was in full swing and everyone was obsessed with Sony. If they wanted to please developers and customers they would have went with known archetecture and not alienated their developers. It wouldn\'t have taken almost 2 years for the machine\'s potencial to be realized. But Sony didn\'t care because they knew the devs and the public would come because where else would they go? This is arrogance (and burgeoning on monopoly).

Now about the whole monopoly thing. People are free to choose, competition isn\'t impossible, Sony isn\'t a monopoly.

It\'s funny how you talk for developers, yet you complete forget the fact that a lot of them wanted a design that let them to code on the metal during the PSX days. You make it as it\'s all Sony who forced their hardware on all developers. Yeah, lets blame Sony. Sony actually did a good thing and as PC enthusiastic sites show over the net, the PS2 hardware has been well received by those developers. Developers actually like the PS2 hardware due to its nature giving freedom and letting developers really explore the metal. And where would we be today if everyone chose to stay on the x86 architecture? It is clear that as a software engineer you have to always learn new technologies, new programming language and new hardware.

Now you also mentioned bad engineers. Yeah sure, so just because it\'s hard means the chip design of the EE was crafted by bad engineers. :rolleyes: See above, developers actually like challenges. You give them (and me) way to little credit for what they do.

Now about the whole monopoly thing. People are free to choose, competition isn\'t impossible, Sony isn\'t a monopoly.

Correct, so what are you trying to prove above? You just underlined what I said above in my posts: Sony does not have a monopoly. If Sony had a monopoly, they wouldn\'t have invested so much of money into a new technology for 3d processing. Get my point?

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Watchdog, no one asked for a lesson on how Microsoft stands as a monopoly and if their decisions are fair or not. Hell, this thread had little to do with Microsoft until you came in hear and felt the need to defend them.

Whew! So is MS a monopoly? Yes, but under the rules of a capitalist society, MS is playing fairly. The only hitch people have is that they play the game much better than anyone else right now. Another OS can come out, people can shose to buy it if they want and MS can do nothing about it. Hell, Linux is free!

Anyone knows that for the casual consumer and worker, Linux is no option. Sad but true. While Linux is very good competitor as a OS, it has no chance to compete because there isn\'t any big backing by software companies. Microsoft and fair? Yeah, if you think it\'s fair for a company to release a very buggy OS and then release some updates (which aren\'t cheap) to resolve their well known bugs.. Yeah, then you might be right. :rolleyes:

No, they do not.

Ryu,

I disagree. Having a monopoly means no real competition. That also means that a Company doesn\'t necesserally have to invest loads of money in future technologies or innovations since their position isn\'t at cost. Instead, they can bring out product after product with very little enhancements. Windows95 to Windows 98? Sure wasn\'t that big of a difference there. Win98 to WinME? Even to a lesser degree. If Microsoft or anyother company in a monopoly had competition, they wouldn\'t be able to do that. They would have to invest in those innovations and future technologies to make a better product. That\'s how technology progresses and monopoly simply doesn\'t encourage that. Therefore in a monopoly, a company can afford to make those cheap shots (make money the easy way). I never said that monopoly == no innovations, but sinply less.

So by your definition, MS is a monopoly, and they merely mimmiced the Mac OS X for fun right?  Also, don\'t forget that winME didn\'t sell well at all and for very good reason.  Why all of a sudden do they have a complete overhaul in WinXP?  Why the change?  If they are so monopolistic, they can release winME 2002 and call it a full on upgrade and yet they didn\'t and streamlined their OS to WinXP and made it look very similar to a competitor who had plenty of hype behind its OS.  Do you think that just happened by coincidence?  There are reasons for change and every company from time to time knows it.

sorry Ryu, I didn\'t disagree with your whole post, just about you not agreeing with my comment. I just backed it up in my last post. As I already said, monopoly doesn\'t mean no technological progression/innovations, but certainly less. XP might be an exception, I wasn\'t debating that.

Well, it\'s either they do it because they don\'t want to change or it costs too much to change... Or they do it because the average customer prefers what\'s going for them.  People do not adjust well to drastic changes afterall.

Just imagine the embolisms people would get if they used windows for the pat 8 years and were suddenly forced to use a Mac.

Actually I was talking about the technological progression in windows. I, as a consumer, don\'t want a nicer looking windows etc; what I want is a unfaulty, stable and fast product. It\'s quite sad that in the past, the last update of each Windows was the only one worth paying for (take out 95). What I also want as a consumer is that if I already have to upgrade to a new version of windows, that the changes are enough to justify the price. So far it hasn\'t in my eyes. You could also ask yourself if ME was really necessary. They could have skipped that and made a "real" upgrade that is actually worth getting. Cost? Easy money? You tell me.

