KungKras said:
I don't think I can come up with a reliable source, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but the megadrive was around $190 until Tom Kalinske got hired in 1990 and cut the price od the console. From what I know, Tom Kalinske was a believer in the razor and blades model. I am very curious as to how you know that Bernie Stolar was fired just because he wanted the DC to launch cheap. I thought that they fired him after the dreamcast launch because launches was all he did well. He made the Playstation launch big, but tried to prevent square from making Final Fantasy VII for the playstation and thus got fired. Sega hired him and he proceeded to fuck up the Saturn with his no-RPG-no-2D policies. Sega knew he would fuck up the Dreamcast and just let him do the launch well and then fired him. That's how I understand it anyway. As for the Mega CD and the 32X, maybe Sega just considered them peripherals to make up the money lost by the megadrive on, just like selling controllers or memory cards at a profit. About the playstation and Saturn, you forget that the playstaytion and the Saturn were both differently expensive to manufacture. Saturn was a monster when it came to components, and therefore much much more expensive then the playstation to manufacture. Playstation had a simpler design and thus Sony didn't suffer as much as Sega did from price cuts. Saturn was expensive to manufacture through it's entire lifespan, and playstation manufacture costs got cheaper. |
Bernie stollar firing summary.
http://info.sonicretro.org/Bernie_Stolar
I think sega was using a lot of bundled games as razorblades in the razor and blades model. I remember sonic 1 bundle, sonic 1 and 2 bundle...but I had to save up my money to buy a snes or a genesis in 1992 and the were both similarly priced. Later in the lifecycle of the console they may have been 50 dollars cheaper until 1996 when the genesis was discontinued and fire sale was on.
I agree that Saturn was a beast cost wise. They used brand name parts and quality was top notch. My saturn still works and never misses a beat...see howmny PS1s work from 1996 :) PS2 was a better example of sony cutting price to eliminate competition. Just look at the losses sony had the year PS2 launched. You have the number 1 and number 2 platform (PS1 and PS2) and you lose 510 million dollars?
http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=72524&page=1
All in all, I dont think sega needed to sell hardware at a loss until PS1. Nintendo wasn't going to do it, 3DO wasn't going to do it and rest didn't matter. So this method was a disruption on how business was done...and Sony gets the credit for starting it. (or blame depending how you look at it)