Is the PS4 Sony's Most Successful Console to Date?

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Azzanation said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

Well, we may be talking past each other.  Legal obligations are different from a business's purpose.  The purpose of a business is to make and retain customers. 

However, you admit that chasing a quick buck is not really the right path.  That was essentially my issue with the PS4 in my first post.  PS2 expanded the gaming market as much as possible, and the PS4 did not.  They kept the price of their console high when they could have easily lowered it.  Not only does this exclude people from the gaming market, but it is not in Sony's best interest to keep prices high when that excludes significant customers.  The reason is that a competitor can easily come along with a cheaper price and take these customers for themselves.  These neglected customers end up empowering competitors.  By not serving them with the PS4, Sony may be shooting themselves in the foot for a quick buck.  On the other hand, if they just focused on serving their customers, and they lowered their system price, then they could avoid empowering competitors.  There are plenty of examples in other industries, where this very thing has happened.

A customer is nothing to a business if they dont have a wallet. PS4 maximizes profits from its customers, PS2 couldn't as it had to deal with piracy at the time and had no service model to continue to generate cash. Hence hardware sales (especially sold at a loss) means little if the customer is spending less. Also expanding upon the gaming market means little to shareholders if they are not generating profits. Each industry generates profits differently however the end goal is all the same. At a supermarket, companies lose money on Milk but rely on you buying other products like fruit which is sold at a profit. Sounds familiar to how hardware and software work doesn't it. Hardware is what gets the customers into the store, the software is the items the customers buy within the store to generate the profits. Ever wonder why some stores try to give you baskets at the door? So you impulse buy and carry more items, because that's where the money is.

I was removed from a bar once because i wasn't buying any drinks and i was taking up space, they knew i wasn't spending so they asked me to leave so they can get others into the bar who were willing to spend. See how important i was as a customer when i wasn't spending money.

Below is a good example of a made up scenario,

Example 1: Company (A) makes a games console, RnD was $3b to make. They sold 200m consoles at $100 each. They now hold the record of consoles sold and have the most customers with no Subscription model. Would you consider that a success?

Example 2: Company (B) makes a games console, RnD was $3b to make. They sold 100m consoles at $400 each, they also have 50m subscribers paying $100 per year over 5 years.

Both consoles were on the market for 5 years and sold the same amount of software. Who is more successful?

This entire post is a strawman argument.  PS2 was profitable even when they dropped the hardware price to $99.