Microsoft's Andre Vrignaud about Modchips

[greay]

key point is nintendo still has a business model. despite what they seem the bottom line is that nintendo is still a company and still wishes to make a profit, they're just taking a different approach from microsoft and sony.

Nintendo has to make a profit, yes, but at least they've got the cart before the horse.

Know what I mean? They aren't in business to make money, but they know they have to make money to stay in business.

um. wow. it must be nice to live in your world. every business is in business to make money.

You're very jaded. There are plenty of people who are in businesses in a field because that's what the people love doing, or because they believe they're doing good. And the money is just there because they can't very well survive doing X for free.

Yes, businesses exist to make money. Businesses also exist to provide a service or a product. There's a huge difference between:

1. wanting to make money, starting a business to make money, and determining what the business does based on how much money it'll make you.

2. wanting to (for example,) make games, starting a business to make games, and determining a business strategy in order to make the making of games profitable.

[jaredfogle]

The film Pirates of Silicon Valley dramatizes the Apple vs. Microsoft battle. What we're talking about is a pretty consistent theme throughout. Bill Gates is the money man, Steve Jobs is the inspired poet who has to deal with business to do what he loves.

Gates always seems a step behind in quality, but a step ahead in business.

Worth watching, IMHO.


Can I not post in any thread without derailing it. . .?

[Roofus]

The film Pirates of Silicon Valley dramatizes the Apple vs. Microsoft battle. What we're talking about is a pretty consistent theme throughout. Bill Gates is the money man, Steve Jobs is the inspired poet who has to deal with business to do what he loves.

Gates always seems a step behind in quality, but a step ahead in business.

Worth watching, IMHO.


Can I not post in any thread without derailing it. . .?

I think you got your Steves confused.

[Covar]

The film Pirates of Silicon Valley dramatizes the Apple vs. Microsoft battle. What we're talking about is a pretty consistent theme throughout. Bill Gates is the money man, Steve Jobs is the inspired poet who has to deal with business to do what he loves.

Gates always seems a step behind in quality, but a step ahead in business.

Worth watching, IMHO.


Can I not post in any thread without derailing it. . .?

I think you got your Steves confused.

i think you're right. jobs was the business man, wozniak was the engineer. wazniak has even said he would have shared his work and ideas if jobs hadn't convinced him that they could sell computers.

[evanft]

Let's take these on one at a time.

* First, the ability to pirate games. I mean, really - what can you say here? We already had a conversation about piracy earlier, and at the end of the day every game not legally purchased is simply stealing money from the creators. Some people attempt to justify piracy by pointing to the perceived high price of their hobby and/or games, but the argument just doesn't hold up. You don't steal a Ferrari that you'd love to drive simply because you can't afford it, right? Same thing.

This has already been covered, but I'll reiterate. People who are pirating current-gen games on a large scale weren't likely to buy games/hardware anyway, so there isn't really any money lost at all. Stupid argument that I've only seen put forth by forum dumbasses.

* The desire to play import games is at least a reason I can rationally understand, but cannot condone. Sure, there are games you might want to play that are either released earlier or, quite possibly, not released at all in your region. But sometimes companies have good reasons to either not release a title into a region or release it at different dates.

Yeah, so? I don't give a rat's ass whether or not they have a reason. I'm willing to pony up the cash to play a game available outside of my region. My money is going to the developer, so what's the problem?

It may be because of the time and cost of localization, marketing plans, ad buys, cultural considerations, or perhaps even because of the impact of piracy in the region.

And those are all reasons to ALLOW me to buy import games! They don't have to spend money on localization or anything like that while at the same time selling the game worldwide.

Whatever the case, it's safe to assume the publisher has thought about it. The good news is that most publishers are developing with multiple platforms, regions, and languages in mind up front, so this is becoming less and less of an argument. (After all, it's in the publisher's best interest to sell as many copies as possible, right?)

Good.

