Cube price cut works

[marconelly!]

That is what the consumer should want . They should want at least 2 companys on par with each other .

While this is certainly true in the home theatre world, where all the TVs receive the same signal, all DVDs play the same discs, etc. I just don't see how I'm benefiting in any way of having the three incompatible consoles on the market. The way I see it:

- I have to spend 3X more money to buy them all if I want to play all the games and
- It makes for so much more clutter (something I honestly hate) under my TV.

The games are not getting any cheaper, the hardware is cheap to begin with and is not being replaced for several years, competition or not. I just don't see how is the presence of the hardware competition in this market changing anything to my favour. I'd much rather have all those hardware manufacturers agree on one hardware platform, make their own console different and with whatever extra features they want, just as long as they all play the same discs / whatever other media they want to use.

 

[jandar]

Well, I could care less if my living room is more integrated, it already is.. CD,DVD, VCD, if they add game console to that, with an HDTV tuner and some other toys, fine..

but see, my PC is something I use for so many purposes, I love games the way they are.. MS is offering PC games with none of thier extras and none of the abilities that one has on a PC such as mapping, modding, modeling, custom coding..

if they are gonna merge PC's into the living room, I want the other PC functionality, If I could have played Halo online with mouse/keyboard and full mod support, with modeling and mapping appz, I would have been ten times happier.

I still like the fact that I can purchase a seperate component at any time and upgrade my home theater versus replacing an entire system every few years.

My mix has Samsung, Kenwood, Toshiba in it, each doing a different job. Some people like everything combined, others detest the idea.

 

[jvd]

That is what the consumer should want . They should want at least 2 companys on par with each other .

While this is certainly true in the home theatre world, where all the TVs receive the same signal, all DVDs play the same discs, etc. I just don't see how I'm benefiting in any way of having the three incompatible consoles on the market. The way I see it:

- I have to spend 3X more money to buy them all if I want to play all the games and
- It makes for so much more clutter (something I honestly hate) under my TV.

The games are not getting any cheaper, the hardware is cheap to begin with and is not being replaced for several years, competition or not. I just don't see how is the presence of the hardware competition in this market changing anything to my favour. I'd much rather have all those hardware manufacturers agree on one hardware platform, make their own console different and with whatever extra features they want, just as long as they all play the same discs / whatever other media they want to use.

What you will end up with is a 9 year old system that is never updated because there is no one to force them to upgrade. It be like the nes all over again . Thankfully sega evened the market or there wouldn't have been a super nintnedo.

 

[cthellis42]

Doubtful. There's always a reason to make a new machine that everyone wants, and sell all new peripherals, not to mention staying firmly ahead of any other competition that might think of joining in, as well as increasing visability (instead of stagnating) with new release buzz... The main thing we'd see is hardware not likely losing money at launch, and probably higher licensing rates for the developers, what with being "the only game in town". Considering new players can jump in at any moment, no smart monopoly would let themselves stagnate THAT much, else they'll provide the entry point for others all by themselves. Resting on one's laurels gets one bit in the ass.

So hey, even if one DOES come about and DOES do what we wouldn't like, they'd bring about the means for others to jump right back and offer other options anyway, so it all works out for us in the end.

 

[jvd]

Doubtful. There's always a reason to make a new machine that everyone wants, and sell all new peripherals, not to mention staying firmly ahead of any other competition that might think of joining in, as well as increasing visability (instead of stagnating) with new release buzz... The main thing we'd see is hardware not likely losing money at launch, and probably higher licensing rates for the developers, what with being "the only game in town". Considering new players can jump in at any moment, no smart monopoly would let themselves stagnate THAT much, else they'll provide the entry point for others all by themselves. Resting on one's laurels gets one bit in the ass.

So hey, even if one DOES come about and DOES do what we wouldn't like, they'd bring about the means for others to jump right back and offer other options anyway, so it all works out for us in the end.

Actually they could jsut sit on new consoles and when a new player enters they just release thier new system . IT would work very well.

 

[Magnum PI]

just don't see how I'm benefiting in any way of having the three incompatible consoles on the market. The way I see it:

- I have to spend 3X more money to buy them all if I want to play all the games and

- It makes for so much more clutter (something I honestly hate) under my TV.

but do you really need it. a lot of games are multiplateform. and most of gamers are perfectly happy with one console.

The games are not getting any cheaper,

but if there was only one company games could get more expensive ! no rivality means no pressure on software prices. no pressure on producing the best console..

and publishers could have to pay more royalties. the company could practically impose their conditions to them.

on the PC, look at the successive increases of the OS and office suite prices..

monopoly is bad for the consumer, bad for the developpers and the publishers. bad for everyone except the company.

 

[Qroach]

JVD,

Oh and ms did have huge companys to go against in the os market , they had ibm and apple .

Now way man. Apple doesn't even count as they didn't make an OS for the PC, and IBM are the people that got MS to make dos.

 

[jvd]

JVD,

Oh and ms did have huge companys to go against in the os market , they had ibm and apple .

