your mother on 22 February 2007
konnichiwa said:
superchunk said:
kber81 said: I will tell you something about prices. Your beloved Nintendo rips off a lot of cash for a crap like Wii, Sony on the contrary gives best stuff below costs of production. If you can't get what you like, you like what you have.
He wants to say. You have to pay 50$ extra at Nintendo when you buy a Wii, When you buy a PS3 Sony gives you 200$. That is why Nintendo ripps you off.
Okay, I'm going to play devil's advocate for a bit:
Nintendo only makes games (and related sales through merchandising). Sony and Microsoft have gaming divisions but make other products in other divisions.
Nintendo would risk far more by going along the "cheap inkjet printer" route - you know, the printer costs less than the cartridges because they lose money on the printer itself, but hope to recoup the money through the sale of consumables, e.g. inkjet cartridges.
In other words, if people didn't buy that many games from Nintendo, they stand to lose far more than just money. The entire company's foundation can crumble.
Sony and Microsoft can simply funnel money from other profit-making divisions into their games division. In fact, there was a time when Microsoft made 80% of their total revenue through their Windows and Office divisions alone. What about Hotmail? Xbox? These divisions were financed by other divisions. I'm willing to wager that the same thing goes on in Sony.
This has nothing to do with ripping people off or bang for the buck. This is market penetration strategy. In other words, this is their way of trying to a) grow market share, b) wrest market share from the competition, and c) get enough systems out there so that manufacturing costs finally break even and recoup losses through game sales.
Do you really think that Sony (or Microsoft, or Nintendo for that matter) give a flying fuck about you? They just want your money. Sony isn't giving you more value for less. It's just part of their business plan - sell for an initial loss, then recover losses through more efficient console manufacturing and game attachment ratios.
Sony and Microsoft are directly competing against each other, while Nintendo have carved themselves out a new market segment. Blue Ocean, anyone?
But Okay, I'll play along.
So therefore, yes, Nintendo is ripping you off. They, as a company, whose sole function as a company is to somehow generate more revenue than expenditure, don't deserve to make a profit. Fuck them with three broomsticks up their collective asses. Sony is practically giving you 200 bucks! I will then definitely buy a PS3 as soon as the hackers in China get around the copy protection and I can buy them pirated Blu-Ray games here for 2 bucks a pop. They don't need my money. Kutaragi and Co. are philantropists! Hell, for all I care, they should just mail me every new game that comes out.
Since when did marketing strategies and business plans equate to economic compassion for the common gamer?
Hell, all console manufacturers should just leave 2 $100 bills inside the packaging, and start asking for handouts on the street to recover their R&D investments.
