| Zekkyou said: The PS2 only lost money in its launch year (about $450m), it made about $2.6 billion in the following 4. Nintendo did make more overall profit that gen ($4.8b in the same 5 years for the GC and GBA), but the PS2 was without a doubt considerable more profitable than the GC. Unless you want to imply that that the GC made a similar amount of profit to the GBA? Profitability alone isn't a sign of success though. A company doesn't dedicate years of its time and resources in the hopes of making a small profit and losing market share, especially when that product represents a major portion of their business. The GC could certainly have done worse (as shown by the WiiU's current situation), but for a company as profitable as Nintendo it was without a doubt a failure. |
(22m vs 81.5m for hardware and 210m vs 370m for software).
Yes, I looked it up later as other corrected me.
As for the WiiU, it wasn't helped by the 3DS coming out at a loss as well as the WiiU. The 3DS because of its 3D tech, the WiiU because of its gamepad technologies (which are still top of the line even today). Both of them coming in at once has really damaged the bottomline but, as of a few months ago, the WiiU has become positive on sale and the 3DS has been positive for a long time now. As to whether or not the NGC is to be considered a failure, that depends on a lot of thing but, yes, they were "losing" in more senses than just profit. They had been losing marketshare and consoles sold since the SNES.
