Recent content by liuelson

We (and publishers) are actually trying to examine 2 things: profitability now, and profitability in the future. Software revenue, install base, attach ratios, million-sellers all help us understand the picture of profitability now. Launch-aligned comparisons (million-sellers in the first...

I thought the DMCA explicitly forbade compromising DRM? Thus, although one could argue that making a personal, archival copy of a DVD that one has purchased is fair use, breaking the DRM to make that copy would be illegal.

I suspect that Nintendo shared your sense of what would happen, which is why they gambled on the "Blue Ocean" strategy. I think Nintendo is a real wildcard this gen. The extent to which they are attracting PS2 casuals should take away market share from the Xbox360 and PS3. The extent to which...

Hard to discuss market without considering price; price encapsulates so much information. Anyway, shouldn't auction prices of the Wii v. PS3 provide some insight?

Are you expecting a roughly 50/50 split with PS3 towards 2011? In other words, the Xbox360 will take about half of the PS2 console market this gen?

This is true. However, you can also think of it in terms of arbitrage. If Nintendo allowed supply and demand to set price, rather than setting a price cap and allowing shortages, the market would drive the price of the Wii above $250. That would be a better measure of the price demand of the...

Yes and no. Take your standard supply/demand curve, and draw a straight line at the supply-constrained quantity, and you'll have 2 price intersections. One is the $250 for which Nintendo is manufacturing, and the other is the ~$500 that auctions are fetching. For some lucky few, it is not a...

Also keep in mind that Greenpeace is an advocacy organization, and giving Nintendo a score of "0/10" instead of a more accurate "N/A" puts public pressure on Nintendo to cooperate with Greenpeace's requests for information in the future. The methodology of the report means that the score is...

I'm sorry for not being more specific - I was trying to draw an analogy between software for consoles and service for vehicles. If a vehicle line dies off, so do the dealerships and the service options for that vehicle. Not a perfect analogy for those who take care of their own cars or go to...

Do you think there's potential in this model for innovation in non-game software? As someone who works in the education industry, I would be interested in a Wii Ware title that could serve as a distance learning platform, for example. In that case, I could see a university project trying to...

Sales numbers of a vehicle (or any other product that requires industry support) are relevant in terms of survival. Take, for example, the Oldsmobile brand. Also, sales numbers of such products are important to the general public in terms of the overall health of the industry and the local...

I can only think of 2 tech companies that would be willing to spend that kind of money...

You could probably do a macro analysis of the market as a whole to determine price elasticity of demand, rather than focusing on one manufacturer compared to another. Your argument is that console purchasers have a very high PED.

Actually, if someone had the data, they could compare the sales of the Wii at this price point v. last gen consoles at a similar price point. If your argument is truly that console demand is overwhelming determined by price alone ("price is king"), that should actually be pretty easy to...

I don't think the manufacturers look at BC mainly as a means to drive sales of consoles - I think they see it as an additional revenue stream once those consoles are sold. For example, Nintendo's VC serves as a way to re-sell old software to Wii owners - some of whom may already own the older...