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Comment by f430 | Hacker News Reader

I asked this before but why doesn't Samsung build video game consoles? They could easily integrate this and spin it off as a console device. It has the brand name appeal, it has the capability, and the capital.

Or did the door close in 1999? I'm ready for Samsung Gamestation

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Consoles don't actually make money (unless you're Nintendo).

The games make money. The online service subscription makes money. Samsung probably can make good hardware, but I don't see them getting into the software / online platform business.

Cell phones don’t make money either. You make money with the App Store.

Samsung has let Google make the money.

Yeah, Samsung doesn't restrict itself to lucrative industries. So many of its ventures are in markets where marginal cost ≈ marginal revenue, and they're big enough and competent enough to get rich doing so.

The smartphone business is maybe not the best example though, since the brand reputation that having the second biggest name in smartphones confers surely pays dividends across their consumer product lines.

Cell phones totally make money, at least for Samsung. Samsung just released 2020 3Q earnings. Mobile division revenue 30B and profit 4B, >10% margin.

Samsung at its peak, circa 2013, made $9.6B operating profit on $55B revenue. Samsung's gross sales revenue, profit (and margin) in mobile has been steadily declining since.

The Mobile division's 2Q 2012 profit was less than 10% ($1.95B OP on $20B revenue). Then Trump's sanction of Huawei happened, after which Samsung's sales grew by 50% QoQ (3Q), but we don't expect Samsung's luck to last forever and their margin would start declining to a mid-single digit again.

Samsung has absolutely abysmal app store experience(remember they do have their own both on mobile and on their wearables).

While app store is more or less required for a phone to sell, those devices still do that quite nice margins. There’s no third party game store you coukd use on a console (apart from steam big picture).

Switch is nothing as a console though. It's Nintendo and Nintendo software that makes it sell like Hot cakes. So anyone can do a Switch (and I would say the Razr ones that attach to phones are pretty good already) but Nintendo Games are what sell the Switch too.

Well, the Switch is also the only real choice for portable console that gets full-fledged games.

A smartphone hardly competes with it with its spammy mobile game stores, lack of dedicated controller, and lack of single hardware target that has developers actually making games for it.

Smartphone + controller is so uncompelling that I've literally never seen someone playing that way in the flesh, and I bought a Switch with zero interest in Nintendo games. And since developers can't assume you have a controller, mobile games are stuck in this very superficial built-for-touch limbo that limits what they can be.

You're missing a lot if you think a Pixel + Razr controller competes with Switch even after removing all Nintendo games. That's to suggest that mobile tap-interface gaming competes with Switch/PS/Xbox games.

Just consider the difference between Skyrim on Switch and Blades on iOS/Android. That's the chasm I'm talking about.

I was talking more of things like Xcloud with Razr controller.

I would also argue that Switch has Skyrim due to the sale of Switch caused by BoTW and Odyssey.

Don't get me wrong, I have only my Switch for gaming, but I only mean that I wouldn't have bought it if it wasn't a Nintendo.

>. So anyone can do a Switch

can anyone do iphone? what kind of logic is this? Samsung is good at what they do and Nintendo is very good at what they do. Sega failed with their console and they are in the gaming industry for a long time. Sony almost fail with their cell cpu console.

anyone can do a Switch? lets start with you...

I don't think they meant that Switch was a technical marvel, but probably that the cost is fairly high for the hardware you get, so they probably make money on the console itself.

That they can charge what they do hinges on the quality of their games, as you say.

Consoles are a platform play to get attached to people's TVs. But Samsung is often there already with the TV itself.

They could contract studios to make games for the TV:s directly.

The 3D thing didn't take off. Companies are constantly trying to find ways to make people ditch their old TV and buy a new one. This could be one.

Game makers want to make games for the most popular consoles, and gamers want to buy the consoles with the best game selection. So there is a natural convergence on one or two platforms, with Nintendo occupying a special cultural niche. Even with the enormous resources of Samsung it would be difficult to displace Sony or Microsoft.

The Nintendo strategy is quite interesting, because they're basically content being the "second console" if it means being the second console in everybody's homes, and leaving MS and Sony to fight for top billing.

Thats a good strategy to be fair.

It sorta garuantees you will outsell both the top consoles while low key dominating people's actual downtime. I can't hop over to my xbox for 30mins. I need a few hours at least.

Portability aspect is also unique selling point. Nintendo has the history with Gameboy, 3DS.

That's also a fair point, but they've had successful non-portable consoles before like the Wii.

That's true and works well for them but on top of that they're also selling to a different market which the other consoles effectively don't serve - there is much more switch content targeted at/suitable for younger players than the other consoles.

Game consoles are about building a functioning content platform. The hardware is only a small part of it. You can see that with Nvidia's half-hearted attempts with Shield.

NVidia Shield did the job.

It got NVidia a contract with Nintendo, who turned the Shield into a Switch. Yeah, Nintendo jazzed it up a lot, but the internals of the Switch and Shield are surprisingly close.

Sure, that is fair. In that sense, Samsung could plausibly build a console and software tools around it as a reference design to encourage a gaming platform company to adopt Exynos.

I dunno, as far as streaming games goes, nVidia is probably one of the better if not the best on the market. Their problem is that literally nobody knows about what it's capable of. Being able to buy a game on steam, and then play it on your TV is AMAZING.

Of course, game publishers are playing hardball because everyone knows you should have to buy a copy of the game for every place you want to play it.

Just a guess but: because it's a horribly difficult market to get into, and Samsung (in my experience) is pretty bad at writing software. Plus they'd be making Google angry (competing with Stadia).

If Sega couldn't manage, I don't know how Samsung would - they've obviously got a lot more money to throw at the problem but I'm not entirely sure there's enough market for a 4th player. Nintendo has the "cheap and fun" market cornered, and Sony and Microsoft own the high end. What development house could Samsung even acquire at this point to get exclusive titles?

I bet they could get a good deal on CD Projekt Red right now

There was a rumor years ago that Samsung was the #1 potential buyer of Microsoft's XBOX division. Obviously that didn't happen. At this point building a brand and a first party game library that can compete in what already looks like a crowded market is probably not worth it. Technical differentiation is hard and as sibling comment said consoles sell at a loss

The failure of the Samsung Saturn probably scared them off :)

If you are asking this with respect to AMD GPU.

That is because the AMD IP deal with Samsung only allows f for phone and tablet market.

KFC Console just launched a few months ago, while running Windows. Once Games move to ARM, I think we are going to see a lot more consoles based on Windows. All manufacturers need to do is to plonk in some good gaming hardware, add windows to it and they are done.

I think the ship has sailed for launching an entirely new console platform. It's superhard for someone to claw market share out of PS, Xbox and Nintendo. Not to mention getting game developers and publishers onboard. It's a chicken and egg problem where users won't come until you have games and games won't come until you have users. Making a windows based console solves the games problem.

I don't see how Windows adds any value to a game console, as they're traditionally understood.

Maybe if you consider it as a Windows gaming PC, yes, but not otherwise.

KFC here is the actual Kentucky Fried Chicken, not an homonym.

The console has a slot to warm up the chicken.

I could not believe this to be true.

https://landing.coolermaster.com/kfconsole/

It is true! Everyone assumed this to be a hoax, but it's being built by cooler master.

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