Poll: Consoles should be FREE!!!!!!

[almostgold]

ak93]****Disclaimer****
(I am not trying to start a revolt or encourage piracy in any way. I am just a gamer that would eather like cheaper consoles or far cheaper games.
I don't mean to sound complainy or whiny I just wish someone would do something!!!)
In no way am I saying we should do this, but it makes for good conversation!!!

Consoles sholud be free. As extream as that sounds... it's true. Think about it for a minute. At $300 a PS3 Slim is not cheap (though cheper that a PS3 once was) a Wii... $220 at least Xbox arcade packs are only $200, but still! After that inicial price, come game after game after game all startin upwards of $50.00s (except for chepo Wii titles which should be illigal [I'm kidding]). This is where the free consle idea lies.... the games. If companies offer consoles for free via EB game or Best Buy pick up or mail... whatever and charged an aditional $20.00 on a game, that would pay for the console.
Say the average gamer owns 10 games (low as that is) that becomes $200.00s in console revenue.
Some people own 30 games... $600.00s additional revenue for free consoles. The only company that may get bitten by this would be Nintendo as there are A LOT of Wiis in seniors homes where all they play is Wii Sports.
To prevent multple consoles being given to the same person, they could implement a complexe registration prosess that would ensure one console per person.
There you go.... Consoles should be free (this does exclude PCs and MACs as that would be imposible to do).
Make sense? What do you think?

But then I buy God of War 3, get a PS3 and the game for $70, and never buy any more PS3 games. They lose LOTS of money.

No.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

So you advocate that a company give away a product at a loss of hundreds of dollars in the hopes that the average customer will buy the dozens of games it takes to make up the difference and turn a profit? I'm pretty sure that's an unsound idea.

 

[razormint21]

What you want is for game companies to subsidize consoles?

- Then piracy will spread! Consoles are easy to procure now, so it will be very easy to reverse engineer them and make them piratable (ehem PS3)

- Not every console buyer buys enough games to subsidize the console. Do you think all those people who bought the wii bought more games for it beside wii fit, wii sports, and possibly rockband?

- Console sales in the books of companies will drop, and won't be profitable anymore. Console makers lose interest in maintenance and quality management, machine suffers the "sega saturn syndrome".

It's like making consoles open source tinker toys.
You cannot make such innovative consoles which costs lots of R&D and hype marketing "open source".

 

[Sephychu]

They're stupidly expensive to produce and pretty damned cool. I think it's only fair to pay for them.

 

[Georgie_Leech]

That doesn't take into account the people who own fewer or more video games. In the former, the game companies lose out on sales. Meanwhile, the latter (myself included, who has about 50 games lying around his house) would freakout at being charged so much for them.

 

[oppp7]

I buy many games, so no.

 

[51gunner]

The industry would die from trying this. The companies would be eating a huge loss one most consoles they sent out there, and couldn't hope recoup that cost ever.

 

[ElegantSwordsman]

I fail to see how giving Konami an extra $10 per game is going to give incentive for Sony to develop the PS4 and give it away for free...

 

[reg42]

Sorry, but that's not a very good idea. No company would mass produce a product just to give it away.
I also doubt as many people would buy games if they cost $80.
Also (and this is kinda important), Sony and Microsoft do not make every game for their platform, so they wouldn't make any money back.

 

[Avaholic03]

They're going to charge as much as they can get away with for both consoles or games. That's how the economy works. The only way they'll ever get cheaper is if people simply stop buying them. But since the popularity of gaming (especially console gaming) is only increasing, you can expect prices to go up.

Then why has every major console only cut prices since release?
If they were selling at $500 a pop, why not keep it that high?

My 360 cost $499 when I first bought it (1st Generation).
Now, it's $299 and comes with two big-name games (Forza 3 and Halo ODST).

Gaming popularity has only gone up since then, so why wouldn't prices, if what you're saying is true?
And why would Microsoft and Sony both sell their consoles at a loss to them?

Uhhh, because most people already have consoles now. Duh. That's how it works with all products. You get the idiot fanboys to spend an arm and a leg at first, and then once they all have consoles you lower prices to attract the more frugal audience.

You'll have to trust me on this one. These companies have an army of finance people who all study the market so they can bleed every last dollar they can from it. Also, as with any manufactured product, the longer you make it the lower the cost is, so you can lower the price and still make money.

 

[Baby Tea]

microsoft was always making a small profit on xbox 360s.

False!
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6140383.html

Microsoft was losing money when it first came out and probably still are, though less due to lower production costs (Though they lowered the price, so the loss is probably still there).

Sony is still losing money on the PS3 slim console itself:
http://kotaku.com/5344701/sony-losing-money-on-ps3-slim

 

[Baby Tea]

As with any manufactured product, the longer you make it the lower the cost is, so you can lower the price and still make money.

But they lose money on each console sold.
Even with the lower production costs, they still lose money.

Whoop! Pardon the double post.
My bad.

 

[Wolfgurl]

Consoles should stay at an decent price, game prices should drop a dollar or so, this is getting ridicules!