NationStates Jolt Archive

Why don't they make basically a PS3 or Xbox360, give it a new Windows OS(for ease of use and compatability), a decent harddrive, and market it as a PC. Basically I'm thinking, why not make a really powerful gaming rig(with a standard SDK, like a console) that can also surf the web and stuff? How much more money would it really cost? If PS3 is going to be $250-350(I think?), how much more would it cost to give it a really basic PC function?

If someone made a powerful gaming rig PC for $500, they would completely dominate the market!

Looking forward in the future, our electronic devices will start to merge more and more like this.... A certain task, such as a home entertainment system, will only require a certain amount of work after it hits a plateau of uses. As electronics become more powerful, individual computers will be able to do more work. If you have something so powerful that the job you assign to it is a waste of all its extra capacity, why not give it more work to do? In this case, you take a very powerful game system, and give it just that little bit extra to let it do normal computer stuff, and you get a single item that is very marketable.

So my question is, why isn't this being done yet?

yes, you can buy a PS2/XBOX 360 for less than $300, but it actually costs sony/microsoft about $2000 to make, they make they're profits from the games.


So if a company started selling PCs dirt cheap they would go bankrupt pretty soon

Don't game consoles surf the net already? I heard that feature was coming soon and I heard it a long time ago.

yes, you can buy a PS2/XBOX 360 for less than $300, but it actually costs sony/microsoft about $2000 to make, they make they're profits from the games.

That means the average console owner would have to own over $2000 in games for the company to start to make a profit. That sounds like a lot. How many dollars worth of new games (not second hand) do you have? I have $0 worth.

If a console costs $2000 dollars to make and I can buy them for $300, I wonder if I can crack 'em open and sell the parts for a profit?

How many dollars worth of new games (not second hand) do you have? I have $0 worth.


I bought all my games at full price, so I would have about $2000 dollars worth, please remember that some people would buy hundreds of games rather than the 20-odd I have.


If a console costs $2000 dollars to make and I can buy them for $300, I wonder if I can crack 'em open and sell the parts for a profit?

No, the hardware has been modified specifically for use with the other items in a console, so the graphics card would only work in that console

No, the hardware has been modified specifically for use with the other items in a console, so the graphics card would only work in that console

Actually people did that with X-Boxes for awhile, almost always for nothing more then the hard drive.

Actually people did that with X-Boxes for awhile, almost always for nothing more then the hard drive.
The security on x-boxes was hacked a while ago. It's just a PC inside and once hacked can run windows.
Microsoft don't want you to use your x-bax for anything but there games. They want you to pay for a PC, buy their software to run it and play their games on it then they want you to buy their games rig and play their games on it.
By using the same technology they save money. By securing it they make you buy more of there kit.
Win - win
No one will make a games rig that does the work of a PC. That's a PC. They want their own corner of the market.

But you can get PS2 and gameboy emulators for your PC if it's powerful enough to run them.

Ps2 and gameboy emulators? You seem to be forgetting all the emulators for NES, SNES, PS1, N64, Genisis, Xbox, Gamecube, GBA, all the Atari systems, Commodore 64... etc.

If an X-box is basically a PC inside then it shouldn't cost $2,000 to make them. Obviously it's good at graphics but it doesn't seem to do anything gamewise that my mother's old desktop can't do.

If an X-box is basically a PC inside then it shouldn't cost $2,000 to make them. Obviously it's good at graphics but it doesn't seem to do anything gamewise that my mother's old desktop can't do.
'praps the added costs are in securing it against people who want to get a cheap PC :p

Yeah, I forgot the other emulators (too lazy to make a full list) but the point is well made. A top end PC will always be able to emulate a games machine.
PS2 and x-box for instance are well out of date. X-box 360? I haven't seen the spec. but i'll bet it uses off the shelf componants. i.e. you could make one.
A least they build play stations from scratch.

Umm... I'm pretty sure that Xbox's don't cost Microsoft 2000 dollars to make. The initial cost of research and prototyping and testing the system probably cost them millions or even billions of dollars. Let's just say it cost them 20 million, just for giggles. Now, after all of that is done, when they start mass producing, they want to sell their items to be making at least a 60% profit (that's just standard marketing), but knowing Micro, they probably try to make somewhere between 70-80% profit. So, if they sell their consols at 300 dollars, it probably doesn't cost them more than 150 dollars to make a consol. So, let's model the equation:
20,000,000 = 150 x N
N is the amount of units sold. 150 is the amount of profit they make on each unit (because 300 - 150 = 150). 20 million is the initial amount invested. So, our friends at Microsoft would need to sell 133,333 consoles to make a profit with the numbers I just used, although I think that they will be making a lot more profit off of each system.
And yes, they do make a hell of a lot of money from games... Think, initial price of making a game: 20 mill... Maybe. Price of copying game to one disc: 20 cents... Maybe. Price you pay for game: 60 bucks. Number of copies sold: 5 million. They just made a shit load of profit.

Maybe Microsoft is making a huge profit on X-Box plus games, but if that's so then competitors should move in to snarf up some of that profit. Now on which competing games platform is it possible to get cheap games that undercut the profits of the big console makers? Could it be actual PCs?