Funny, I know someone else who has deep pockets.

Google has deep pocket, but has a habit of abandoning projects that aren't immediate successes.

Above all the Xbox had Halo, google doesn't seem to have anything unique up their sleeve.

To add on to this, I remember Gates said _something publicly like "I expect to lose about a billion dollars on it before it pans out" when launching xbox. I remember that it just seemed a very genuine "I think we should be in this market long term, and I know we'll lose a lot of money to get there. But we can afford it."

I'm pretty sure Xbox Live had something to do with MS's success.

Success? You mean they saw it as one area they did better? Microsoft considering killing off the xbox after the fist iteration because the sales figures were not where they hoped it would be and it was costing them.