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mutantsushi on 05 February 2014
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supernihilist said:
mutantsushi said:

But MS and Sony's consoles are profitable with 1 game sale at launch
That is only on a direct basis, not accounting for R&D, but there is less R&D for this gen, at least for Sony.
(MS supposedly invested lots in Kinect 2)
The size of the gen doesn't really matter per se, they could switch to yearly platform updates
and the size of each gen would obviously drop, but that wouldn't matter if
yearly game sales are good and each gen is profitable.

The downside for shorter gen seems like it would be for exclusives,
if the install base never gets as large to justify as many awesome exclusives late in the gen. (or vice-versa, if those push out 3rd parties)
Then again, if the follow up gen is largely architecturally compatable, cross-gen exclusives are much easier and viable.

Lets see...you dont count R&D as loss

I explicitly DID address R&D costs.  Thanks for taking one sentence fragment out of context and ignoring everything else. 

supernihilist said:

you say Xbox and PS4 are profitable with a game which they are not

Apparently I was basing that on Sony comments saying they are marginally profitable with 1 game sale and 1 year of PS+.
Immediate profit or loss, or closeness to profit, etc, is obviously relevant to the overall picture by being that much closer to overall profit.
Again, not sure why you're taking that out of context to make it appear as if my entire point hinges on immediate profitability,
when the focus of my post is on the overall longterm picture for the generation, i.e. relevant to the topic of the thread.

supernihilist said:

you say the install base doesnt matter as long as SW sales are stable

 I didn't say it doesn't matter, in fact I specifically address a smaller intall base for the gen as a downside.
But if 2 gens can be compressed into the time of one, each with 60% the sales of a longer gen, that certainly is a counter factor,
especially when they are architectural evolutions allowing full BW-compatability and easy 'HD upgrades' in exactly the same game, not disrupting game sales.

I mean, Sony themself directly state that they expect this generation to be shorter.  Why would they set out for lower profits?

supernihilist said:

NO.

I'm baffled why, if your goal is communication with other people, you do not start by asking people friendly questions to clarify their intent instead of REACTING to minute sentence fragments without considering their context?  And if that is not your goal, what IS fulfilled by engaging in the forum here?  Howling at the moon is always an option if you feel in the mood.