[Kane Knight]

Originally Posted by Cyke Now, now, let's try looking at what we've seen from Nintendo over the years, compared to Sony and Microsoft in the video game industry: - Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, just like he did months ago, recently stated that console online play wasn't a wise business decision for the company. Nintendo doesn't want to lose money in the still-green online console market. On the other hand, Sony and Microsoft are supporting online play, even if they're still losing money for it. - The Nintendo 64 and GameCube charged third parties more money for manufacturing games for their systems than Sony and Microsoft did for theirs. Earlier this year it was reported, by GameSpot, that Nintendo decreased its third-party fees to attract developers, as it was a big reason why some of them didn't make games for the GCN. As we all know, proprietary formats like the N64 cartridges and GCN optical discs cost more money to make, and as a result third-party developers pay more money to make games for these formats than they would for CDs and DVDs. - Nintendo has just recently released a series of "NES Classics" for the GBA, each one priced at $19.99. One NES game for the GBA, 20 bucks. On the other hand, Capcom released Mega Man: Anniversary Collection for the PS2 and GCN, with 6 NES games, 1 SNES game, 1 PS/Saturn game and 2 arcade games, all for $29.99. This example is merely to show Nintendo's business practices. - While Sony's Greatest Hits and Microsoft's Platinum Hits games are guaranteed to cost no more than $19.99, Nintendo's Player Choice games are either $19.99 or $29.99. Saying that Nintendo might be more money-whoring than Microsoft and Sony in the video game industry wouldn't be a stretch of the imagination, and I'm not getting into other subjective points, such as the release of the GBA SP and its price only two years after the original GBA was released, the cost of playing The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures and Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles to their full potential, the marketing fiasco behind the 59 and 251-block memory cards, or more ancient practices, like their stronghold on retail stores during their NES days.

First off...

The problem is, combined against the two, your statements are pretty damning. However, the original contention was that they were more massively money whoring than the two combined. So you took ALL the negative aspects of Nintendo, and ignored all the negative aspects of the other two. Yes. If you only compare the worst aspects of Nintendo to the best of the other two, the contention is valid.

However...

Microsoft owns ISPs and charges a fee for X-Box online. Nintendo doesn't have that level of resource for online gaming. You have to be pretty naïve to think that Microsoft is taking the same kind of loss Nintendo would.

Sony didn't make Mega Man collection. Capcom did. That's a product of NONE of the three companies in question, and is totally irrelevant.

Sony's only offering to fix hardware they shipped out knowing it was defective to avoid a class action lawsuit. That's pretty money grubbing.

Sony has a lot more titles. Dropping their prices on Greatest hits games doesn't hurt them much. It hurts Nintendo more. PLatinum hits for the X-Box? They have a ton of money to throw at it.

Microsoft is known for a monopoly. When one has a monopoly, one tries to protect it. When one expands one's monopoly, one will throw a lot of money into undercutting the opposition, but only as long as it takes to run them out of business.

You bring up (how you won't get into) various costs for playing various games. Good reason. Final Fantasy XI is similarly costly. That's just to play it. None of this "full potential" bullshit.

How much does it cost to play a 16 man game of SOCOM II? That's 16 PS2s, 16 TVs, 16 ISP accounts, 16 USB headsets, 16 Network adapters, 16 games...

Yeah. Crystal Chronicles is gonna be soooo expensive commpared to that...