Okay. That doesn't conflict with their point. "No one had to sell at a loss... Except every non-market leader" only proves their point.
>, but their redesigns made them profitable
No one says consoles always sell at a loss. They are sold over 6-8 years and price drops are pretty conservative (until last gen where they ceased to be). Every conse eventually becomes profitable, but not in the years where they sell the most.
Nope. Take 1 example, the PS3. It lost money in 2007 & 2008, but became profitable in 2009. They sold 16 million PS3's in 2007 and 2008 out of a total 87 million. So approximately 20% of PS3's were sold at a loss.
And the PS3 is perhaps the console that was sold at the biggest loss at the beginning due to the horrendously expensive Cell chip.
It's kind of moot, anyways. The discussion is about the consoles of 2026 competing against Steam Machine. The PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Switch 2 are all currently being sold for positive margin.
The ps3 was certainly a unique case, because despite selling at a loss it still wasn't a competitive price. The infamous "599 USD" now translates to 950 dollars today, so that really shows you how utterly expensive it was (when the PS5 pro just needed to price hike to $800).so it coming down in price for consumers and manufacturers helped it immensely.
But I do believe that was a unique case. Consoles don't typically "come back" later in life. The vita later on didn't. The Wii U and Xbox one didn't. The dreamcast sure didn't. Sony's big turnaround should be praised, but not accepted as a norm of business.
Yes, I'm aware on how consoles are monetized. They take a loss in the first few years and make up for that with software sales, which they take a 30% cut on.
I'm not dispelling if the model isn't profitable, I'm simply stating that the hardware is historically sold at razor thin margins early on, if not outright a loss (until this generation)
4 consoles 2 handhelds, and a hybrid (switch). I have no clue if the gameboy and DS were actually sold at a loss. These were pre-smartphone devices sold more like toys, so I can see them being manufactured for very cheaply in a pre-smartphone era with minimal peripheral requirements.
> That practice started with PS1 / XBox and ended with PS4/XBone.
Okay, fair enough. Atari and NES were very expensive for their time. Nintendo had a few generations to itself to revive the industry and I'm thankful, but I'm also glad their blunder ended up creating competiton in the market.
>, but their redesigns made them profitable
No one says consoles always sell at a loss. They are sold over 6-8 years and price drops are pretty conservative (until last gen where they ceased to be). Every conse eventually becomes profitable, but not in the years where they sell the most.