The Shrine

<div style='font: 12pt Arial; text-align: left; '>"Microsoft announced that they are expecting to sell 4.5 to 6 million units of XBox within the first fiscal year." In other news, root canals replace sex as the most popular voluntary activity in human existance.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>Down boy. :P With the DC outta the way there's room for the 3rd console. :)</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Well yah, definitely. I'd rather still have the DC around, but, at least there's a bright side to having one less console.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Ha! I'd expect maybe 1 million, and that's pushing it.</div>

<div style='font: 14pt Draconwick; text-align: left; '>AH HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!! Um... right... Just because they did Ok with AOE they think they know consoles...</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "comic sans MS"; text-align: left; '>Gamecube is gonna broadside their sales like a train broadsiding a VW Beetle. $200 for a console with graphics on par or better than PS2? Sheeyit!</div>

<div style='font: 14pt "Times New Roman"; text-align: left; '><center><img src= "http://home.dencity.com/manshoon/4858.j ... nter></div>

<div style='font: 12pt Arial; text-align: justify; padding: 0% 8% 0% 8%; '>Should that read "Microsoft expects sharp drop in stock price, 4th Q 2001"? Now, bear in my mind, my opinion is that what makes a good console is and always has been GAMES...and the X-Box has like two that I would consider marketable. Their strongest genre is sports and they don't even have EA...</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Not everybody has a PSX or a DVD player...</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>*hhhhhhhaaaaawwwwwwccccccckkkkkkk"

*cough*

Um reddy...

KO-</div>

<div style='font: 9pt Arial; text-align: left; '>It's probably just to raise hype. Who's going to buy a console if its company says "The only people we expect to buy our system are our relatives who'll get them for half price."</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>Keep dreaming. :P</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "Arial bold"; text-align: left; '>Personally, I think it'll be a miracle if they sell that many. The only way is if they create MASSIVE hype in the US</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Then again, I'm pretty sure everyone in the Shrine has a PhD in market studies so their figures must be better than whoever Microsoft hired to do this.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>I don't see a system with minimum support in Japan surviving very long, didn't work with the DC and it won't work with the XBox.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Ummm...what? The DC had great Japanese support.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>I don't need a PhD to know what propoganda is.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>N64 lived just fine despite some absolutely horrible sales in Japan.

The world market is roughly split into thirds by Japan, Europe, and North America. Japan is but 1/3rd of the whole market.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Microsoft's earning was better than expected, and this was responsible for a huge surge in the stock market the day after. People are looking at them... or anyone, who can show signs of recovery.

With the new Windows come out that's like free cash, and with the antitrust stuff sent back to the court, they're in a very good position at the moment.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Do you think stockholders will take words like, "We're just kidding about making a ton of money next quarter"? It's not like you can just say stuff like this without taking responsibility for it. Whoever came up with this figure will be the first to receive the flame if they don't meet it. True, numbers can be twisted and projections can go astray, but no company in their right mind makes a claim that obviously can't be fulfilled to face the wrath of the stockholders and lose the confidence of the public just for the heck of it.

People have estimated these things wrong before, but it's not because you're saying they're wrong.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt Verdana, Tahoma; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>You're talking present; he's talking future.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>This is clearly imo a case of the left hand being unable to communicate with the right. The console portion of Microsoft must have believe that since Win ME is soooo popular, people will automatically get Xbox.

But then, they forget the PC end has no real competitors at the home user end while the console side has a lot.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>Besides, Nintendo has a number of very popular first party series, such as Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc, which X-box will definitely not have. And if it wasn't for the popularity of Pokemon, Nintendo would've been in a much worse position...also the fact that a lot of Nintendo's revenue's have come from outside game sales, such as merchandise and licensing of their charas. Do you seriously think we'll see a Halo TV series?</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>...not quite.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt Verdana, Tahoma; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>The thing is, 4.5 to 6 million units is not just decent, it's not just good, it's phenomenal. I just don't see why the X-Box would do so well when it's sharing the market with two other solid consoles.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I have a hard time seeing how they're going to make numbers like that... but it's not so hard to see why they'd BS something like that.

Like mentioned before, what are they gonna say? "Our system isn't gonna sell diddly squat.", then nobody would waste their time on it, and it really wouldn't even sell diddly squat.

Now, if they say "We're going to sell five million units!", they get a lot of hype, some people start to think "Hey, maybe this X-Box stands a chance?", I mean, five million is a good number.

But then they only sell two million... oh well, what the hell does MS care? They just sold two million units, possibly far more than they'd sell if they didn't BS about selling five million.

Hey, I'm no PhD grad, but I don't need a PhD to figure out that if you make sales, it doesn't matter what BS you spread, so long as you get money. If I were selling something, and normally, I'd sell absolutely nothing... but if I lie out of my ass and say I'm gonna sell five million, which causes me to fall short and sell only two million... hey, that's two million more than I would've sold.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>In a word: yes.</div>

<div style='font: 14pt "Times New Roman"; text-align: left; '><img src="http://home.dencity.com/manshoon/XB.jpg">

Guess I'll have to wait for the patch to come out before picking up this game.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>No Sine, it didn't. :( Believe me I watched both fronts 24-7.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>Are you forgetting they get a nice bulk of their income to stay afloat from Gameboy sales? And they also have well known games such as Mario, Zelda, etc.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>The DC sales soared in Japan... like a rock does when dropped from a high altitude.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Arial; text-align: justify; padding: 0% 8% 0% 8%; '>4th Q 2001 means like this December, Don (I actually have no idea when the XBox is supposed to be out...)</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I know it's the future. I'm asking where he's getting that information?</div>

<div style='font: 10pt Verdana, Tahoma; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>He's saying there's no way they can meet that prediction, and due to that, their stock will suffer.</div>

<div style='font: 14pt Plakatbau; text-align: left; '>You forget Microsoft is the focus here. One of the original listed features of Office 98 was "Cures Cancer!", but they took it away when someone complained.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>And where's he getting that information?</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>So Capcom doesn't count? What about Sega? I guess we ignore those "meager" Japanese companies, right?</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>If MS said that they will sell "6 billion consoles in 10 days", would you believe them?</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>As I remember, N64 took second place almost the entire way.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Don, Microsoft's hold on the computer market is completely different than their shallow grasp on the console wars.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>2 does not equal majority. If you go by that logic, The N64 had GREAT Japanese 3rd support.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt Verdana, Tahoma; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>What do you mean where? He's using his own experience with the industry to interpert a claim about the same industry.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>Shoot, I won't lie Capcom was VERY loyal to the Sega and the DC, stood by the console for quite some time till they announced they were entering the software game.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Arial; text-align: justify; padding: 0% 8% 0% 8%; '>I'm not getting any information anywhere. It was a joke. But I am still very convinced that the X-Box will have the worst sales since Conker.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Yah, fairly good analogy (although Conker was almost good in EVERY way, and it still bombed. Not a fair world.)</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Arial; text-align: left; '>But see... that many million consoles in a year is even a broad statement for GameBoy Advance to make (despite Nintendo and their hottest console brand being behind it). Remember, most stats and such in the corporate world are created under bullshit pretenses.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>DC however did have very good sales around south east asian countries since technique for piracy are avalible to it.....</div>