Sure, most exits in this industry are detrimental in some way, but MS leaving the industry wouldn't make it fail or somehow cause it to have a massive contraction. SEGA leaving did what? They started releasing all their franchises across other platforms, most notably Shenmue 2 on Xbox.
What you mean is they stopped releasing basically any of their franchises once the games that were previously destined for DC were out. That said though, I will admit that Sega's exit didn't so much dramatically alter the market, so much as the market dramatically altered, causing Sega's exit.
Also, they've arguably developed the most successful in house studio between them and Sony, in Bungie.
Alright no... Bungie were Bungie before MS, and Halo was going to be amazing anyway. It just wouldn't have been amazing for Xbox (I'd hate to think how that gen would have gone for MS without it). I'm also not sure Bungie were a bigger success than Polyphony was.
But you're forgetting something: the reason the PS3 games look better than the best looking 360 games is because the PS3 had enough TIME in the dev scene to get a grip on. All of PS1's best lookers (RE2, Tekken3, Gran Turismo 2, MGS, Omega Boost etc.) all came out quite well after official development on Saturn ceased. That's why you can't really compare VF2 to T3, for example, or SR to RR4....two of those games came out well later and benefited from an already talented developer who had even more time with a given architecture.
I will just forever look at the videos for Saturn VF3 and Shenmue and wonder what could've been if the system's best developers stuck with it longer.
I'm not forgetting anything. I accounted for dev focus in the very text you quoted!
And even then,Sony's first party is really responsible for the majority of the titles that set the PS3 apart (and Microsoft Game Studios are responsible for the majority of the best looking 360 games). Sega themselves were extremely capable technically, and gave enough focus to the Saturn that I believe the results should have been there if the machine was as capable. I'd even say they did better matching the PS2's output with the DC (whilst it was alive), than they did matching the PS1 with Saturn. It wasn't just later PS1 games either. Daytona vs Ridge Racer? Anything vs Wipeout 2097? Crash? etc
Nobody outside GAF gives a damn about tiny subscription fees though. I pay about the same for my phone, I pay a lot more for my TV. I pay more for my internet access and a hell of a lot more for the electricity. Xbox Live is just another cheap utility bill.
I disagree with this. The Gold subscription is less likely to be a factor for people on GAF if anything, because it's a cost they'd likely factor into the price of the console, because they'd want to play online anyway. This isn't very important at the start of the gen, as someone who just wants a Netflix box isn't about to pay $400-$500 anyway. Later though as the price drops it begins to stand out that this $200 machine wants an additional $50 each year to continue doing it's job. A cost that no other comparable device is asking for.
A few years back I bought my mother a PS3 instead on a 360 for her media purposes. This was partially due to the PS3 also being a BluRay player, but that wasn't too important because she would mainly be streaming. This real reason was that I wasn't about to give her a machine that would become useless to her the moment she let her sub lapse. I would essentially have had to pay for an extra Gold sub each year to make the gift worthwhile for her.
MS needs to remove the paywall from the media apps by the time the consoles hit mass market prices, or their attempts to sell it as an all-in-one machine are wasted.