jarrod said:
Nintendo spends enormously on R&D, probably more than either MGS and SCE (though SCE does like to offload/hide costs with SEL, lol). Hell, even this generation ATi mentioned that R&D costs sunk into Xenos (360 GPU) and Hollywood (Wii GPU) was practically even. Nintendo's not afraid to invest, and they have long term, mutually beneficial relationships with tech firms like IBM, AMD, NEC, Sharp, Matsushita, etc. Nintendo's engineers definitely tend to have a different ideology from Sony, they favor high efficiency / low cost setups much more, they don't rely on economies of scale to drive down prices (something that's especially sunk PS3 this gen) but they've proven themselves before. Just look at GameCube, a system that launched (profitably) at just $199 and handily outperformed a $299 (loss taking) PS2 and performed surprisingly well against a (heavy loss taking) $299 Xbox. I think you're very much underselling Nintendo's engineers, know-how, partners and contacts when you claim they couldn't make a $299 box next that handily outperforms PS3... |
Yeah Nintendo has some amazing engineers. Although I think some of the problem is each company's design philosophy. SONY for example wants to focus on high end entertainment. Nintendo wants to create mass market products. Based on those philosophies Nintendo should always sell more then SONY. The products they make are not bad.
There's a weird marketing / market analysis / consumer analysis problem that Nintendo is good at and SONY is really bad at.