Now UKers can complain about the price of the Wii as well as Apple stuffs

[myca]

But it mostly comes from software, which Nintendo has been developing since at least 2003. And it may just be licensed tech but Nintendo had to build the controller and get everything working, even from the first introduction to the controller in 2005-ish to release in 2006 saw a huge design shift. And of course all this needs to be reflected in the SDK and tested for god knows how long.
I have only played with a Wii dev system a short while whilst at university, never got to see the GC one so I don't know how they compared.

And I'm not counting the Cell in with the PS3 dev costs since as I linked to before - it's not just for the PS3. The first Cell computer wasn't even a PS3. Would you count in Nintendo's disc encryption, or mini-DVD tech? Since Matsusha (or whoever) and Panasonic co-developed it with Nintendo?

You still offer no valid argument to the statement that you made about the Wii arguably costing more in terms of R&D compared to the PS3 and 360. Whereas I’ve given IMHO a sound argument to say that the Wii would have cost much less in R&D. And given that the PS3 and 360 were wholly new systems built from scratch, whereas the Wii is built upon the GameCubes design, common sense would lead one to believe that the Wii cost less to develop.

It’s a common held notion in the Gaming industry that the reason for Nintendo not entering the HD gaming market was due to costs, they didn’t want to spend the big sums of money involved in developing a new system when their last two (the N64 and GameCube) had underperformed in sales, so they just enhanced the Gamecubes hardware. Now Sony and Microsoft have bigger pockets, as they are much bigger companies, whereas Nintendo couldn’t really afford another failure, look at Sega to see what happened there. This of course can also help to lower costs for developers making the games.

So your statement

..they're just the usual 'insert new CPU, insert bigger HDD, insert new graphics chip' cycle of old consoles. Else all systems would just be the cost of a few silicon boards and a bit of plastic

seems quite naïve and silly, as I’d stated earlier the only current gen system to actually update the hardware was the Wii, whereas the other two were built from the ground up.

And trying to argue that a new control mechanic would push Nintendos costs up past their rivals seems a little off keel. Also I doubt (well know) that Nintendo isn’t the only console maker that uses some form of copy protection, and the drives that Nintendo use are again just a newer version of the Gamecubes drives.

P.S. all arguments aside, love your Butters style sig.

 

[PowerFullMac]

Also I doubt (well know) that Nintendo isn’t the only console maker that uses some form of copy protection

Indeed, I know for a fact that Microsoft use a LOT of copy protection methods in the XBOX 360, and they ban your console from XBOX Live if it's hacked, and they will find out eventually since your console will build up logs of what you've done to send to M$ next time you connect it to the net.

 

[Tokiopop]

Makes me feel glad I got mine on launch day. Shame the poor thing has been showered with some crappy games