By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
SvennoJ on 31 July 2016
Edit Thread
Intrinsic said:

 

SvennoJ said:

Agreed, these are all tactics to try to hold on to the biggest slice of a shrinking pie. No efforts at all to expanding the market, rather the opposite.

And Intrinsic, why make the consoles profitable (and weaker) from day one instead of subsidizing the hardware if you're only after the loyal hardcore?

But they are expanding the market, just not how they typically do so. Now its more of a waiting game.

firstly, the PS3 showed that the subsidized model just doesn't work anymore. New tech is simply too expensive and when in competition with people willing to come in at lower prices, you are just making things unnecessarily hard for yourself. 

so make a console that is priced right but good enough and get those that are willing to jump in in at the time. The PS4/XB1 selling better than any PlayStation/Xbox respectively is proof that this is the better strategy to take. 

Then expand by adopting an iterative model. When the Neo/scorpio is released, most people that own a PS4/XB1 today will upgrade. And sell their perfectly fine consoles for as little as $200 in some cases, or even less. The cost of the current PS4/XB1 could even at the time be at around $250/$300 new. The lower price points of the used and new "8th gen" consoles puts them in the hands of people that wouldn't typically have spent $400/$500 for a console. While those that are willing to spend that much can jump into the "9th gen" iterations of those consoles. 

In one move, you expand by reducing the general cost of entry while also providing more expensive versions for the hardcore crowd. You keep everyone happy so to speak. 

The ps3 was an extreme case and mostly showed that subsidizing a movie player doesn't make you money in the short term. (And still debatable whether it was worth winning the format war quickly although I'm glad they did)

I'm curious to see where this goes. For now the only effect it has had on me is that I spend a lot less on games. The HDD is full anyway, I'm kinda done with buying unfinished games at launch and my backlog is looking just as good if not better than new games coming out. NMS, GT Sport, Zelda and perhaps Horizon are the only purchases I have in mind for the next 6 months. Not woth buying a Neo or NX for. A big difference to spending well over $1000 on games yearly until a couple years ago. Perhaps I've finally fallen out of the target age demographic.