Mr. Chambers said:
I'm going to assume your comment there was directed at myself. I have no actual, factual figures stating that Sony, M$, and/or Nintendo ever lost money on their hardware. That being said I distinctly remember reading a few years ago in some gaming magazine, stating such.
I haven't the time, nor the drive to research for said figures, but I emplore you to post some of your own showing me where they made money off their hardware sales, instead of just stating that I'm wrong. Which I very well could be, like I said - I just remembered reading years back about this, and to me, common sense would imply it would be a very difficult task to make money when selling a unit for $200, when you couple in all the parts, manufacturing costs, and research/development costs.
It was directed at several comments about companies not being able to produce units without them costing ridiculous amounts as well as comments about consoles losing money. This article sums things up very well and I can find business articles that state Sony and Nintendo admit they make money on hardware sales to if you want to read those too. This was before the $149.99 PS2 and $99 GC prices, but I expect to see some info on margins for the new slim PS2 soon.
http://red-mercury.com/mmceo/mmceo_current.html
Heres the estimated costs of Xbox and PS2 since official numbers aren't released to the public:
http://www.xboxsolution.com/printout154.html
"By contrast, Sony is believed to be losing only a small amount of money on the PlayStation 2, which costs an estimated $185 to manufacture. Sony recently began shipping a cost-reduced version of the PS2 with redesigned chips and fewer and smaller components in the box. Microsoft isn't expected to do the same until the fall."
I was hoping to find linkage to the Igiwataki Myomoti (close enough), nintendos head guy saying they make money off hardware sales and as long as they do they will make their own systems (was in an issue of GI where they interviewed him). It was about rumors that nintendo would go software only a year or so ago.
I did find this information from Nintendo though:
"The GameCube does not cost $380 to manufacture; Nintendo is not losing $180 on each system sold. Though Nintendo has not specifically indicated a loss-per-unit number, most estimates are in the $5-$15 range... placing the total manufacturing cost per console around $200. "I think we've indicated that we expect to incur a small loss on the hardware initially...We expect that to turn profitable early next year." - Peter Main at Nintendo's Space World event in August, 2001. In a somewhat dated report by Merrill Lynch in June, 2001, it was estimated that the company would likely lose $20/system which is at the very high end of estimates though the number is almost certainly too high given Main's comments on a breakeven date."
http://www.gamecubicle.com/editorial-gamecube_forbes.htm
Anyway, my point is simply that we can not compare PC prices to console prices. They are much cheaper to produce (compared with us buying parts for our rigs or even MS slapping togather Xboxes).
Niku-Sama said:
i know for a fact there are more fart can hondas than hdtv's where i live...
i have only seen 2 in peoples homes...one was my dads one was a feiend of my dads....my dad is on his seccond HDTV acually.
when he moved he sold his 65" Projection tv and bought a 50" LCD projection tv (wooo big diff i know)
lol, lots of friends and family h(of mine) have them now that most projection TVs come HD ready now.
When I'm out of school, I'll have mine. I would have one know, but I'm not going to half-*** it and settle for 1080i. I want 720p also, like your dads LCD or more probably a DLP big screen. They are SO light weight and its got to be cheap as heck to produce them. They really should drop dramatically in price within the next few years. I can see companies making money and selling 50" DLPs for $500 once HDTV programing becomes mainstream.
Of course, this is just my speculation. Maybe half the 75 pounds those things weigh is gold, but I'm thinking the inards have to be a fraction of the cost (to produce) compared to heavy
@SS projection units. We're probably just paying the new tech premium on them at this point.
