Microsoft ships them these units and gets money from them in return. If the store sells an XBox, it shows that this is a product that sells, and the store orders more units. That sort of rep is death to any console. Secondly, adding to the Xbox userbase without buying games actually makes their userbase less attractive to developers: if you have one million users who are, on average, only buying, say, two games a year, that's terrible because it suggests that you've captured a particularly thrifty demographic and can expect any future growth in your userbase to spend at more or less the same rate. If, as I suggested to the MS-hostile poster, he uses solely downloaded pirate or homebrew games he won't be giving MS any royalties and certainly less than they'll make on his purchase of the PC version of Halo. His argument is that the purchase of an Xbox doesn't cost MS money because a)they'll make royalties on the games we can't resist buying and b)simply buying a unit assists MS's effort to build a user base that is attractive to developers. I'm glad to know that there's at least one user on slashdot that doesn't believe the 'income = money loss' myth that everyone else seems to propagate. That's like Nintendo releasing Mario Sunshine for the PC, stupid. As one of the meager few games that were both worth anything, and original to the system, their shooting the Xbox in the foot allowing others to play it. Microsoft, if their Xbox people were at all thinking straight, should never have allowed a PC port of Halo to exist, ever. It's Microsoft trying to dominate another industry and that's worth fighting against actively in my opinion. Personally, I don't care about Halo, and I'm one of those actively against the Xbox, for reasons beyond its pathetic library of games (PC ports, PS2 and Dreamcast ports, and crappy games, with the odd good one hidden here and there under the massive piles of crap) its crappy controller, and the fact that unless you have an HDTV, it doesn't look any better than a PS2 or Dreamcast.

If people have waited for this long, they'll wait another year, and not bother with the $200 for the Xbox. They just removed that reason by announcing it's release, ever. The preception remains, true or not, that 'Halo is the only reason to get an Xbox'. Microsoft ought to be looking to expand into the casual gamer crowd/those of us who don't like, don't care, or actively dislike the Xbox. The people who were waiting for a price drop have already gotten it as well (or may by Christmas, but everything game-wise gets a Christmas boost). Pretty much, the people who wanted an Xbox originally have already gotten it.

Play halo for mac