Game Console Economics
The cluster discusses the business model of video game consoles, where hardware is sold at a loss or low profit to generate revenue from game sales, licensing, and vendor lock-in via closed ecosystems and DRM. Debates center on why consoles remain proprietary and the potential impacts of opening them up.
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my best guess is that they don't make enough profit on the console and expect to sell games
It would be the end of consoles. The economics of the Xbox/PlayStation/NintendoWhatever presume vendor lock-in.
It's just a different business model. See: game consoles.
Primarily, it's just because game consoles are not general purpose computing devices, customers don't expect that kind of software support in the first place. But even if we wanted to change that, the consoles are all priced around this lock in. Generally speaking, consoles are sold at a loss during their first few years in production, under the assumption they will make money on software sales. If you no longer have to buy software the manufacturer gets a cut of, it no longer makes s
Gaming consoles are a different breed since they are usually subsidized by the manufacturer. The PS4 was sold below the bill of materials cost at launch (which is waaaay lower than the manufactured unit cost) and remained relevant for 7 years and will continue working for many more. Meanwhile the iPhones that were sold at a premium in the same year are now landfill. You can't convert game consoles into general computing devices without shaking the business model of that industry.
You just described why game developers prefer to target consoles.
Video game consoles, especially modern ones (the Switch is an Nvidia Android tablet, the Xbone and PS4 are AMD NUCs) are fundamentally owner hostile devices. Their business model is to sell you a computer with crippled software and no ccontrol over it where programming for it requires NDA to get developer documentation.They are a gross facimilie of computer. They waste what could be general usage hardware on restricted functionality all for the sake of maintaing total software control to exto
well, people will buy a console (i have a ps5) nvidia does not want that.
Seems like without some kind of software revenue sharing model it doesn't make sense. These things are consoles -- sold a cost or below cost in order to make it back on software sales.
The console market has been slowly dying for the last decade. If anything, opening the console market could help rejuvenate it by turning consoles into general purpose entertainment devices.And the claim that consoles are just closed down PCs is absurd. Consoles can play AAA games at a fraction of the cost of your average PC. The hardware that goes into building a console is significantly different than a PC.