That's exactly why Sony will be conservative to not mess with the PS Division. Your statement is the exactly opposite of Sony's action. If Sony was aggressive, we would have seen PS Now not be ignored by pretty much everyone, we would have seen PS Now have good quality third parties on service.
Sorry but everything you say is makes sense.
The way Microsoft insiders are saying, Microsoft is putting A LOT of Money power into winning the Game Streaming/Subscription wars. The losses generated to get Game Pass/XCloud into a dominate position will be in the billions. Is Sony willing to loose that much?
Your statement about profits in the 360 era has zero relevance in 2020. So why are you constantly bringing it up?
It seems like you may not have understood me in a few areas- some of your statements seem a bit garbled here. Let me clarify to make sure we're on the same page.
1.) Sony is quite aggressive and always has been with the PS hardware and software. The PS4 is the most conservative system they've ever put out, in fact. Prior to this they were notorious for going balls to the wall with strange, custom hardware that was quite powerful yet difficult to master. Even so as we've seen the PS4 hardware get more conservative, we've seen them take MORE risks with their software and first party efforts.
Your example of PSNow is nonsensical. Sony bought Gaikai *7 years ago* for **$380 million USD** based largely on potential. Is that "not being aggressive?" a lot of people will disagree with you. PSNow isn't "ignored by everyone" it's the largest streaming service that exists. Now, is there missed potential there? absolutely. Sony could have done more with it- but there's not really a good reason to. The infrastructure to make a purely streaming only service just isn't there yet. We've seen this with Stadia. Despite google's piles of money and massive datacenters they own, the platform is nowhere NEAR what was promised and does not appear as if it can be for a very long while. The streaming model also makes sony WAY less money than direct sales of software, which they are very, very good at. Microsoft on the other hand is NOT good at selling consoles in comparison, which is why you're seeing the shift to gamepass and xcloud, because the console war is over. Sony has won that battle.
If Microsoft wants to lose money giving away gamepass subscriptions to build the kind of base that Sony already has, more power to them- but there's no reason for Sony to push PSnow the same way.
2.) Microsoft is investing a lot of money into pushing gamepass and Xcloud. They are NOT putting a lot of money into losing fistfuls of money on console hardware- because there simply IS no way to beat Sony selling consoles when they don't exist in half the market where Sony competes. So does making Gamepass a loss leader to make inroads in those territories make sense? possibly. Does losing $200 a box on Xbox Series X systems to price cut Sony make sense? absolutely not.
3.) You misunderstood my statements about profits entirely. no one was speaking about the 360. We're talking about microsoft's profits RIGHT NOW.
RIGHT NOW, not in the "360 era", only about 9% of Microsoft's revenue is coming from gaming, in its entirety. 90% of that revenue is coming from somewhere else. It's not a big revenue driver. in fact, everything Xbox and gaming related period is only marginally more than Microsoft makes from Bing. Yes, Bing. That thing no one uses and microsoft barely bothers to mention anymore.
Sony on the other hand is a completely different story.
Game and network services is the LARGEST sector of sony's business by far. it's a full quarter of sony's 79 Billion USD revenue in FY 18, and double what Home Entertainment and Financial Services brings in. Playstation is CRITICAL to the success of Sony as a business, and Sony treats it as such.
So when asking "who is in a better position to agressively price a console product'" the answer is- as I said- Sony. Sony's PS division is more critical to the organization, and game and network services is FAR more profitable as a division than Microsoft's gaming segment is.
There's no coherent reason why Microsoft WOULD throw a bunch of money at Xbox, even if they had not previously demonstrated with Xbox as well as other divisions such as zune, bing, surface, and windows phone that they will not float them indefinitely with profits from office, windows, and azure. There's a fantasy that Microsoft will simply use piles of cash to dump hardware at fire sale prices to win the sector- Microsoft has *never* done this. Not with Xbox, not with anything.