* Finally, let's talk about the desire to add new functionality to the console. Some folks want to enable new functionality on consoles beyond what was delivered by the manufacturer. Sometimes the desire is to add new hardware capability (say a larger hard drive); other times it's to add new functionality such as PVR support, web browsing, or to run homebrew applications of whatever sort might be imagined.

Yeah, people want to get more bang for their buck. SHOCKER!!!!

This is the one aspect of modding I've always struggled with the most myself, but at the end of the day I just can't condone it. Here's why.
The console business is a razor/razor blade model. Hardware (the console) is subsidized (meaning Microsoft sells it at below cost) to make it easier for consumers to get it into their homes.The business then makes this up by selling you additional hardware (peripherals), software (games), and services (Xbox Live). The success of this razor/razor blade model is tracked by analysts as the "attach rate," or how many of these add-ons an average person might have per console. (The most common metric you'll see tracked is the game attach rate to a console, but some analysts also track the attach rate of peripherals and Xbox Live.)
Over time you buy games (and other peripherals and services). The revenue generated from those purchases helps to make the business a profitable one (which is the reason you see a healthy game industry, and continual investment in new features, games, and hardware). Some folks point to the fact that they bought the hardware and believe they should be able to do anything they wish with it. Unfortunately, this argument ignores the fact that they're buying that hardware at below cost, and it's the razor/razor blade model that makes it even possible to buy at that price. The other solution would be to sell the hardware at a price that covers cost and also includes a profit margin so that selling the console alone (with no game/peripheral/service sales) could be a stand-alone business. Problem is A) this model already exists (it's called a PC), and B) selling a console at PC prices (especially with the capabilities the console has in it) would simply be too expensive and no one would buy it. At the end of the day, the cost difference needs to be made up somewhere, and that's why we need to you buy those razor blades.

And how exactly does modding my Xbox to run homebrew emulators and what not hurt MS' attach rate? If people buy an Xbox to play legal Xbox games (which is probably over 90% of the people who buy the system), and then mod the system later to play homebrew stuff, the attach rate isn't hurt at all. In fact, people that are on the fence about buying an Xbox for the game may hear about the homebrew stuff and decide to get the system for both reasons, thus earning MS some revenue in game sales. Then there are the people who buy the system purely to mod. This group is probably incredibly tiny compared to the market and will probably actually end up buying games eventually.

Again, this argument holds no water.

The interesting thing to me is that I think the idea of homebrew/user-created content is looked at with much interest at Microsoft (we are a software company after all), but the challenges caused by the impact to our business model make it very difficult to enable. Interesting tidbit: a friend of mine at Microsoft once demonstrated a modded PSP to Bill Gates and showed off all of the interesting things that enabled. According to my friend Bill was intrigued and asked the audience what we might be able to do to encourage this sort of thing without damaging the business. I love that our top executives think this way - the challenge, of course, is that modchips allow much more than just homebrew software, and so it's a tough problem to sort out.

If you offered the ability to legally use homebrew programs on the 360, the number of people who buy the system purely for this reason and never buy a game, peripheral, etc., is going to be made up for by the number of people who a.) buy for the system for the homebrew and then buy games b.) are pushed over the edge by the idea of games and homebrew c.) choose to buy earlier because of the homebrew and games.

[greay]

Let's take these on one at a time.

* First, the ability to pirate games. I mean, really - what can you say here? We already had a conversation about piracy earlier, and at the end of the day every game not legally purchased is simply stealing money from the creators. Some people attempt to justify piracy by pointing to the perceived high price of their hobby and/or games, but the argument just doesn't hold up. You don't steal a Ferrari that you'd love to drive simply because you can't afford it, right? Same thing.

This has already been covered, but I'll reiterate. People who are pirating current-gen games on a large scale weren't likely to buy games/hardware anyway, so there isn't really any money lost at all. Stupid argument that I've only seen put forth by forum dumbasses.

And that's just as stupid an argument. No money lost at all? Of course they're losing potential sales. Not as much as they'd have us believe, but of course piracy harms businesses.