Amusingly, I already linked that in another thread on here. I've been involved in helping bands tour, and I currently book shows. Tours can, and do, make money. NOT if you run it like the band in the Baffler article - that is, letting your "managers" handle everything. The bands that make money from touring are either popular, or simply smart. The more things you handle on your own, the less cuts come out. Instead of letting the record company handle your mechandise (and reap the majority of the profits), you arrange for them to be made, or better yet - make them yourself. It's mind-numbingly easy to screen shirts. You can make 200 in an afternoon at a cost of about $3 a shirt. If you sell these for $10 a pop, that's $1400 profit right there. Shirt sales and alnare the thing that keeps most small bands going on the road, more than door receipts.
If you think it's a myth, check out this article by Steve Albini. In case you don't know who he is, Albini is a career musician who, among his other accomplishments, produced at least one Nirvana album.
Make sure to check out his royalty breakdown at the bottom, based on his experience working in the record industry. It's pretty interesting stuff.
See the show: Very few tours make money for the artist. That's why some went for corporate sponsorship, just to help pay the bills. Do you know what it takes to put a show on the road? I do.
A lot of this is because of they way tours are organized - with the label and other "handlers" arranging everything, and billing the band for all the "services" they offer. They take this money off the top, and also generally take off money owed for promotion and such off the top as well.
In my experience, it's not hard to organize a profitable tour. It's hard to do a hugely profitable tour, but not a modestly profitable one - assumming, of course, people want to see your band play.
When I worked at a photomat, it was very common to see disposables (the kind you have to activate the flash on) to have one severely under-exposed shot before each good one (or few good ones).
People would usually forget to turn the flash on the first time.
I believe the poster was referring to theatrical re-releases, like the special edition re-release of the Star Wars Trilogy.
Also, I have most of those movies on DVD as well, I think they are pretty good. The Rambo Box Set is the only one I wouldn't buy, but the first one is really good.
People will ALWAYS go to the movies. Rentals may suffer, but people will always wanna go to the movies, until you can download a 100' screen and stadium seating...
You are one huge dumbass. Those tech companies you mention are the MPAA. The MPAA has just 7 members and you listed just about all of them.
From the MPAA website:
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) serves its members from its offices in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. On its board of directors are the Chairmen and Presidents of the seven major producers and distributors of motion picture and television programs in the United States. These members include:
Walt Disney Company; Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc.; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.; Paramount Pictures Corporation; Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.; Universal Studios, Inc.; and Warner Bros.
The original poster mentioned Toshiba, Philips and Sony. Only one of those is listed as one of the 7 main members.
And there there is commentary, deleted scenes, isolated scores, etc. - the extra features on DVD are the reason why most people buy them. They are certainly why I buy them. I've never been upset, as you seem to be, by the menus.
Of course, I'm not using my computer to do so, so I guess there's no feeling of "losing control" of my computer.
Has id EVER tried to do anything _but_ make a perfect FPS? I mean, sure, you can say that's a limited goal, but really - that's been their intent since almost the beginning. They make a very specific type of game, and they are good at it.
My cable provider has been giving me shitty quality picture and no digital channels for the past week. So, I cancelled my service and am going with a satellite provider. In the same way, I have not watched a movie, bought a CD, or played a video game from a corrupt company in more than a year.
You DO know that cable providers and tv channels pay the movie studios (and the MPAA) BIG BUCKS to show movies, right? Also, TV companies pay the record studios (and RIAA) BIG BUCKS to use songs in shows and in ads.
So if you have cable or satellite TV, you are supporting both the RIAA and MPAA directly.
I built an account, plunked down about thirty bucks for cards. After trading all my colors away for black, I have a decent deck. I've played maybe ten games so far, it's fun. I don't plan to buy more cards, so it works out fine for me. There is no monthly fee, and I downloaded the client, so I now have a cheap online game to play whenever I get the urge. $30 is less than the store price of most games.
I'm not critiquing them, I just think Nintendo is not losing much (if any) money on their console sales. They have never really been subscribers to the loss leader strategy.
However, as far as the Xbox goes, I can't see it being a success. The games aren't there and they don't seem to be coming.
I might pick it up for MAME and a few of the exclusive Sega games, but these are somewhat obscure and really only appeal to Sega devotees - the support of whom wasn't enough to save the Dreamcast.
