Xbox One: The nightmare begins

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I think I'll wait till later next year to pick up a PS4, because of the issues they need to work out. (Plus many of the games I want are not coming out till later on anyways.)

Mind you, this was back in the 360 vs. PS3 days, but last I heard, MS and Sony were losing money on every console sale, and making up for it by selling games. Nintendo were the only ones making money off of consoles.

But things may have changed since then...

You're quite right.
Presently, neither console is being sold for profit.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/171697-xbox-one-costs-more-to-make-than-the-ps4-thanks-to-esram-and-kinect

Regarding Jagen's maths :

The Xbone has a 1 year warranty, but if people are super concerned about system failure they could always get the 3 year warranty service.
I dersay the PS4 has a similar warranty arrangement.

Of course, if a system truly is bust then you can still get a bit of money for it by selling it for 'spares and repairs'.
I just got £12 on Ebay for a sh***y old 4th generation iPod from about 10 years ago which hasn't worked for years, for example.

And of course, by the time the system conks out (beyond a year, if we're only considering out of warranty failures) then you'd be a damn fool to be paying the present as-new prices for a second new system. Even if you're going to insist on buying everything new, the prices of new equipment would have dropped considerably by then. Of course, it's not compulsory to buy everything new in the first place.

Just saying...

Well, my ps4 is on "hug demand" from Wal-mart. The issue doesn't concern me much. I mean, if I end up with the DOA unit, sure I'm gonna be a little upset, but I can't lose my head. It's got a 1-year warranty and it might be wise to add another warranty on top of that, but one year should do it. I can only hope that I don't end up with one was like my used fat ps3. Lasted perhaps 6 years before it gave me the RLoD. By that time a used Super Slim was $200, so I can't complain too much. I kind of knew there was a chance and I had it a good long time. I think people make too much of a deal over this. By not buying right away, you're mostly just saving yourself a headache and waiting for the game library to grow, and even maybe the price to go down. I don't see any real money loss if Sony or M$ honor warranty. I only buy when I have the money and I just happened to sell some stuff that I no longer use. (A handheld system with games, an iPhone, etc.)

I wanted to comment on the Xbox One damaging disks in the drive and see if that's what it's doing, because then you would need M$ to replace the game including replacing the console itself. But I'm kind of thinking that what I'm hearing is some gears in the drive grinding. It doesn't sound like a disk scratching thing.

I don't personally believe that, if it were true, MS and Sony would only be breaking about even on consoles, and since that's not profitable, they would have little to no money for newer development of tech, which means they'd go out of business very quickly by doing so.

@Ladywoofwoof:

There's nowhere on that page that mentions the 360, so whether MS spent more money making the 360 or not is still a matter of debate. Also, if you'll look closely at my construct, you'll see where I said it was based on the 360, and while the 360 had a warranty, you couldn't simply send it in at no cost and they would fix it. What they did was, you had to pay them $100 and they'd send you a box to ship the system in, after they received it, they'd send a different used system back, even for the ones that didn't work straight away. Most of the time those would also break down, some didn't even work. So, yeah, unless you wanted to go through the same crap a few more times, potentially wasting hundreds of dollars doing so, buying one new and hoping you were in the 2/3 that did work was the best shot for consumers at the time, and based on the disk drive failure of the xbone, it'll likely be the same story with that too.

Nintendo is making money from their systems right now, because A) they're not trying to incorporate a bunch of crap in their systems that isn't needed for quality gaming (*cough* xbone), and B) They know what they're doing and know they have a huge customer base that will buy their merchandise at a decent price. In fact, if Nintendo had a game base similar to Sony and MS, they'd be the top ranked console choice by miles because there's no bullsh*t from them, you get a good system for like half the price of PS or xbox and the likelihood of it breaking down is so small, it's not even worth mentioning. They're making a profit because they don't do the crap that Sony and MS do, something that other gaming companies should learn from, quite honestly. When you buy a product from nintendo, you know what you're getting, the same can't be said for sony and MS.

Believe what you like.
The truth remains evident for those who bother to research the matter, instead of just coming out with bogus rationale which isn't based in reality.

Actually, the Wii-U is being sold at a loss as well. (*cough)
It took them some time before the 3DS was finally being sold for any profit, as well.
Considering the woefully poor sales of Wii-U compared to their projected estimate (even after a price slash), I would actually say that Nintendo aren't doing so well at anticipating consumer demand. It doesn't help that their consoles lag so far behind their competitors in terms of processing power, graphic quality, memory and suchike.

It's hardly like Nintendo consoles never break.
My 3DS XL conked out about a month after I got it.
There was an internal fault where it wouldn't use the stored electricity charge properly and kept switching off every few minutes.
But, Nintendo did repair it for free as it was (of course) within warranty and now it works OK again.

Out of warranty repair from Microsoft for an Xbox 360 would cost either $79 or $99 / £64 (depending on the model) plus tax.
In-warranty repair has no charge.
They just have people submit the repair request online (or over the phone for an extra fee), then let them print out a prepaid label to stick on the box.

It's the same arrangement which Nintendo has, basically.
Where do you even get your information from ?

If you're going to complain, then you should at least have your facts right before starting up.

Yeah, I figured they would be after the price slash. It's unfortunate, but handheld sales have been keeping them floating for a long time.

It's looking like Super Mario 3D Land, and more aggressive marketing (including a TV commercial where a girl explains that the Wii U is a brand new console and not a Wii controller) are helping sales quite a bit.

...but we've gone a little off-topic, haven't we? =D

Indeed.

Does anybody else have further entertaini...uhh.... interesting information about how the Xbone and PS4 keep on conking out ?
What's this about them making trenches in game discs ?

Yep, this. The Wii-U hasnt been doing very well, and Nintendo has had alot of trouble with it lately.

They seemed to have an utter and total lack of anything resembling an understanding of the real reason why the original Wii sold like crazy. Nintendo has ALWAYS been obsessed with stupid gimmicks, ever since the NES days, and that trend not only went all the way through to the Wii, it outright CARRIED that thing to it's great sales. But it wasnt just the fact that it was a gimmick, it was the fact that it was an ultra-easy gimmick to understand. Wii Sports, as well as the Balance Board, sealed the deal. A great many consumers bought the console, but never had anything else beyond those particular games. Nintendo never seemed to quite catch onto this fact. All they seemed to notice was "gimmick = money printer!!11". So they came up with another loopy gimmick, but this one was different. The thing is bizarre, consumers are intimidated by it's apparent complexity, they dont like the very high price of adding additional controllers (the touchpad thing being pretty darned expensive), and finally, the game lineup hasnt been very good according to many, and lacked the ultra-simple Wii Sports.

Needless to say, the thing hasnt been doing even REMOTELY as well as the original Wii. The original didnt even need a good game lineup to sell. But this does, and needs it badly.


To be fair though, the dolts at Sony and Microsoft both did the same thing, the "gimmick = money printer" bit, after watching Nintendo. They didnt base entire consoles around it, though. Though Microsoft of course did jam the Kinect into the Xbone, of course, but at least it's not the core of the console.