| frybread said: Software sales are always important for every platform, consoles, handhelds, pc's. But when the hardware is sold at a loss, as in the case of PS3 and 360, software sales are all they have. They simply can't afford to have people to buy a console and not a single game. Consider the PC, where hardware is sold at a profit, or even Nintendo. Piracy is rampant, but profits are still being made. Hell, look at the iPod. If the 120GB model was sold at a loss for $50, I assure you Apple would have many protection features to force the majority of users to buy every single song off of iTunes. But they don't, the iPod is sold at a profit, and apple doesn't seem to mind that most people pirate music.
If the Razor & Blade strategy is at its end for consoles, which it looks to be considering the negative profits for MS and Sony, could software developers face a future where console makers turn a blind eye to piracy?
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Apple makes barely any - if any at all - money off of music. The deals with the record labels are terrible - basically they created the store to make it easy for iPod customers to get music - so that more people would buy (and upgrade) their iPods. Their model is most definietly making money off the hardware.
