| largedarryl said: These threads are always too biased, with fanboys eating up PR like its candy. The truth is, that Sony want the PS3 to sell for 10 years, the problem is they will have the PS4 on the market for 4-5 of those years. This means that Sony is going to release a new console long before the end of "the 10 year plan". Microsoft is actually a guessing game with when they will release a new console. I think they are going to go for an early release again because of the advantage that gave them. Now for some reason I don't understand why people don't think Nintendo should release a console early. At the current moment they are completely owning the mainstream market and are struggling to captivate the hardcore market. So it would make lots of sense for Nintendo to do something very non-Nintendo. Release a loss leading console priced at $400-$500. This would be a fully featured system that blows everything away currently on the PS3 and 360. I think the current profit from the Wii could more than offset the loss of their new console. With this early out of the gate system they could basically have an amazing system at the low price point and another amazing system for the hardcore priced above (or even at) the price of the PS3. There are lots of possibilities here, but it makes the most sense for Nintendo to start the next gen early. |
Nintendo has produced a loss leading console before being that Nintendo lost dozens of dollars off of every console when they released the Gamecube; it may have not been losses on the scale of the XBox, PS3 or XBox 360 but it demonstrates that they are willing to lose money to get the "Right" product on the market at the "Right" price. The reason why they haven't taken the same scale of losses as Microsoft or Sony has is they see themself as a software company, and you have see value in the software you produce from taking losses on the hardware.
Now, the question is what Nintendo gains from being the first mover? They're a company that is most dangerous when they do something unexpected, if they end up releasing their next console early then the other console manufacturers have an opportunity to respond. If they're as successful as they were with the Wii this doesn't really matter because the generation will be over before the other manufacturers have a chance to respond; but if they release an expensive console that will (obviously) have a slow start it makes it easy for their competition to respond to their approach.