You also mention it above, cost could also be a factor. Again underlines that a company with a monopoly can afford more of those cheap shots because there is no competition to take\'em down.

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Sigh, this is why I tried to avoid this debate, bacause most of you have no idea.

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Watchdog, you are the ultimate spindoctor, you need to submit a resume to M$ ASAP beacuse they need your help in spinning the horrible sales in europe and japan
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I don\'t even know what this means or how it is relevant.  Bravo Chrono.


Disney is a huge company and I wouldn\'t want them to develop chips.  Why not go with the industry leaders?  Why not go with the best chip makers on the market?

What does B&W tvs have to do with anything?  And MS does look on the horizon, if all they did is copy, then would always be one step behind.  They\'re not.  They\'re leading the industry and are one of the biggest and richest companies in the world.  You don\'t do that by shipping inferior products that are merely copies of existing materials.  You do that by assessing the market place, making determinations, and giving consumers what they want.

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It really pissed of developers? which ones? The ones like oddworld who were handed money by MS?
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Which ones?  Have you read interviews from 3rd parties?  The only ones who "like" it are the ones who are handed money by Sony.  I\'m sorry, where\'s you point again?

That\'s exactly why they chose it Toshiba\'s design and a lot of people did point and laugh at MS and said exactly that.  Do you ever make valid points?


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This is not even close to a monolopy..
A monolopy would never think of trying something new an innovative, they would just release something close to the original and call it new.. something that would cost the company virtually nothing yet people would still buy with cause they had no other choice.
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Sigh, see.  I told you that would happen.  I\'ll give you a hint, monopoly isn\'t ONLY a board game.  You have no clue.


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Sigh. Watchdog, I remember the days when you weren\'t a fanboy... or at least, you weren\'t just an anti-fanboy for the sake of it. blah blah blah
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Tell you the truth I don\'t even know who you are, FatalXception so you can imagine what your assessment of me means to me.  I don\'t care what they wanted, I wanted a system that could deliver from day one, we didn\'t get that.  Yes, you are right, it certainly is different from a PC...


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This is not arrogance or monopoly. The devs did have the simple choice of going to other consoles.
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The devs had about as much choice as consumers do with MS OSs.  So if that\'s you stance then you really need to rethink your entire post.


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Yeah, Bill Gates definitely made some good business moves at the begining. Backstabbing leech that he is. Unfortunately, honor and ethics blah blah blah
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Backstabbing?  Whatever, the business world isn\'t a friendly place.  They others didn\'t have what it took.  Gates did.  And if you read my post, nothing they have done is anti-competitive, they follow the rules of a free market.  I\'d be very surprised if MS pays dearly for anything.  It\'s only really the hapless masses and disgruntled companies that are crying foul.  You sound like an xbox fanboy: "just wait till E3".  What about Boarder\'s/Chapters\'s book stores that are putting Mom and Pop operations out of business because they can\'t cope with the prices and selection the bigger chains provide are these establishments evil too?


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Actually, the problem was that at the time, MS\'s OS had such a market share, that in most defenitions, they were a monopoly on the market. By bundling their explorer, blah blah blah
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Again, that\'s not a problem.  That\'s smart business.  That NS crashing in windows was brought up in court and it was thrown out because it was never proven.  The fact is that IE was proven to crash just as often.  What about car companies putting stereos into cars?  Hey that\'s not fair!, you\'d say.  Man, it must be some kind of freedom to be able to speak from such a vast pool of ignorance.  Posting seems so easy and carefree for you.


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That\'s probably true, I won\'t check your source, but 200 years ago, they weren\'t dealing with companies that had resources greater than many small countries.
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That\'s the whole point, the precidence for these anti-trust alegations are being sourced from a 200 year old text.  Worse still, is that if these people actually read the source text (and not some modern annotation of it) they would see that it speaks out directly again anti-trust cases in a free market environment.  This is MS\'s case and is why nothing is likely to happen.

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Again, 200 years ago, the problems of allowing even big companies to try and dominate were small scale. Welcome to 2002. Read a moden textbook.
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See above, and before you fill up my read queue with "modern" texts, perhaps you should read any text, just plain read.  It\'ll do wonders for your comprehension skills and knowledge about this subject that you would like to think you know so much about.  And besides that.  Railroads, coal , etc were big business back before the technological explosion (relatively speaking) so even that point completely nullifies any credibility you are so desperately vying for.


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It\'s not a monopoly yet, and hopefully will never be one. MS is not playing fairly, they use their money in ways which no company can realistically get around.
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Why is this not fair?  MS is supposed to handicap themselves?  Truly, did you read anything I wrote?  You clearly don\'t understand economics, business or a capitalistic society.  Linux is free, and no one wants it.  It doesn\'t matter how much money MS has, MS can do nothing else.

