By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
foxtail on 08 July 2016
Edit Thread
DonFerrari said:
foxtail said:

It was 4% of the net sales price of DVD players and DVD decoders (not just the drive) , with a minimum royalty of $4.00 per player or decoder and a maximum of $8.00.  The Gamecube and Xbox would be considered the DVD players, and 4% of their net sales price would reach the $8 limit.  They would both be charged $8 per console at their launch prices.

Most PS2 games could fit on a Gamecube disc, and for those that couldn't they could use two discs (though it may be harder with some open world games) or use compression .  Besides, if they put a DVD drive in the Gamecube it would be less of a small CUBE. =P

That table I put was for DVD-ROM DRIVE not DVD Players (which was another part of the table)... so you are talking about different things. PS2 had to pay for royalties for their DVD Player, MS had to pay for the Driver, not the end unit... or do you think computers would have to pay royalty on DVD drive on the price of the whole PC?

To conform to the applicable DVD format standards (DVD disc, drive, codec and software, etc.) you must pay the licensing and/or royalty fees. The company that ships the end product is responsible for paying those fees unless the drive is sold standalone. For new PCs it would be the PC OEMs.  Microsoft avoided paying the fees on the original Xbox by excluding the necessary software for DVD video playback.  Even for Win7 and later they avoid paying fees by not including the codecs in non-Media versions of Windows out of the box.

Since the cap is $8 they would never have to pay more than that no matter if the whole price of the PC was $200 or $4000.   If the price was $100 or less the fee would be the $4 minimum, in-between $100-200 it would be 4% of the total price (i.e. if the final price was $150, 4% of that would mean a $6 fee).