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The Battle Of The Consoles: From Atari To The Xbox
msolnik writes: "There's been a lot of talk about Xbox, and GameCube, and even more speculation about the technology inside the box. However, the console wars are not going to be won based purely on technology. There's a long history of cyclical win and lose peaks and troughs for companies that have tried to stay the course in this business. Nintendo stands alone in having survived a number of generations of innovation and still managed to remain a contender in the market. Tom's Hardware has delivered this unique assessment of The Console Wars." Update: 12/06 16:28 GMT by M : Note that Tom's has updated some of the charts in the article - they note that there was a misunderstanding between Tom's and the article's author as to which version of the charts to post.
A better 'that was then, this is now' comparison might have been to show Wolfenstein 3D and Return to Castle Wolfenstein... Enormous difference ten years makes!
(Even better, show the original Wolfenstein game, 2D with stick figures. Wasn't that kind of a 'Berserk' ripoff? Coward. Fight like a robot.)
"Information wants to be paid"
I compared the Gamecube against the XBox to see how they stacked up.
Can you guess which one was on top?
Did the same thing with a Saturn, too.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Microsoft will expect to lose money on a certain number of sold machines. Any machine morethen that will make profit.
You are assuming that the "losses" Microsoft are making is due to capital investment, and it makes an operating income on each unit. But it is widely believed that each unit actually costs more to manufacture than it is sold for, meaning that every sale will result in a loss, on top of capital investment. Under this model, the cost is recouped from the games. The percentage of the profit made on total games sales that Microsoft receives must cover the loss on the consoles, and the capex plus interest, and anything left on top of that is the only profit MS will see.
So the question is, what is the average number of games/merchandise that must be sold per console in order to make a profit?
I agree. It stands unique as the worst one I've seen so far.
Err, right you are.
I guess my old economics textbook could be used for better things than propping up my monitor...
I didn't realise that we went straight from infocom to doom. Man, those graphics cards manufacturers sure beat moores law there ;)
And thus, with some battle lost, Rome fell, leaving only monuments and lead piping behind
NEXT>>>> The American Civil War
That win4lin article pissed me off. My favorite part? They had you check to see if you had tar! TAR! The best part was the way they told you how to find out whether or not you actually had tar:
rpm -qa | grep tar
What the fuck is what I say, because if you have rpm, yet you DON'T HAVE TAR, then something is seriously wrong with you.
LIVE NUDE PETS!