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Linux is never going to be the \'windows\' killer, it is a superior product in many ways, based on Unix, it\'s faster, more secure, and more stable. Unfortunately, like Unix, it is also difficult to master, and hard to learn
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Have you used a GUI OS in linux?  It\'s almost exactly like Windows, even looks and works like windows.  It has some really nice features.  Again, what was it I said about ignorance...  If anything is a Windows killer it is Linux.
 

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So, If I follow your logic, just because Toshiba isn\'t known by the casual consumer in chip-design, Sony is arrogantic for choosing them? Sorry, but I don\'t follow your logic and I won\'t even speculate why Toshiba got the lead for the Emotion Engine chip-design. Fact is though, Toshiba and Sony made something that is obviously well accepted. Just because it\'s not a chip by Nvidia, IBM or ATI doesn\'t mean it\'s infiriour.
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It is inferior.  Toshiba isn\'t known to the casual or the professional as a high-powered chip designer.  Still searching for a point here.  Even if it isn\'t inferior it isn\'t any more powerful, but it\'s a hell of a lot harder to code for.  Do you really thing Sony would make the same decision if they had a chance to do it over again?


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It\'s funny how you talk for developers, yet you complete forget the fact that a lot of them wanted a design that let them to code on the metal during the PSX days.
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I think it\'s funny how you make things up.  You can code to the metal for the xbox, only it is far easier.  You tell me what devs want, then if you post what I know you will, let\'s quote some devs and see how many actually prefer the PS2 archetecture to the xbox\'s.  I\'ll save us both some time, the answer is none.  Like I said above, the xbox is old archetecture, but it still kicks ass.  Why revent the wheel?

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Correct, so what are you trying to prove above? You just underlined what I said above in my posts: Sony does not have a monopoly. If Sony had a monopoly, they wouldn\'t have invested so much of money into a new technology for 3d processing. Get my point?
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I never said Sony was a monopoly.  And again, your lack of any knowledge comes shining through.  Do you know how much MS spends on R&D?  Millions upon millions.  It has NOTHING to do with a company being a monopoly.  So no I do not get your point, because what you are saying makes nothing valid.

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Watchdog, no one asked for a lesson on how Microsoft stands as a monopoly blah blah blah
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No one asked for a lesson, but you do need one.  How can someone argue a topic without any knowledge about the topic.  I don\'t know either, but watch Seven, he does it all the time.  My "lesson" wasn\'t about MS, it was about monopolies, which is what this topic is about and is what you know nothing about.  Do you get my point?

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Anyone knows that for the casual consumer and worker, Linux is no option. Sad but true. While Linux is very good competitor as a OS, it has no chance to compete because there isn\'t any big backing by software companies. Microsoft and fair? Yeah, if you think it\'s fair for a company to release a very buggy OS and then release some updates (which aren\'t cheap) to resolve their well known bugs.. Yeah, then you might be right.  
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Windows 2000 is rock steady.  Of course it\'s fair.  People buy it. That\'s the bottom line with capitalism. There is no backing because it is an inferior product (including all aspects, not just the actual OS which is better as a stripped down windows clone).  If the product was superior, people would buy it.  That\'s capitalism at work.

My whole point is that the majority of the people that call MS\'s practises unfair are either disgruntled competitors or people that do not understand the first rule of the game of capitalism: making money.  If you don\'t understand the rule of cricket you can\'t call a "leg bye", similarly, if you don\'t understnd economics you can\'t call MS evil let alone debate about it.

Watchdog, you seem pretty intelligent to me, and certainly have a lot of fine points (that you keep making over and over ), but I do disagree with this one thing:

if you don\'t understnd economics you can\'t call MS evil let alone debate about it.

That\'s not true, there are plenty of other reasons people hate MS.  Take the web development community, for example, Front Page is more headache than it\'s worth for a real developer.  There are even programs to clean up the trash that Microsoft adds to its web files.

For me, I don\'t like how MS links its programs together and tries to default everything on my system to MS apps.  I closed MSN for a reason.  No, I don\'t want to open MIE.  That kind of thing.  And that\'s just the tip of the iceberg for some people, still without having anything to do with economics.  

-Eik

Point taken Eik, can\'t say I disagree or that I can argue with that--I really meant that people can\'t argue about monopolies and that being the reason is evil.  The windows operating system, pisses me off too, the tie ins (besides the IE and notepad ones, I really like them) bother me too.

BTW, I\'m sure you can see why I have to keep bringing up the same points.  I swear some of these people can\'t even read at a grade 6 level.

all I can say is

man you guys have too much time on your hands

haven\'t you noticed, the sun is out