| Dark_Lord_2008 said: Lower price = increased hardware sales. Hardware is often sold at a small profit or a loss. The loss can be recouped through gamers purchasing on average between 8 to 10 games per console over a few years. Games and accessories make the big profits for companies. |
8 to 10 or more is an attach rate typical of home consoles, portables actually have lower ones, even the mighty DS is under 5 (will most probably reach it before its end of life, anyway), PSP is under 4. If the HW losses are low, though, even 3 should be enough, so you're right anyway, unless 3DS flop so hard to not even reach it. In a year, thanks to components price reduction, if enough pieces have been produced (even a few millions more than what have already been made should be more than enough to allow the first production process tuning and cost reduction), 3DS should be profitable even at $170, so Nintendo must just resist and deliver the games.
One last thing: particularly now, with still so little games, of which many not available in every region, removing the region lock would help a lot.
Region lock is always stupid: if the importing volumes are little, it's not relevant and it just pisses some users, that often happen to buy more games than average, if the importing volumes are large, it kills a big business, reduces SW sales in a relevant way and pisses many users off, so it does big damage. It's a lose-lose choice just to protect a minority of publishers that still stick to jurassic release policies in a globalized world.
