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[Honey Bunny]

Where do you draw the line, though? What about three games and better RAM? Four games and a built-in harddrive? Five games and a multi-touch tablet controller?

I'd draw the line at two games? Not seeing why this has to be escalated.

 

[GameplayWhore]

I think the initial quote was that a console being sold at loss could change. That is what happened with the PS3, it was sold at a big loss to begin with, but that is not the case anymore.

I've heard the claim about the PS1 and PS2 profits being completely wiped out by the PS3 before, but is there a source to this?

Its only PS2s profits.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=19625451&postcount=103

This is out of date, but it shows that from 1997 April to 2010 December (if I'm not getting my fiscal quarters mixed up), Sony posted a total profit of $387m.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArzcNGK4ZqT9dFk1cnZqc2ozdjV4WUpCM1Nxd1ZGTUE#gid=0

This is my little spreadsheet keeping track of profits and losses in the video game divisions. From 2011 January to 2012 June, Sony appears to have lost about ($3.1 billion). So from early 1997 until this Summer, Sony has apparently posted losses in their applicable divisions ("Game" then "Networked Products & Services" then "Consumer Products & Services" then finally "Game" again) of around ($2.7 billion).

These are rough numbers, but be aware that the Playstation 2 came out in 2000. So these losses take into account three years of Sony's only game system being the original Playstation. I'm going to go out on a limb without checking and guess that the PSX did not, in fact, deliver $2.7 billion or more in profits to Sony's "Game" division during its first three years, which would indeed mean that the PS3 "wiped out" all prior PlayStation family profits.


Caveats:
This ignores impact from the Vita, PlayStation Portable, PocketStation, and various non-PlayStation products that existed in those divisions. There's really no way to weed those out, and it definitely causes problems: Sony's "Game" division posted a profit last quarter and said that profits were down slightly from last year's equivalent quarter, but their "CP&D" division, which the PS business was in during that quarter, reported a substantial loss.

I also haven't completely taken inflation into account. And I didn't yet include this last quarter's small $29m profit. And numbers seem to change retroactively sometimes, something I haven't checked up on in a while.

And, of course, "profitability of entire generation" is not considered an important metric to the financial community as "ongoing profitability" is.



Bonus numbers: Microsoft seems to be at overall breakeven on the 360's division. This of course does not count the losses on the original Xbox, for those interested.

Good news. I guess this explains the $60 cost of Wii U software.

No excuse for boosting game prices would I consider reasonable. My friends used to buy games all at launch, and now they almost universally wait a few months after release. I used to buy lots of games, and now I just go out and get laid more often instead of pursuing new games. Obviously, rampant game buying is more rampant than ever, but we're fed up enough over here to change our general practices.

 

[Plinko]

People weren't as much ready to move on to a new thing rather than there was either nothing they wanted to play or they were casuals. You are assuming the casual person who never bought a console before the wii is going to spring for the wii u. That's simply not going to be true. I mean if the wii u ends up selling like 100 million units by the end of it's life cycle come find me and I'll eat my words but that's simply something I don't see happening. The tablet controller is simply not as unique or casual drawing as the wii mote was.

Also, why do you think even if Nintendo did a 5 year life cycle their console would be a half generation more powerful given the Wii U has been getting panned for it's lack of hardware advancement over 7 year old consoles?

And you're assuming that the casual person who bought the Wii is NOT going to spring for the Wii U. Not sure how that's any different.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

This, and other similar threads, is reminding me a lot of E3 time on GAF where Nintendo really gets a lot of irrational hate thrown its way.

Reality has a well known Nintendo bias.

 

[Freshmaker]

It must be almost even margins if that's the case. And if it's only the $300 model, then there's probably going to buy a game since NintendoLand's not included.

Nintendoland doesn't count either way.