Sony CEO admits to admiration for Xbox 360

He means the hardware, and he's right. The 360 has an IBM chip and ATi graphics, just like the Gamecube. They're not copying the Gamecube's buisness model (ie making money ) or image, but CPU, GPU and several other things (like the L1 and 2 caches) are a direct development of what the Gamecube did, and they've ditched pretty much everything that was in the original Xbox hardware wise.

And it's been said before, but I'm a sucka for flame bait - if the Gamecube was a failure, so was the Xbox, because they sold about the same number (and by the end of this year the GCN will eventually have sold more), and at least the GCN made money, rather then losing 4 billion.

Related point:

One thing I'm dissapointed about in terms of next gen is that I think the reason the Wii is less powerful then the others is that Nintendo didn't get the credit for what an engineering marvel the Gamecube was. It cost a fraction of what the PS2 or Xbox did to manufacture, and was more powerful then either in most game related tasks. But EB schmucks and Madden morons didn't look at it for long, saw Mario Kart and Luigi's Mansion (rather then Re-make and Metroid Prime), and decided it was 'less powerful then the PS2' and 'Kiddie'. So now Nintendo figures it like this: 'people assume we're less powerful, so we might as well go with it, save a few bucks, make the machine cheaper. We've already got this fancy but relatively expensive controller thingy, we'll make a difference with that and get back to graphics in the next gen'

If the Gamecube didn't get such a bad rap, we may have soon been getting a console with the fancy new controller and the best graphics around. Oh well, for this gen it's now one or the other.

Yes, the Cube has made more money then the Xbox in Australia, because it didn't make a loss, which the Xbox did. I believe the loss for the Xbox was actually greater then the world average per unit for Australia, so they probably lost 200 million dollars here. Nintendo makes a tidy profit on the Gamecube here, so technically the Gamecube made infinitely more money then the Xbox did in Australia, since 1/0 tends to infinity.

Also, you've dodged the main point - in terms of hardware, the Xbox 360 has followed in the footsteps of the Gamecube almost exactly, which is a clear vindication Nintendo's harware decisions.

That was only in Japan, there were almost 20 for us here at launch.

No no no.

That's NET LOSS, including all money made back on software. The original Xbox lost 4 billion+ for Microsoft worldwide, which is around US$200 loss per console, including everthing they made back on software. Nintendo's Gamecube buisness has made a net profit.

This means they probably lost $6 billion on hardware and advertising and only made back $2 billion in games. Whatever the ratio, they're $4 billion+ down on the whole thing.

There is no 'they make all the loss back on games' money. They have lost billions that never and is never coming back.

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Now there are two things they have done. They clearly made more gross income with the Xbox then the Gamecube in Australia, that is, more money was spent by consumers on XB products then GCN. But that's a pretty futile achievement when they never made a cent on their products, and in fact lost massive ammounts of money. It also means they were competing unfairly - for example, if Sony or Nintendo decided decided to sell PSPs or DSes for $50 and games for $20, sales would go through the roof. But since they need to make money, they can't do that.

Another thing is that publishers of Xbox software have made more money releasing games on it then they have with Gamecube releases. Microsoft's publishing fees are lower, which makes the platform attractive to publishers, and the games sold quite well on it. Now it's worth noting that Microsoft doesn't see the majority of the cash for the games sales, only the licencing fee.

That's fine, I wasn't being vindictive, just making sure you knew what his (and my) point was.