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Originally Posted by TheGame
Um... I saw more piracy on Psx than any console in my life.. and that didn't exactly hurt the userbase did it? MS wants user right now, not money.
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You really are getting everything backwards in this debate. Console sales hurt Microsoft, software sales help Microsoft. The more people who buy Xboxes, the more money Microsoft will lose. Now if those people don't buy games, Microsoft will never make back the cost. So if 20 million people go out and buy Xbox to pirate it, Microsoft would lose about 2 billion.
Software sales have always been a much bigger source of profit than hardware sales. That's why it's not uncommon for a company to release a gaming console at a loss, because they can rely on software sales to make up the difference, and bring in additional profits. For a company who is still taking a loss on hardware, piracy means big losses. For a company making money on hardware sales, piracy still means less profits, because game sales bring in a lot more than hardware sales.