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The most profitable and unprofitable consoles of all times

Bodomism

Banned
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Nintendo Switch is now the most profitable console of all times in just 4.5 years on the market

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PS3 is the most unprofitable console of all times and nearly wiped out PS1 and PS2 total profits
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Kokoloko85

Member
Surprised the 360 lost money and the ps2 had so little profit.

Not surprised with switch, such little money must go into making those games. Especially all those ports and refreshes like Mario Kart that sell 10’s of millions. And games that look worse than alot of indies must be cheap to make.

Be interested to see there next console/hybrid that will require newer games made and possibly more expensive because of graphics etc
 

Stuart360

Member
I take it this is based soley on the actual console sales and nothing else?, because game attach rates were huge on 360, same with PS1 and PS2.
PS3 and 360 being in minus would make sense because of the RROD fiasco on 360, and PS3 selling at a loss most of ts life, but both consoles will be well into profit when taking into account game sales, licenses, and controllers, Kinect, etc. But it only makes sense if this is based SOLEY on console hardware sales.

Nintendo being where they are is no surprise with their continued low end hardware at high prices strategy.
 

Bodomism

Banned
I take it this is based soley on the actual console sales and nothing else?, because game attach rates were huge on 360, same with PS1 and PS2.
PS3 and 360 being in minus would make sense because of the RROD fiasco on 360, and PS3 selling at a loss most of ts life, but both consoles will be well into profit when taking into account game sales, licenses, and controllers, Kinect, etc. But it only makes sense if this is based SOLEY on console hardware sales.

Nintendo being where they are is no surprise with their continued low end hardware at high prices strategy.
Hardware and software sales for the systems were accounted for those profits/loss result.
 
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Stuart360

Member
Hardware and software sales for the systems were accounted for those profits/loss result.
Really, i find that hard to believe to be honest. I take it stuff like controllers, Kinect, PSMove, etc are also taken into account?. I fint it hard to beleive that as consoles always used to be sold at a loss as the real money was in game sales, and that was way back in th old days when they didnt have all these online features to make money from like today. I find it had to believe consoles like the PS1 and PS2 made so little money if this is taking EVRYTHING into account in terms of revenue.
 

Bodomism

Banned
Really, i find that hard to believe to be honest. I take it stuff like controllers, Kinect, PSMove, etc are also taken into account?. I fint it hard to beleive that as consoles always used to be sold at a loss as the real money was in game sales, and that was way back in th old days when they didnt have all these online features to make money from like today. I find it had to believe consoles like the PS1 and PS2 made so little money if this is taking EVRYTHING into account in terms of revenue.
Nintendo made more profits with GCN/GBA during PS2 era, the only time Nintendo made less profits than Sony was during WiiU/3DS era.
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Stuart360

Member
Nintendo made more profits with GCN/GBA during PS2 era, the only time Nintendo made less profits than Sony was during WiiU/3DS era.
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Oh i'm not doubting Nintendo's success, thats why i didnt mention them in the above post. They will continue fleecing gamers for years to come.

By the way just noticed your custom tag, i take it this thread was just made to show that Nintendo are no.1.
Cool.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Wii U may have bombed, but 3DS sold 75 million units. The profits on the system and games must be huge making it at least a positive bar?
 
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V4skunk

Banned
How is a consoles profitability good for the gamer? I'm glad that Nintendo is making money with the Switch I suppose but as a gamer am I getting good price for performance out of the system?
4.5 years ago Switch was pretty good hardware wise. There wasn't really a better soc available unless they went with arm and got a high end mobile soc but then Switch would have been more expensive.
 

Bodomism

Banned

They did recover a little bit at the end, but it was too big to offset the operating loss in the previous years.
 
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Thought 360 would have been worse with the Red Ring of Death recalls

I went through 3 of them personally and feel like almost everyone i know had it at least once
 
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They did recover a little bit at the end, but it was too big to offset the profits lost in the previous years.
The first two articles contains no real data, they just link to another article on Kotaku(!), which contains no real data either and is largely based on a 2012 GDC presentation by the author (who just so happened to work for a mobile publisher) in which he predicted the imminent death of console gaming. He does claim that Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division posted a $7.8 billion loss in his presentation, but he completely ignores that those numbers include losses from other notable duds such as the Windows Phone and Zune.

In short, it's the word of a former Xbox executive versus that of a mobile-shilling Kotaku author who turned out to be spectacularly wrong in his predictions. I know who I'm going with here.

