Hmm, one of my first posts. Whee!
I like looking at the console wars from a global perspective. Anyone who says "Pepsi is better than Coke" (from a business standpoint) just proved themselves as an ignorant fool who only focuses on North America.
If you go to any country outside of North America, especially smaller ones like Belize, you can see that most people don't even know what Pepsi is. On the worldwide scale, the Coca Cola corp is making 10X the money Pepsi is.
Consoles are much the same in this regard... Just not to the same world-dominating extent. GLOBALLY, nintendo is doing quite well. GLOBALLY, sales of the GC are pretty close to the PS2 (well, closer than the North American results).
I don't have figures so I'll let you draw your own conclusions; I had to bring it up though.
As for this nice little argument about whether online play would work or not -
"Online play is not profitable." - Nintendo of Canada.
Well, there's the proof right there. Sure, X-Box has 500,000 subscribers - but how many of them have paid for a year's worth of services? I know for a fact that Microsoft has not released any actual
Sales figures on the Live system, and the "500,000" quote is from before the payment scheme had even been set up.
It is also a fact that Sony and Microsoft are losing money hand-over-fist on the online systems. Yes, it may boost sales - but if that made it profitable, they wouldn't be losing money, would they? It HELPS, but it isn't enough. Yes, it would be super-nice if Nintendo had a limitless supply of money and they could throw in an online feature, and yes I love playing online, but I'm not about to ask nintendo to set up an on-line system at their expense so I could half-play it. (what is online play without a keyboard?)
But.. if nintendo did make an online system for this console, and as a result made a loss over the next four years, it would make me even MORE sad to see Nintendo give up the race. As long as nintendo is making a profit, they'll make games. As long as nintendo makes a profit, they'll make new consoles. As long as nintendo makes a profit, they are proving that their business model works, and we'll see more of it in the future. If PS2 and XBOX were making money, then your online-defending claims do have a point.
As for the blizzard's free online system - well hell yeah! I can buy a broadband adapter and go out right now. But even the DEVELOPERS of GC games know it isn't profitable, because the DEVELOPERS aren't setting up any free online services. It would be really easy to include it in 3rd party titles, wouldn't it? just port over some net code. But they know it's a waste of time. they don't even bother.
So here we are, the developers don't make online games, the producer doesn't make online games, and at the end of the day, the USER doesn't even PLAY online games!
Us internet users are always skewed a bit in vision to see the drawbacks of an online system. Here's a quick fact. only 30% of internet users in north america have broadband. How many PC internet games say "requires broadband?"
I'm on the verge of pulling a mouse_clicker and saying "drop it."