I don't think I can come up with a reliable source, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but the megadrive was around $190 until Tom Kalinske got hired in 1990 and cut the price od the console. From what I know, Tom Kalinske was a believer in the razor and blades model.

   I am very curious as to how you know that Bernie Stolar was fired just because he wanted the DC to launch cheap. I thought that they fired him after the dreamcast launch because launches was all he did well. He made the Playstation launch big, but tried to prevent square from making Final Fantasy VII for the playstation and thus got fired. Sega hired him and he proceeded to fuck up the Saturn with his no-RPG-no-2D policies. Sega knew he would fuck up the Dreamcast and just let him do the launch well and then fired him. That's how I understand it anyway.

As for the Mega CD and the 32X, maybe Sega just considered them peripherals to make up the money lost by the megadrive on, just like selling controllers or memory cards at a profit.

About the playstation and Saturn, you forget that the playstaytion and the Saturn were both differently expensive to manufacture. Saturn was a monster when it came to components, and therefore much much more expensive then the playstation to manufacture. Playstation had a simpler design and thus Sony didn't suffer as much as Sega did from price cuts. Saturn was expensive to manufacture through it's entire lifespan, and playstation manufacture costs got cheaper.

I am sorry of my previous point, I was confusing sales with quality.. my bad

This is why I despise Malstrom. Hey, it's fun to bash Molyneux for his BS but he's still a hell of a game maker.

And blaming Tsunoda for the downfall of EA Chicago? Come on, you *&)$ing hack. Tsunoda was responsible for Fight Night, the one EA Chicago title that was good.

He's making it awfully easy for me to despise him. He's become the typical popular blogger; so full of himself that he no longer realizes that his lack of journalistic integrity isn't funny anymore.

Thank you. I'm glad someone with reason thinks the same way I do about the guy.

Shit, I'm a better editorialist than that guy and I write pretty shitty editorials compared to most.

If you have read his main site you will know that he is not trying to be like a journalist. He despises game journalists. He is just a blogger who states his opinion and tries to analyze Nintendo.

Bernie stollar firing summary.

http://info.sonicretro.org/Bernie_Stolar

I think sega was using a lot of bundled games as razorblades in the razor and blades model. I remember sonic 1 bundle, sonic 1 and 2 bundle...but I had to save up my money to buy a snes or a genesis in 1992 and the were both similarly priced. Later in the lifecycle of the console they may have been 50 dollars cheaper until 1996 when the genesis was discontinued and fire sale was on.

I agree that Saturn was a beast cost wise. They used brand name parts and quality was top notch. My saturn still works and never misses a beat...see howmny PS1s work from 1996 :) PS2 was a better example of sony cutting price to eliminate competition. Just look at the losses sony had the year PS2 launched. You have the number 1 and number 2 platform (PS1 and PS2) and you lose 510 million dollars?

http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=72524&page=1

All in all, I dont think sega needed to sell hardware at a loss until PS1. Nintendo wasn't going to do it, 3DO wasn't going to do it and rest didn't matter. So this method was a disruption on how business was done...and Sony gets the credit for starting it. (or blame depending how you look at it)

"Malstorm is WORSE than the SDF"

I don't agree darthdevidem01,

I think he is a ninty fanboy who does write well thought out articles. He does bring solid thought to his posts while SDF spews rainbow hyperbole about Sony

I don't think his articles are particularly well thought out.  I mean he wrote an article two weeks before E3 2009 stating that Microsoft does everything with the Xbox 360 in response to Sony.  To show just how ridiculous he can get in order to justify his views he basically stated that he thinks Project Natal (of course he didn't know the name of it then) is a response to the Eyetoy and not a response to the success of the Wii.  Keep in mind that the same article also completely contradicts a part of an article he wrote last year in which he wondered if Microsoft even cared about Sony anymore.

Also a wall of text does not mean an article is well thought out.  For instance he wrote a huge analysis giving reasons why he felt that McCain was going to win the presidential election.  One of the reasons he bashed the Obama Campaign for example was their obsession with the media.  I mean what person who knows anything about elections would even fault a campaign for caring and taking a huge interest in what the media is saying about them?  Considering the incredible influence the media can and usually does have on elections only someone with a complete misunderstanding of the subject would even make the argument he did.

I could go on with other examples as well but lets take the article this thread is based on.  In one part he states: "With the Natal hype out of control" and then a couple of paragraphs later he says: "No one swallowed the stupid Natal hype".  Well if nobody even swallowed the hype how in hell could it be out of control?  It's stuff like that which makes reading his articles so painful.  I've seen an article in which he quoted someone saying something they didn't (it was a misquote from someone at another company).  I mean how well thought out are his articles when he basically makes up things at times to further his argument? 

How can people say this. There is a reason Natal was on GMA and Jimmy Fallon. It is because they do have actual substance.  It takes balls to show off technology like this 1.5 years out.   Has Sony actually lets someone outside of thier labs play with the Sony WiiMote+?  I havent heard of anyone getting to try it hands on.  Have you?

Motion+ is available today, for $20, with multiple compatible games available at retail right now, and is going to be bundled with one of the biggest games of the year next month. As far as I'm concerned, Natal and the Sony Wiimote don't exist. At this point Microsoft doing this amount of marketing for Natal makes as much sense as Will Wright's Spore lectures from 5 years ago.