Placed between Sony and Nintendo, I don't see room in the marketplace for the Xbox. If I was them, I'd have tried to buy Sega. Having exclusive Visual Concepts games and Sonic games would have been a bigger feather in their cap than Bungie.
"Nintendo expected to ship a total of 2.5 million GameCubes by 2001, says George Harrison, senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications at Nintendo of America. The total could reach 4 million GameCubes worldwide by the end of March, if the company reaches its stated goal... the GameCube, which costs less to manufacture and will sell for $199, will "lose a small amount for the first year," concedes Nintendo's Harrison." - eb-asia
has it been a year yet? also, they beat their estimates, and hit 4 mil by the end of 2001.
"Because we have shipped more than four million GameCubes worldwide we have been able to bring down the cost of production and have a price cut before launch [in Europe]." - bbc
There's really no way to tell for _sure_ if they are losing money on the consoles or not... It can't be much if they are, and even if they are, company profits are going up, so their business plan is working.
"If we achieve our sales targets (of 4 million), we should be able to make an operating profit in the GameCube business this year," said Nintendo's managing director Yoshiro Mori at a news conference. - older cnn story
"Shipments of the GameCube were expected to jump to 12 million in 2002/03 from last year's 4 million, and output was tipped to surge after the launch of production in China."
"In early estimates of its results, Nintendo said that net profit for the year to 31 March had risen 14%" - bbc story
They said that they would be in the black on Gamecube sales if they sold 4 million of them. They did that, before the price drop. They could be lying, but I tend to believe them.
Also, their reported profits have been rising, and though some of that is probably a result of the GBA, it seems likely that a lot of it is to do with the Gamecube as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Amusingly, I already linked that in another thread on here. I've been involved in helping bands tour, and I currently book shows. Tours can, and do, make money. NOT if you run it like the band in the Baffler article - that is, letting your "managers" handle everything. The bands that make money from touring are either popular, or simply smart. The more things you handle on your own, the less cuts come out. Instead of letting the record company handle your mechandise (and reap the majority of the profits), you arrange for them to be made, or better yet - make them yourself. It's mind-numbingly easy to screen shirts. You can make 200 in an afternoon at a cost of about $3 a shirt. If you sell these for $10 a pop, that's $1400 profit right there. Shirt sales and alnare the thing that keeps most small bands going on the road, more than door receipts.
If you think it's a myth, check out this article by Steve Albini. In case you don't know who he is, Albini is a career musician who, among his other accomplishments, produced at least one Nirvana album.
Make sure to check out his royalty breakdown at the bottom, based on his experience working in the record industry. It's pretty interesting stuff.
See the show: Very few tours make money for the artist. That's why some went for corporate sponsorship, just to help pay the bills. Do you know what it takes to put a show on the road? I do.
A lot of this is because of they way tours are organized - with the label and other "handlers" arranging everything, and billing the band for all the "services" they offer. They take this money off the top, and also generally take off money owed for promotion and such off the top as well.
In my experience, it's not hard to organize a profitable tour. It's hard to do a hugely profitable tour, but not a modestly profitable one - assumming, of course, people want to see your band play.
When I worked at a photomat, it was very common to see disposables (the kind you have to activate the flash on) to have one severely under-exposed shot before each good one (or few good ones).
People would usually forget to turn the flash on the first time.
Actually, I believe most of those are _magazines_. Not message boards, as I stated.
Slashdot is a glorified message board. I'd be worried if my manager's opinions were dictated, or even swayed, by opinions posted on any message board.
Seriously though, it does do those things, but it's also not professional.
/. _is_ professional?
And what aspect of
That's fine, but realize the reason most people like DVD players is precisely the fact that they _aren't_ just digitized VCRs.
There is a reason why the DVD player is the fastest selling consumer electronic device in history - people like them.
Also, some players let you have more control over what the discs can do than others, you might want to check out some imports.
I believe the poster was referring to theatrical re-releases, like the special edition re-release of the Star Wars Trilogy.
Also, I have most of those movies on DVD as well, I think they are pretty good. The Rambo Box Set is the only one I wouldn't buy, but the first one is really good.
The DVD has the music on it- I could legally get on LimeWire and download backups of the music I just bought without neeeding a soundtrack.
