your mother on 27 July 2007
| Sqrl said: @your mother, Just to add one more thing to that list that a company cannot really buy...they don't have people with the experience and more important they don't have the contacts needed to make this stuff happen. Most of the things you listed requires working with other companies and you need people who know how to deal with those companies and when to grease the wheels so to speak. All in all, I feel confident in saying that the barrier for entry into the console market is one of the highest barrier's for entry of any industry. You need to be willing to lose money by the hundreds of millions (and probably billions) for the first 2 years of development...and all of that is well before you have any realistic idea of your market risk since you won't be able to see how well your investment is going to perform until its out there (just look at this gen, people had no clue how these consoles would do until we started to see mostly complete prototypes of the consoles etc...). Anyways, I think I may be kicking a dead horse here, so I'll leave it at that. |
You might be "kicking a dead horse" here, but I do agree. Such massive expenses and startup cost is the main reason Nintendo plays it safe by making a profit on hardware from day one, Sony and Microsoft can afford to be in the business even while incurring such substantial losses because they have other business units to offset those losses, SEGA was forced out of the console business (not enough cash to sustain losses) and companies like the Phantom will never amount to anything more than vaporware.
