What's with all these Next-Gen Consoles?

[Tets]

Maybe it's better for you, but it's a bad idea for the people making new consoles. They don't care if you've still got the old one, they'd rather you buy the new one so you can buy their new games. What you need to understand is that these machines are normally sold at a huge monetary loss for their parent companies, and selling games and accessories is the only way to offset that loss.

 

[AdamTheHedgehog]

Maybe it's better for you, but it's a bad idea for the people making new consoles. They don't care if you've still got the old one, they'd rather you buy the new one so you can buy their new games. What you need to understand is that these machines are normally sold at a huge monetary loss for their parent companies, and selling games and accessories is the only way to offset that loss.

Um, you think you could simplify that, please? I don't quite understand what you said.

 

[Mystic]

Basically, most video game systems are sold at a loss. For instance, the Playstation 3's 60 GB model cost them $750 to make. Selling it at $600 means they lose $150 on each one they sell.

However, selling games is very profitable. After they finish paying for making the game (developer paychecks, etc.), the rest of it is pure profit (after all, how expensive is it to make a DVD)

So basically, their goal is for you to buy the system AND a lot of games, so they offset the money they lose on the actual video game system. This applies for pretty much everything except Nintendo systems (The Wii and DS are sold at a small profit).

The point of making new video game systems is to make them appealing to the consumer so they buy it AND a lot of games. That said, it's generally accepted that Sony jumped the gun on the PS3, and probably should have waited until this year to launch, letting the PS2 keep running last year.

Honestly, though, if you don't have any of the next gen systems, the time of video game system death is generally a great time to pick up all the games you missed earlier in the system's lifespan. I bought about 8-10 N64 games at the end of that system's life for about $10 each, mostly at Blockbuster, but frequently at retail. With the PS2 dying, this is the perfect time to pick up games you always wanted to play but didn't originally have the money for.

 

[AdamTheHedgehog]

well, that makes a lot of sense, but have you ever thought of how much natural resources are used in making these monsters?

 

[Fish hook]

"Hey ma, look, a wooden Wii with Paper Mario!"

Thats natural resources.
The Wii is Plastic.
Not wood.

And you contradicted your self.

It would take more resouces to make new AND old games, but less just for the new games.

 

[AdamTheHedgehog]

well, some materials, such as plastic, are made of various combinations of of these resources.

 

[tails92]

The reasons for which they do not make games for older consoles anymore is quite obvious.
The main reason is that they want you to buy the newer console and stopping to use the old one because so they can make money and the smaller reason are techinical advancements of the hardware.
The latter once was way more obvious, for example the differences between the SNES and the N64 were tremendous.
Now it's less obvious as difference between next-gen and last-gen aren't so marked and deep.
A way to remain older consoles in life with new games is homebrew.
Imagine that the Vectrex has still received new games in this decade by homebrew developers while commercially being actually dead in the water for almost two decades.
The Dreamcast still remains in life mainly for that and seems to be the preffered homebrew console, and such it's still alive and kicking with new games still being made for it.