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The business model of consoles is selling hardware at discounted price which is not profitable, then selling games at a premium price. All the game sales give a

by exDM69 9y ago

The business model of consoles is selling hardware at discounted price which is not profitable, then selling games at a premium price. All the game sales give a cut to the console company. This only works if there isn't a lot of piracy or 3rd party content. If consoles were an open platform, they would have to raise the price of the console itself. Very few would pay $1000 for a console.

delecti 9y ago
Nintendo goes to more trouble than most to lock down their consoles (and they always have), and they also never sell their hardware at a loss (though this may have briefly been untrue after they lowered the price of the 3DS shortly after launch).
- jonny_eh 9y ago
  Just because they don't sell their hardware at a loss, it doesn't mean they want to give up software licensing fees.
  - delecti 9y ago
    True, and I'm sure that's a factor, but Nintendo's history leads me to believe that it's more of a cultural/ethical thing than a financial thing.
cleeus 9y ago
The Nintendo Switch is basically a nVidia Jetson TX1 (4xA57@1GHz) with some additional parts and a nice plastic packaging. That's comparable to a RasPi 3 except for the GPU. The costs are probably a bit more then 30$ of a raspi but it's not 1000$.