That's pretty questionable logic. Especially since movies usually only contain snippets of songs.
Amusingly, the re-release of the Godfather a few years back only made about a tenth of that.
People will ALWAYS go to the movies. Rentals may suffer, but people will always wanna go to the movies, until you can download a 100' screen and stadium seating...
Don't bother with Amazon, go to Artisan.
From the MPAA website: The original poster mentioned Toshiba, Philips and Sony. Only one of those is listed as one of the 7 main members.
Who is the dumbass?
And there there is commentary, deleted scenes, isolated scores, etc. - the extra features on DVD are the reason why most people buy them. They are certainly why I buy them. I've never been upset, as you seem to be, by the menus.
Of course, I'm not using my computer to do so, so I guess there's no feeling of "losing control" of my computer.
Has id EVER tried to do anything _but_ make a perfect FPS? I mean, sure, you can say that's a limited goal, but really - that's been their intent since almost the beginning. They make a very specific type of game, and they are good at it.
My cable provider has been giving me shitty quality picture and no digital channels for the past week. So, I cancelled my service and am going with a satellite provider. In the same way, I have not watched a movie, bought a CD, or played a video game from a corrupt company in more than a year.
You DO know that cable providers and tv channels pay the movie studios (and the MPAA) BIG BUCKS to show movies, right? Also, TV companies pay the record studios (and RIAA) BIG BUCKS to use songs in shows and in ads.
So if you have cable or satellite TV, you are supporting both the RIAA and MPAA directly.
Oh yeah, and /. not posting a review of Warcraft is going to stop that!
Or maybe people on here, like everywhere else, have differing opinions.
I built an account, plunked down about thirty bucks for cards. After trading all my colors away for black, I have a decent deck. I've played maybe ten games so far, it's fun. I don't plan to buy more cards, so it works out fine for me. There is no monthly fee, and I downloaded the client, so I now have a cheap online game to play whenever I get the urge. $30 is less than the store price of most games.
I'm not critiquing them, I just think Nintendo is not losing much (if any) money on their console sales. They have never really been subscribers to the loss leader strategy.
However, as far as the Xbox goes, I can't see it being a success. The games aren't there and they don't seem to be coming.
I might pick it up for MAME and a few of the exclusive Sega games, but these are somewhat obscure and really only appeal to Sega devotees - the support of whom wasn't enough to save the Dreamcast.
Placed between Sony and Nintendo, I don't see room in the marketplace for the Xbox. If I was them, I'd have tried to buy Sega. Having exclusive Visual Concepts games and Sonic games would have been a bigger feather in their cap than Bungie.
You can do what you like with your own XBox
In your parent comment you make the case that people shouldn't be allowed to hack their consoles... Which is it?
"Nintendo expected to ship a total of 2.5 million GameCubes by 2001, says George Harrison, senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications at Nintendo of America. The total could reach 4 million GameCubes worldwide by the end of March, if the company reaches its stated goal... the GameCube, which costs less to manufacture and will sell for $199, will "lose a small amount for the first year," concedes Nintendo's Harrison."
- eb-asia
has it been a year yet? also, they beat their estimates, and hit 4 mil by the end of 2001.
"Because we have shipped more than four million GameCubes worldwide we have been able to bring down the cost of production and have a price cut before launch [in Europe]." - bbc
There's really no way to tell for _sure_ if they are losing money on the consoles or not... It can't be much if they are, and even if they are, company profits are going up, so their business plan is working.
If they are billed per gb for bandwidth, they did.
If they paid employees to spend anytime whatsoever tracking down the culprits, they did.
"If we achieve our sales targets (of 4 million), we should be able to make an operating profit in the GameCube business this year," said Nintendo's managing director Yoshiro Mori at a news conference.
- older cnn story
"Shipments of the GameCube were expected to jump to 12 million in 2002/03 from last year's 4 million, and output was tipped to surge after the launch of production in China."
"In early estimates of its results, Nintendo said that net profit for the year to 31 March had risen 14%" - bbc story
They said that they would be in the black on Gamecube sales if they sold 4 million of them. They did that, before the price drop. They could be lying, but I tend to believe them.
Also, their reported profits have been rising, and though some of that is probably a result of the GBA, it seems likely that a lot of it is to do with the Gamecube as well.