Ps3, Nintendo Wii Or Xbox 360

[andywg]

Actually a number of companies make the primary product at a gross loss and get the profit from peripherals.

Look at cars. Most car manufacturers (at least in Europe) make a loss on the individual cars, but the servicing and parts is where the profit lies.

I would not be surprised if Sony (and definitely M$) are selling the console at an overall loss, but raking it in from the games, after all, the average gamer must buy between 4 and 12 games per year, but will only buy a console once every 2-4 years, so they take a loss (known as a loss-leader and strangely enough illegal in UK supermarkets) on selling the product to get people into their market and buying other things they make a profit on.

The extra cost on Sony is the Blu-Ray drive, which will be a gimmick, I doubt that many games will come out using all 20gb of memory, and you only have to look at the original CD consoles that came out before everyone had CDs to see how well it works to put a player on a console that has no other uses (Mega CD anyone? Amiga CD32?...)

 

[bunjiweb]

The "revolution" is called Wii and will remain the same name in japan, as it is pronounced "we" by them, and that is how it is intended to pronounce as it is intended by Nintendo to be a symbol of togetherness in gaming, as they aren't intending to aim the console at any one particular market, they want to bring gaming to anyone, whether its your 3 year old cousin, or 93 year old gran....

Kawaii is a typical japanese word that is used ALOT. It means "cute" and is pronounced "Ka-Wa-ee".

As for console profit loss, this has been the case for many consoles. The original Xbox was loosing microsoft over $100 until they had reached a production threshold which was not atained until the 2nd year of the consoles life. The Games are where the money is made. It worked for Microsoft, and so has been seen to be the way to aim a console by most manufacturers since. The Nintendo DS, Gamecube, Aswell as the PS2 Slimline etc.

The Blue-Ray as andywg said is a total gimmick. It will NOT catch on, as people still havent got over DVDs yet, and wont get over them until everyones house has full surround sound, flat-screen, high definition systems. At that point, HD-DVD will take off. It has been claimed by many industry experts that Sony have been wasting massive ammounts of money on the Blu-Ray system as we as the consumer just simply aren't ready for it.

Ben

 

[pica_nuttalli]

It has been claimed by many industry experts that Sony have been wasting massive ammounts of money on the Blu-Ray system as we as the consumer just simply aren't ready for it.

I know this is true of the US and apparently the UK, but does anyone know the status of Blu-Ray in Japan? There's a pretty high concentration of technophiles oin that little island chain...

 

[bunjiweb]

Well, the Japanese try to adopt most new technologies, but alot fall at the first hurdle, as opinion will spread very quickly. I have no doubt the PS3 will sell, especially in Japan, but I feel Sony have wasted to much time and resources developing an almost totaly redundant media.

Ben

 

[blue acara]

We all would probably agree that the playstation is going to have good graphics and some good games, but as people have said its this blue ray drive that may well be a very big mistake by sony.

People dont want or need it yet and it drives the price of the ps3 up a lot.

Also the blue ray may come second to the HD DVD and so become useless.-Most people dont buy games consoles for all these extras, they buy them for the games, I think sony may have tried to do too much to soon and for too much cost on this ps3.

Another big worry for sony is that the games developers are worried about the cost of the machine and may chose to make games for the nintendo or x-box instead. The first 6 months of the life of the ps3 will be vital for sony if it doesnt do well sony are in very big trouble.

I am going to wait and see how it does before before buying mine

 

[SamUK]

your still all forgeting about asia!

they worship sony electrical stuff over there and that will be enough to keep sony going.

most of us here are in the UK.

why do you think we get games last? were a tiny market in comparison to america and asia. we dont really matter.

harsh but true fact.


thats why the japs got all the limited edition xboxes and we got about 2 even tho sony is still (sorry, was) winning here too!


and i had aload more to say but bunjiweb pretty much covered it lol.

EDIT -

jus wanna add that i do agree MS is gathering speed but i think since theres been such a big gap between consoles and because sony advertise and parents and people that dont read forums (were a pretty small minority i bet) trust them then the console will still sell.

itll be close but it will sell.

 

[gremlin]

wii