The third article is about hardware only.

The fourth article is from 2007. Xbox 360 was in production until 2016. Do you see them problem?
 
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Bodomism

Banned
The first two articles contains no real data, they just link to another article on Kotaku(!), which contains no real data either and is largely based on a 2012 GDC presentation by the author (who just so happened to work for a mobile publisher) in which he predicted the imminent death of console gaming. He does claim that Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division posted a $7.8 billion loss in his presentation, but he completely ignores that those numbers include losses from other notable duds such as the Windows Phone and Zune.

In short, it's the word of a former Xbox executive versus that of a mobile-shilling Kotaku author who turned out to be spectacularly wrong in his predictions. I know who I'm going with here.

The third article is about hardware only.

The fourth article is from 2007. Xbox 360 was in production until 2016. Do you see them problem?
I would take Microsoft home entertainment financial results over former Xbox executive that shows nothing to support his claims.
 
Xbox division
2001-2005= -$4bn
2006 = -$1.89bn
2007 = -$1.28bn
2008 = +$0.43bn
2009 = +$0.17bn
2010 = +$0.61bn
I would take Microsoft home entertainment financial results over former Xbox executive that shows nothing to support his claims.
You're making the mistake of assuming that Xbox has its own division within Microsoft. This has never been the case, especially back in the Xbox 360 days when Xbox shared a space with a whole bunch of failed forays into other hardware markets. Just because a division is losing money doesn't mean that all of the products it is responsible for are unprofitable.
 
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Selling a shitton of low cost exclusives at full price for years and not having to spend extremely huge amounts of money on marketing them seems like a good strategy. They don't even have to port them to Pc. I'm happy for Nintendo.
 

Mr Hyde

Member
Switch is such a beast on all fronts. Nintendo is very smart when it comes to economics. They have found a good strategy that is obviously paying off. PS3 on the other hand just seems like a failure the more I think about it. Difficult to develop for, expensive and bloated with unnecessary features. Glad Sony bounced back with PS4 and now PS5, which most likely will be a very profitable console.
 

Hunnybun

Member
Switch software sales are just freakish.

It's like they have a dozen GTA's at once.

I find that whole console fucking baffling.

$60 for glorified indie games like Metroid Dread and Yoshi's Crafted World.
Tens of millions of units of a fucking Animal Crossing game.
Tens of millions of units of a fucking port of a Mario Kart game.
No price reductions EVER.
A portable console flourishing in the time of ubiquitous smart phones.

I don't get it. Do they just move loads of software cos there's fuck all other games on there?
 

Kokoloko85

Member
You mad?

You sound mad!
Nah just factual, I own 2 Switch’s. It‘s ok to talk truth about companies you like, you don’t have to lick there ass all the time…

There games are cheaper to make and games like Mario Kart have sold like close to 20million compared to the Wii U version, its bound to be pure profit.
You telling me Animal Crossing cost the same as Halo Infinite to make? Or Porting Mario from the Wii U cost the same as God of War? Or big sellers like Pokemon with used assets from a 3DS game.

And apart from Mario Odessey and Luigi’s Mansion there games look worse than alot of indies
 

Hunnybun

Member
Nah just factual, I own 2 Switch’s. It‘s ok to talk truth about companies you like, you don’t have to lick there ass all the time…

There games are cheaper to make and games like Mario Kart have sold like close to 20million compared to the Wii U version, its bound to be pure profit.
You telling me Animal Crossing cost the same as Halo Infinite to make? Or Porting Mario from the Wii U cost the same as God of War? Or big sellers like Pokemon with used assets from a 3DS game.

And apart from Mario Odessey and Luigi’s Mansion there games look worse than alot of indies

Them charging $60 for indie level productions (good games, but so are lots of indies) has to be the biggest gaming scam of all time.

I remember playing the demo of Yoshi and being like, what? You want $60 for THIS? Are you fucking KIDDING me?

And yet millions upon millions of people just hand the cash over. It's kind of amazing, really.
 

ParaSeoul

Member
I find that whole console fucking baffling.

$60 for glorified indie games like Metroid Dread and Yoshi's Crafted World.
Tens of millions of units of a fucking Animal Crossing game.
Tens of millions of units of a fucking port of a Mario Kart game.
No price reductions EVER.
A portable console flourishing in the time of ubiquitous smart phones.

I don't get it. Do they just move loads of software cos there's fuck all other games on there?
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You have to remember they literally sold cardboard for 70 dolars
 
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