I have a UK monthly phone contract, and if I take the Eurostar 200 miles to France, it will cost me £1.30 a minute to make a call (to the UK/France) or 80p per minute to receive a call. In fact, the call costs are almost identical if I take my phone to Hong Kong to make local calls (which is much further away than Paris if I remember correctly), except when I go to Hong Kong now instead I pick up a local cheap Pay As You Go sim card.
Oh, and the neat thing is, it resizes all text columns to fit within the phone's screen. So although a web page might span twice the phone's screen resolution, the actual text column you highlight will span to fill the screen perfectly, making it very easy to read.
You're not using the S60 3rd edition khtml browser then. Which is very good, the best I've ever used on a phone.
I got my Nokia N80 last week, here you can see a sample screenshot I took of the BBC website using the phone's khtml browser. It's running at a fairly decent resolution, although it appears much smaller in real life as it's on a 2.1" screen.
I mentioned it indepth with more photos here and here.
Basically, it's a very good browser that renders web pages pretty much perfectly, and has functions like zoom in/out, full page preview scrolling, visual back/forward tabs (the N80 also has an inbuilt WAP browser, which by comparison is rubbish). I did notice it crashed a lot if you went to a web page over 1Mb in size (including images, flash, etc), but otherwise it's great.
I did suggest the markup would include VAT - what with everything in the UK including VAT.
So yes, for a Wii, the actual markup is more in the region of 5-10%.
For the PS3 though, if that "actual" cost is £320 ($599), then the price including VAT is just under £380. That leaves about £45 of markup, which is about 15%.
I'm not sure how the DVD/Blu Ray movie playing affects the import tax on the PS3 though.
By that same reasoning, the $599 PlayStation 3 would cost £599. A nearly 100% markup. But the PS3 is said to cost £425 in the UK - a still expensive, but a lesser 33% markup.
By the same 33% markup, a $200 Wii would cost £145 (so round it up to £150). That markup includes VAT. Yes, the UK gets screwed still, but much less than before. IF the US Wii is $200 and the UK Wii £150, the £40 difference is a mostly VAT and a little bit extra to the retailers.
The PS2 wasn't much stronger than the Dreamcast, on a technical level.
Many Dreamcast games still look good by todays standards. Some were ported straight to the GameCube (regarded as graphically superior to the PS2) and fit right in. Some Dreamcast games wouldn't look as good on the PS2 (Shenmue being an example, as the Dreamcast had more video memory than the PS2).
The Dreamcast failed against Sony's marketing machine, hindered by a lack of publisher support (EA). As a piece of hardware, it was on a par with the PS2, launched at an affordable price, had online gaming from the start, and a great collection of arcade quality games.
I don't think Ken Kutaragi's restaurant analogy makes any sense. Most PS3 gamers are in the 15-25 year old range. Most can't sensibly afford really high prices, whether it's for a games console or a restaurant.
The few that won't mind, are the early adopters - the older geeks, the younger rich kids.
And that's who the price is for - early adopters.
Because, 6-12 months after the launch, it won't be $600. It will be more like $400, or a more sensible price.
The launch price will have no influence on how well the PlayStation 3 does. For the first year, Sony will fleece the early adopters for all they can, while at the same time making the PS3 appear like more of a high value product. Then, a couple of years down the line, they'll be half price or less. That's when the "real people" will buy them, and that's what will determine whether the PS3 is a success of not.
And surely at some point, Sony will stop it with the (stupid) two PS3 packages, the high value 60Gb one and the (rubbish) 20Gb one with all the neat features (WiFi, HDMI, MS) stripped out. What is you spend $500 on the 20Gb PS3? What's that? An expensive restaurant with a table beside the toilet?
Slashdot Mirror
Define extortionate.
I have a UK monthly phone contract, and if I take the Eurostar 200 miles to France, it will cost me £1.30 a minute to make a call (to the UK/France) or 80p per minute to receive a call. In fact, the call costs are almost identical if I take my phone to Hong Kong to make local calls (which is much further away than Paris if I remember correctly), except when I go to Hong Kong now instead I pick up a local cheap Pay As You Go sim card.
Oh, and the neat thing is, it resizes all text columns to fit within the phone's screen. So although a web page might span twice the phone's screen resolution, the actual text column you highlight will span to fill the screen perfectly, making it very easy to read.
I got my Nokia N80 last week, here you can see a sample screenshot I took of the BBC website using the phone's khtml browser. It's running at a fairly decent resolution, although it appears much smaller in real life as it's on a 2.1" screen.
I mentioned it indepth with more photos here and here.
Basically, it's a very good browser that renders web pages pretty much perfectly, and has functions like zoom in/out, full page preview scrolling, visual back/forward tabs (the N80 also has an inbuilt WAP browser, which by comparison is rubbish). I did notice it crashed a lot if you went to a web page over 1Mb in size (including images, flash, etc), but otherwise it's great.
So yes, for a Wii, the actual markup is more in the region of 5-10%.
For the PS3 though, if that "actual" cost is £320 ($599), then the price including VAT is just under £380. That leaves about £45 of markup, which is about 15%.
I'm not sure how the DVD/Blu Ray movie playing affects the import tax on the PS3 though.
Not fact at all.
By that same reasoning, the $599 PlayStation 3 would cost £599. A nearly 100% markup. But the PS3 is said to cost £425 in the UK - a still expensive, but a lesser 33% markup.
By the same 33% markup, a $200 Wii would cost £145 (so round it up to £150). That markup includes VAT. Yes, the UK gets screwed still, but much less than before. IF the US Wii is $200 and the UK Wii £150, the £40 difference is a mostly VAT and a little bit extra to the retailers.
The PS2 wasn't much stronger than the Dreamcast, on a technical level.
Many Dreamcast games still look good by todays standards. Some were ported straight to the GameCube (regarded as graphically superior to the PS2) and fit right in. Some Dreamcast games wouldn't look as good on the PS2 (Shenmue being an example, as the Dreamcast had more video memory than the PS2).
The Dreamcast failed against Sony's marketing machine, hindered by a lack of publisher support (EA). As a piece of hardware, it was on a par with the PS2, launched at an affordable price, had online gaming from the start, and a great collection of arcade quality games.
People just didn't buy it.
I don't think Ken Kutaragi's restaurant analogy makes any sense. Most PS3 gamers are in the 15-25 year old range. Most can't sensibly afford really high prices, whether it's for a games console or a restaurant. The few that won't mind, are the early adopters - the older geeks, the younger rich kids. And that's who the price is for - early adopters. Because, 6-12 months after the launch, it won't be $600. It will be more like $400, or a more sensible price. The launch price will have no influence on how well the PlayStation 3 does. For the first year, Sony will fleece the early adopters for all they can, while at the same time making the PS3 appear like more of a high value product. Then, a couple of years down the line, they'll be half price or less. That's when the "real people" will buy them, and that's what will determine whether the PS3 is a success of not. And surely at some point, Sony will stop it with the (stupid) two PS3 packages, the high value 60Gb one and the (rubbish) 20Gb one with all the neat features (WiFi, HDMI, MS) stripped out. What is you spend $500 on the 20Gb PS3? What's that? An expensive restaurant with a table beside the toilet?
It's not this holiday. It's October 2007. Quite a long wait.
Did anyone mention the classic Wii control pad? It's a SNES pad with analogue sticks - should be great for the downloaded virtual machine games!