axt113 said:
HappySqurriel said:
axt113 said:
HappySqurriel said:
axt113 said:
Yes the GCN was powerful, but when it came down to the Wii, they were not able to stay in the graphics arms race while still offering an affordable system, so there is a good chance they will end up not delivering a high power system this time
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It isn't that they "couldn't" provide a more powerful system, it was that they choose not to ...
Hypothetically speaking, Nintendo could have easily paired up a PowerPC 970MP @ 2.0 GHz with a Radeon X600/X800 and sold it for $300 without taking a large loss; and the system would have potentially been very small and energy efficient as well.
Why they didn't do this is something only Nintendo knows, but I suspect it was because they were uncertain of the success of the Wii and didn't want to expend the hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D and licencing fees to make it happen.
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$300 wouldn't have been as market friendly as they were looking for, and they probably couldn't have done it while having a pack in game at the $300 price point.
The unknown success of the Wii was a potential possibility for their decisions, but that still involves releasing the system at a market friendly price to make its chance of success greater
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Why?
The per-unit price of packed in software is almost nothing, with how well the Wii sold initially I highly doubt $50 would have been a deal-breaker, and the hardware I'm suggesting is very similar to what Apple used in their Mac Mini which was small, energy efficient, (reasonably) inexpensive, and sold at Apple's insanely high margins.
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Yes, but we get back to what Nintendo percieved as market friendly at the time, they didn't see $300 or $350 as an acceptable price (and after seeing the slow start of the 3DS, its very likely they will be hesitant to make the next home console too expensive), so for them to pack in a lot of power and risk exceeding that market price was not something they wanted then, and will likely not be something they want in the future.
Sure the pack in game was negligible cost, but as we saw in Japan, they decided to sell it seperately, indicting, they valued it at $50 in the US bundle
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We could go round and round in circles debating what Nintendo could have potentially decided to do in 2006, but I think it is fair to say that you've already conceded my main point that Nintendo decided not to produce a powerful system for business reasons; potentially because of the risk of facing new stronger competition in the handheld space, and Nintendo’s repeated disappointments in the home console market.
Being that the DS is the most successful gaming system ever, the Wii is Nintendo's most successful home console ever, and Nintendo has very little to (really) fear from the NGP at this point in time, the risks Nintendo faces today are dramatically different than what they faced in 2004-2006; and Nintendo's strategy will probably reflect that. Nintendo has moved from being in a position where the risk was they could no longer be a hardware manufacturer to a position where the risk is that they won't expand their marketshare; and the likely solution to this risk is to try to make a bolder, more interesting product to as wide of a group as possible.
