| TheLastStarFighter said: Absolutely they need to work with 3rd parties. Either that or buy them, and working with them is likely the much cheaper option. In the past "working with" third parties would mean selling hardware at a loss to please them. But now with online subscriptions Nintendo could sell the system at a loss but make it back up with subscriptions. They made massive profits by making $49 per Wii. If they sold a kick-ass system at $399 (the same price as NES, adjusted for inflation) with $450 worth of stuff in side but an annual fee of $49 per year, they would have Wii level profits within 2 years of ownership, and a system on par with Sony and MS. They really, really need to work with 3rd parties and get them on board. And yes, the SNES was truly Nintendo at its best. |
Looking at PS4, it is sold at a little loss/little profit by the reports. Lets assume is at US$ 0 and we wont be more than US$ 10 from the truth anyway. People will get it with a US$ 60 plus subscription and at least a game (tie ratio is more than 2). With a Sony cut of, lets say, 20% for game, they already got US$ 12 and there is the US$ 60 from PS+. US$ 72 doesn't sounds bad, even if they reserve US$ 30 from that to pay infrastructure and the free games from Instant Collection they will already profit US$ 42. Even if I'm being optimistic and they get around 30 bucks, it will do a nice figure for 5M units.
And probably in a year or 2 they will be selling the units at profit (or will price cut and improve sales, getting more PS+ subscribers and software sales anyway). The old model of selling consoles at loss and praying for software sales is probably dead and buried, replaced by the new "sell console at cost price, charge a subscription, sell games and turn the unit to a profit ASAP".