Now way man. Apple doesn't even count as they didn't make an OS for the PC, and IBM are the people that got MS to make dos.

Apple does count its a competting format . Apple could have taken over the desktop market and would have had a 96% share and ms could have ended up with a 4% share. Ibm developed dos but they were pushing osr while ms was pushing windows

 

[zurich]

Wow, the Cube is now $99 CDN

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/pr...on=&langid=EN&dept=15&WLBS=fsweb2

 

[Qroach]

Jvd,

Apple does count its a competting format . Apple could have taken over the desktop market and would have had a 96% share and ms could have ended up with a 4% share. Ibm developed dos but they were pushing osr while ms was pushing windows

No, apple doesn't count as they don't develop an OS for PC hardware. If they did, then it'd be a different story. Btw, IBM contracted Microsoft to make DOS for thier PC architecture.

 

[Vince]

Tell me this, what good is a cut and one week spike if the sales normalize after 2 weeks?

Why don't you wait 2 weeks then before you start yapping about it

Ok, I did buddy. Interpret this as you will. I don't care, nor do I want an argument.

Xbox pushes Cube back into third place.[/url]]GameCube sales dropped by an alarming 20 per cent week on week, despite heavy TV advertising and a £50 advantage on the competition, but the good news for Nintendo is that since the price cut sales are still running at an average of seven times the level they were at previously.

 

[cybamerc]

Vince:

> Interpret this as you will. I don't care

You cared enough to post it. UK btw... one market. Out of many.

 

[GHost]

GOOD, so it wasn't a one week spike, by still keeping an average of 7 to 1 ratio, compared to the sales before the price cut.

Now let's see if Xbox's advantage will hold for more than a week, as it was pushed hard by MS to counter Nintendo, by bundling Halo, Midtown Madness 3 and a two month Xbox Live (all for free? apparently Game are doing this bundle with the addition of Frontline and Timesplitters2 also free).

The UK market finally seems to come to some healthy balance, it was so silly US-ish and MS-ish not long ago. Good job Nintendo!


Edit: it's looks the xbox offers a hell of a bundle right now

 

[Vince]

You cared enough to post it. UK btw... one market. Out of many.

Of course it's only one market, and it's only a slight trend. I realize that people will interpret this differently, to each his own. Which is why I said what I did, and didn't provide any of my "biased" thought on the matter. I care because he told me to back off and wait two weeks, which I did.

 

[Qroach]

it's as I suspected too. We'll need to wait a few more weeks for north america numbers, but I'm willing ot bet things have died down in this area too.

 

[StefanS]

it's as I suspected too. We'll need to wait a few more weeks for north america numbers, but I'm willing ot bet things have died down in this area too.

It is reasonable to wait for the NA numbers. But died down is hardly appropriate given the fact that gamecube sales are still seven times higher than before.

 

[Qroach]

If xbox is still doubling it in sales, then I'd say that it has died down from the previous week where it was outselling it, wouldn't you? even if it's still selling 7 times what it once was.

 

[StefanS]

If xbox is still doubling it in sales, then I'd say that it's dieds down from the previous week where it was outselling it, wouldn't you? even if it's still selling 7 times what it once was.

That doesn't fit Qroach. Gamecube sales are down by 20%. Xbox sales up by 80% (after the Xbox bundle counter move). That doesn't mean Xbox is outselling GCN 2:1.
All that can be taken from that article is that Xbox is ahead again.

EDIT: For clarification:

1st scenario: Gamecube outsold Xbox by 1 unit last week. -> Xbox's outselling GCN by 2:1.

2nd scenario: Gamecube outsold Xbox by a very large margin. Xbox's selling 1 unit more than GCN. Ratio Xbox:GCN 1:1.

Thus: 1:1<=Xbox:Gamecube<=2:1 can be derived from that article, unless you got last week sales in absolute numbers.

Neither scenario is very realistic. In my opinion the ratio will probably be around 1,5:1 which is just a mere guess.

 

[Qroach]

hupfinsgack,

That doesn't fit Qroach. Gamecube sales are down by 20%. Xbox sales up by 80% (after the Xbox bundle counter move). That doesn't mean Xbox is outselling GCN 2:1.

Yeah it's not doubling the cube sales, I misread that.

However a 20 percent drop in a single week is a considerable amount. it shows that the sales are dying down and we'll have to wait for more numbers over the next few weeks to see if tha ttrend continues.

 

[cthellis42]

I think using the phrase "dying down" is a bit of an overreaction, though. We know a price jump like that will cause a sales spike, and we know that sales will settle down shortly thereafter--the key is just where it normalizes. If Nintendo normalizes ONLY 20% lower than where it spiked to in the first week, I'd say they're holding pretty impressively, and certainly much better off than they were previously. I also think rating things right now will be hard to judge, since we're also ramping up into the holiday season, so we won't have normal numbers to judge by comparison-wise until after the season dies down. (We can take season's sales in and of itself, but it won't necessarily mark an overall, normal trend.)