[Xantar]

Originally posted by TheGame
1) GCN at launch lost a estimated $80 per unit sold, while Ps2 and Xbox lost more than $150 each. If they really wanted to make $$$, they could have dropped the price and relyed on game sales to carry them like Microsoft and Sony. But Wait! The games were the weakest on the market, so they relyed off of Hardware sales and dumb Nintendo fans to go out and buy ports and below average games like Luigi's Mansion and Wave Race.

That wouldn't have made them more money. If you look at launch sales, you'll see that GameCubes were going as fast as they were being made. They didn't quite outsell the Xbox because Microsoft had bigger production capacity (and a factory in Mexico is closer than one in China or Japan or wherever GameCubes are produced).

So if Nintendo had lowered the price of the Gamecube to lose $150 per unit just like Sony and Microsoft, they wouldn't have made any more money. All right, I grant that consumers would have purchased more games, but with the lineup that was available at launch, I imagine most people would have just saved up for Super Smash Bros.

I completely agree that the GameCube launch was not spectacular. But I think the only way Nintendo would have made more money off of it was by making better games (which may or may not have been possible. I don't know because I don't work for EAD).

In any case, what we're talking about is how Nintendo's tactics reflect a greedier approach than its competitors. I simply don't think that's true. As I said before, Microsoft wouldn't have gotten away with a launch like the GameCube's. They were forced to do things like offer Halo at launch along with DVD-playback, a built in hard drive and ethernet out of the box. If they hadn't done all that, they would have been laughed out of the market. Really, what would the Xbox have been without all those things at launch? A flop. So by including all that stuff, Microsoft was trying to make money. Surely you didn't believe Microsoft did that out of the goodness of their collective heart?

2) GBA costed $99 at launch, you cant tell me that they weren't making at least a $40 profit on it. Not only that, they can't take the time out to develop a new mario or Zelda game, instead they port games from NES and SNES and they sell like they are new either way.

You can't tell me that Microsoft or Sony wouldn't have done the same thing if they were the producers of the GBA instead of Nintendo (and also had access to all these NES and SNES games). In Microsoft's case, I have only to cite the example of Windows. There's a monopoly they have that they exploit. So you do have evidence that Microsoft would exploit a monopoly if they have one.

Now give bigger examples of Microsoft and Sony sacrificing gameplay for $$$.

I can't because they haven't. As I already explained, they wouldn't have gotten away with it. Nintendo can, so they did.

Um, no. Because Ps2 would have been an example to prove your point... but it isn't.

This might be a brilliant argument, but I'm afraid I don't follow. How exactly could the PS2 have proven my point? I don't believe the PS2 is analagous to the N64, if that's what you're saying. The PS2 had some anachronisms like not having four controller ports, but that's not nearly as blatant as going with cartridges instead of CDs. No matter what developers did, the N64 was incapable of doing anything remotely resembling what many Playstation games did (such as playing CD-quality music and FMVs). This is not the case with the PS2. It can go online. It can save things on a hard drive. It can play DVD movies. It may not do these things as well as competitors, but it's better than being incapable of doing such things in the first place.

Anyways, this is my last post on the matter. Let me try to wrap up.

You say that Nintendo price gouges and generally tries to maximize profit as much as possible, sometimes to the detriment of gamers. I agree with this. I contend that Sony and Microsoft would do the same. You either disagree or are sitting on the fence on this issue (your posts are giving me mixed messages). Whatever the case, that's fine by me. There's not a lot of evidence to go around even if we do accept the example of Windows. So I suppose we'll never know what Sony or Microsoft would do in Nintendo's position. I just like to think that I understand businesses well enough that I can predict that they would do whatever it takes to earn more money.