Most of your information is wrong, some of it laughably so.
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Originally Posted by hulk
So, the HD is used for, what, one game? That, once it goes down, will never come back up? MMO's don't last forever. Oh, and there's been twice as many pre-orders for the DS than there are players on FFXI.
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Nintendo's launch day shipment is
300,000 units. There are more than
500,000 FFXI players, and that number refers to data taken before the release of the expansion. 300,000 is not "twice as many" as 500,000+.
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Interestingly enough, even with a 'smaller marketshare' (which I'm yet to see anyone back up with decent evidence), the GameCube is profitable. The X-Box is not. Go figure.
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Forbes reports the PS2's market share at "just under 50%", while the Xbox enjoys about 26%. That puts the Gamecube at 24%. There are two very important factors to consider when looking at the numbers presented.
1. The article was also published on 11/7/04, before the release of Halo 2. Add almost 3 million copies sold for just
one title to that market share figure.
2. The Gamecube got a HUGE upswing in market share when Nintendo lowered the price to $99. The NGC is still selling for $50 less than both of its competitors. Even with a 50% advantage in price point, the NGC is still trailing the PS2 about two to one for weekly units sold, and four to one for total units sold.
If you consider worldwide sales, then the Gamecube is selling more than the Xbox, because of Microsoft's absolute absence from the Japanese market (7% market share at last estimation, up from 2% last year). Of course, the PS2 dominates the Japanese market even more than it does the American market.
Finally, the Xbox console unit sells for less than the cost of the parts, this is true. And so, the statement "The Xbox is not profitable" is literally true. The games, however, are profitable, as is the Xbox live service. Microsoft's Xbox department is very profitable on the whole. Halo 2 had over 1.5 million pre-orders in the United States alone, and has sold almost that many copies since release.
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And how popular would the PS2 be without it's exclusives? Would the X-Box have gone anywhere without Halo?
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That's a retarded question. How popular would the PS2 be without its exclusives? Uh, yeah, how popular would the Gamecube be without controllers? The PS2 has
twice as many titles available as the Gamecube, and consistantly sells cross-platform titles BETTER than the Nintendo counterpart. Go have a look around the web, I'm tired of linking articles you probably won't read... consensus is that the PS2 has sold four consoles for every Gamecube sold. Sony outsells Nintendo on just the multi-platform titles alone, and PS2 exclusives (GTA: San Andreas, Metal Gear Solid 3, Star Ocean 3, Smackdown vs. Raw) are fucking DOMINATING Nintendo exclusives (Metroid Prime 2, Mario Power Tennis, Donkey Konga, Pikmin 2). It's Muhammad Ali vs. Pee Wee Herman in the console war.
Would the Xbox have gone anywhere without Halo? Yes. See also: Fable, Morrowind, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Ninja Gaiden, Crimson Skies, Dead or Alive, and Otogi. And those are just the exclusives. And how about we talk about Xbox Live, a system which knows no equal in the console wars (least of all from Nintendo and their two online-compatible games).
The only exclusive game Nintendo is putting out this quarter that's even worth talking about is Metroid Prime 2, and it's laughably buried under the pre-order totals for GTA and Halo 2. Gamestop took 260k pre-orders for GTA and 500k for Halo 2. Metroid isn't even on the map. Nintendo estimates 60k pre-orders. Lol?
Sure hope the DS can save Nintendo. They're getting pwnt everywhere else. Sure can't wait for the next game in the Put-Mario-In-An-Otherwise-Horrible-Game series.