I was anxious when Microsoft bought Minecraft, but so far it’s been mostly good. Yes, i had to transition to a Microsoft account. But they have continued to invest in the game, develop new content, and generally been good managers of the property.
Yes and that’s how the console market has always been as far as I know. I worked at Toys R Us in the 90s and at least back then it was common knowledge that all the money was coming from the games.
But if Microsoft no longer controls the platform, they might not sell as many games. That’s just my WAG. Sega got out of the hardware market after the Dreamcast, because their consoles were tanking. They were far more profitable after that by just selling games for other platforms, and they’re still around more than 20 years later. But I’d wager that move only made sense because their consoles weren’t selling; Microsoft should hang onto the Xbox line as long as people are buying them.
Yeah, some might buy gaming PCs if they haven’t already but most people are used to hooking up a machine to their TV to play games and will turn to somebody else who offers that if Microsoft doesn’t want to be that provider.
It’s a loss leader and there’s generally no problem with loss leaders. Especially as many consoles eventually get to break-even or turning small profits late in their production runs as components gets cheaper and production issues ironed out.
This is news to me, I never knew consoles were loss leaders.
~Max
Yeah, the consoles cost quite a bit to make. But the games cost less than a dollar each to mass produce (and nothing at all in the days of digital downloads). So you make money hand over fist after a small initial loss.
When I was a computer salesman we had similar deals. The computers sold for a profit but sometimes peripherals were a loss. Desktop printers were something we sold at a loss. I even remember one day having to run to Costco, buy a printer with the store’s credit card, then take it back to my own store and sell it cheaper.
Why? Because a person wants a printer with their PC, and if we can offer a PC with a discounted printer it makes the sale. It ends up being a net profit even if you’re losing money with that item.
Sales are freaking weird. I’m glad I’m just fixing computers for a living now and not selling them anymore.
Indeed so. I recall articles saying the PS2 was launched at roughly ~$100 loss per unit and finally got to breakeven 2-3 years after launch. Sony wasn’t going to be ok losing $100 per unit indefinitely but was satisfied getting to a small profit per unit eventually.
And of course, Sony sold an unbelievable number of games and the PS2 was the dominant console of the era. Sony did just fine with it. Microsoft probably felt the same with pretty much all the XBoxes.
I wouldn’t be shocked if the penultimate gen consoles were sold at even larger losses at launch but never looked.
For the current gen, you might as well toss all projections out the window because the pandemic just did weird things to sales and prices all around.
When I bought my current laptop, the salesman managed to upsell me into also buying a printer to go with it. The additional charge to get the printer? Literally $1. That was pretty clearly sold at a loss.
There was also a case once (probably a few times, actually) where someone figured out how to mod a cheaply-bought console to function as a general-purpose computer, with some flavor of Linux installed on it. The console company had to figure out how to put a stop to that, because they were losing money on those sales without making it up by selling the games.
As a former salesman that guy was an idiot. I was an assistant manager and I’d lecture my salesmen for doing stuff like that. You cut people deals to make the sale, you don’t cut deals to cut deals.
As an example, one of my salesmen was asked how much it would cost for 10 hard drives of a certain size, he quoted the price we had listed, and the guy said sure, I’ll buy it. (This was a guy who worked for the NCIS, they often came to us to buy parts. They had some high-end gear they used for whatever, I never asked for details because they probably couldn’t say.) He then offered to knock off 20% of the cost for a bulk sale and the guy said, uh okay, sure. I was so mad… You had the sale, you don’t offer a discount anymore!
Sorry, flashbacks to my sales days, ugh. Bottom line is that you offer something like that if a guy is waffling on a sale, or if you’re trying to catch someone’s attention, “Come buy this computer and get a printer for a buck!” If you “upsell” someone by practically giving them something for free that they weren’t pushing for in the first place, you’re a bad salesman.
I always tried to be fair, I never gouged anyone (I had coworkers that would and that irritated me) and I never tried to oversell anyone. I’d even warn someone if they were asking for too much; someone who wanted to do email and word processing and web browsing, hated games, never watched videos or did graphics design, they don’t need a top system designed for video games. But you don’t give something away just because. Sheesh!
Low end Printers are basically loss leaders to sell Ink carts anyway.
ETA: I mean for the manufacturer, not at the retail level necessarily.
actually due to the chip shortage and related hardware factors supposedly the next x box and possibly
ps 6 (tho since sony actually makes devices still they might be stubborn about it )might just be a Roku style box with an HDMI cable and a controller if its not built into the tv … maybe with an HD of some sort for those who want it but probably in the cloud
You don’t give someone a $1 printer to sell them a computer. You give them a $1 printer to sell them toner cartridges.
The only reason the printer companies don’t ALWAYS sell printers for $1 is because then, folks would just buy a new one whenever the toner ran out.
Except they don’t have to buy them at the store, as was pointed out.
Now if that was $1 with a manufacturer rebate I’d understand.
Looks like Sony is buying Bungie, of Destiny fame
BREAKING: Sony is buying Bungie, the maker of Destiny — another seismic gaming deal that comes just two weeks after Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard.
Bungie put Xbox on the map. Now it’s part of PlayStation Studios. Filed to Bloomberg Terminal, hitting web soon
Looks like a $3.6 bil purchase.
And very little else, especially in the last decade.
I did rather enjoy Myth back in the day.
Not to come off like a Microsoft Fanboy, but I am amazed Bungie is worth 3.6 billion and am at a complete blank to think of where the value is sitting.
The value is probably in the name. People will still buy games from a company that released a game they liked 20 years ago, even though the staff has turned over 3 times since then and they’ve released crap since then, they’re still emotionally attached to it.
I’m sure this has been in the works for a while, but the timing sucks for Sony. It makes them look like they’re spending way too much money for an Activision cast-off just as Microsoft is buying the good stuff.
Well, they did create the Halo series. (And I remember playing Marathon by Bungie before Halo came out, that was a fantastic FPS on my old Mac computer.) But you did say “the last decade”, and 343 Industries took over from Bungie in 2009 and has been making the Halo games since then. So it is indeed something along the lines of, “What have you done lately?”
I enjoyed both Destiny games for a while, but both got bogged down in stupid expansions. The worst bit is buying a game and then having to buy it again to keep playing it. They suckered me in both times. I’m not sure who is to blame for that, Bungie or Microsoft, but either way it left a bad taste in my mouth.
I wonder if Sony will be getting any money from this series:
My WAG is that they wanted something that could fill the CoD hole once they lose that in 2023. Bungie was probably the best FPS developer that was still independent.