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Comment by fidotron | Hacker News Reader

I've actually worked at a high enough level in the games industry to know about the non-public dynamics, and that includes working with some of the people involved in this story.

> Hardware has always been a loss leader used to sell games, nothing more. If they can sell the games just as well on their “competitiors platforms” then why bother spending time and exorbitant amounts of money building your own hardware?

By this logic Sony and Nintendo are completely wasting their time making hardware, yet they persist in doing so. Does this make them bad at business?

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> Does this make them bad at business?

No, and nobody said as much either.

It just means they get enough out of other sales (including an increase from hardware) that they have decided hardware is still worth it. Microsoft has decided otherwise. They’re both perfectly fine decisions.

> I've actually worked at a high enough level in the games industry to know about the non-public dynamics, and that includes working with some of the people involved in this story.

Then you should very well know how hardware has always been a loss leader intended to drive people to exclusives and first party services. It shouldn’t be a surprise that once a company finds just as successful ways of driving the same engagement, they no longer need hardware.

> Then you should very well know how hardware has always been a loss leader intended to drive people to exclusives and first party services.

Just like the number one console, the Switch? Sold at a loss? To drive people to play the exclusives?

TBH I won't engage further in this line.

> Sold at a loss?

I highly doubt they have recouped the R&D costs of making the console and platform at $40-80 per unit. So, yes, at a loss. Looking at the BOM and calling it a day is the shallowest way to evaluate if something is sold at a gain or loss.

> To drive people to play the exclusives?

Nintendo? The major game studio that famously only releases their first party titles on their own platform? Yeah I'm pretty sure that's the reason their entire hardware lineup exists and has ever existed.

> TBH I won't engage further in this line.

Not that you've been engaging in anything but dismissals without substance in this entire post.

Both Sony and Nintendo have expanded outside their traditional exclusive hardware. I don't think the parent is saying that doing hardware is useless, but rather that the writing is on the wall to some extent for pure console exclusivity.

It ain't the PS3 era where consoles are some radically different hardware stack. The latest gen, except for nintendo, are basically just x86-64 gaming PCs.

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