First of all Gekko/Stu... It's not even Mirosoft's intention to make a profit with Xbox. They put it out quite cleary that Xbox is just a tool to put thier foot in the door of the gaming market.... and they are willing t spend whaver it takes to get in.
If they are not even trying to make a profit, how could you count them out?
Imagine if tey weren't about games and were more about Money... I don't thik they woud have purchased Rare or Bungie, Xbox would sill cost $300, and they wouldn't have paid thid parties to make games for them... Xbox would have sucked, and it would have flopped, that should tell you how hard it is to jump in and become a major player in ths industry off of the bat (which MS is doing).
I think thier plan is smart personally... If they would have even thought about making a profit this gen, they would have failed
Do they have the best chance of dropping out? No... why? Because they have proven that they can lose milions and millions and still be satisfied with the results. Nintendo on the other end, is my personal pick for the next thing to drop out.
Why? There popularity is falling, and even with a profit in Nintendo's pocket, a lower userbase hurts third party support, and lower third party support hurts the sales, and low sales hurts the third party support, and s on and so on. They are caught in this spiral, just like Sega.
But can they bounce back? HELL yeah! All they have to do is become a gambler like Microsoft, take some risks, grab on to the next big thing before MS or Sony gets to it... but Nintendo's "Stay a generation behind" attitude will be the death of them if it continues.