I've been wondering just how much leverage a company's other endeavors give them when marketing their video game systems. Simple example: Sony has consistently gambled by selling their consoles at a significant loss, in the hopes that they will make up those losses later on -- I'm not sure that's something Nintendo could possibly do, even if they wanted to, because they don't have other sources of income to suppliment such a gamble.

Obviously, though, money goes only so far. I doubt many people here have been particularly concerned with the overall structure of companies like Sony and Microsoft that have other significant holdings besides video games: for those unaware, Microsoft's overall profts were over 13 billion last year, placing them in the top 10 most profitable companies in the world. Sony, while still an extremely succesfull company, had profits totalling around 1.5 billion -- about 1/10 of Microsoft's, and not enough to place them even in the top 100 companies in the world. Nintendo doesn't even register on the map: they're not in the top 500.

In other words: Nintendo is a big fish, Sony is a very big fish, and Microsoft is a goliath. How do people here feel this effects the gaming industry, and how each company can afford to approach their system strategies? Sony and especially Microsoft are well known for gobbling up robust game developers for console exclusives.

Nintendo has around 3,000 employees worldwide, and that includes all the sales/marketing/game designers/corporate offices and everything. Sony has around 158,000 employees worldwide. Nintendo is in the game business to make money. So you could say that their entire business health is dependant on whether they sell alot of games or not. Microsoft and Sony don't really NEED to sell games to get money, but they are using their consoles to A) make money off games, B) other corporate interests. In the case of Sony, the corporate interest is pretty obvious, atleast with PS3 and PSP. They use their Blu-ray tech in the PS3 to boost HD-movie sales and they use UMD in their PSP to boost UMD sales. They not only see videogames as a way to make money directly, but also indirectly through Blu-ray licensing fees and trying to make more people use UMD, which would get them extra money. In the case of Microsoft, they are trying to not only make money in your Corporate offices and home PCs, but also in your living room, through the 360. Their hope is to have a Microsoft product anywhere that you are using media, I guess. They lost money on XBOX and they will probably not gain a profit on the 360, but maybe their next machine will pull a profit. That's not to say that Nintendo only makes games, it is just their main focus. There are all sorts of Nintendo licensed clothing, TV shows, movies, etc. They design their products to make a profit right off the bat. They can't necessarily afford to sell their product at a huge loss, because they don't have enough money from any other sectors (they dont have any other sector lol).