It's just like any new product. The first try is going to have problems and cost twice as much as the second try. But thank goodness there are enough early adopters that "must have" these items, otherwise the companies wouldn't be able to continue producing them until a point where it's reasonable to purchase.
Consoles are actually rather different than normal in this regard. The first try is still much more heavily tested than most products because typically there's no way to fix them after market. So the problems are very minimal. (I'm afraid how much this will change as 'on-line' consoles become common.)
And with consoles the initial price to the manufacturer is almost unimportant. As far as I know, just about every console ever sold has initially been sold at a loss to the manufacturer. The console manufacturers make their money in licensing and their own software sales. <i>Eventually</i> the consoles become cheap enough to produce that they make a small profit there as well, but certainly not initially.
The actual price drop that comes several months after a console has been on the market is not because the consoles have become affordable to produce, but because the growth rate of the console's uptake has begun to taper off. The manufacturer needs to entice more customers to pick up their hardware or else they'll be losing growth on the profits from licensing and software. When the hype dies, the discounts begin. It has very little to do with production cost.
Specifically with consoles, games can be an issue, but you figure that by the time you buy a game (or two) and play it until you either
A) beat it
B) get bored
There will be lots of others out.
There's a reason why I have a Game Cube but don't have an XBox or a PS2 yet. The games. I like Zelda. I like Metroid. And goddess save me, I like Mario. (I used to like Final Fantasy until it went all Final Sci-Fi instead of Fantasy, and then worse, went all on-line. I'm very heavily a single-player gamer. All of these online games just make me want to <i>not</i> buy the system.)
While occasionally I am tempted with the PS2's game selection, at this point I'm more hoping that the PS3 will be backward compatible as well. (At least to the PS2, but hopefully the PS1 as well so that I can pack it up and have one less console sitting around.) So then when I could afford the PS3, I'd also have a plethora of cheap PS2 games that I could pick up. If the PS3 isn't backward compatible, I may never buy it.
And the XBox game selection never impressed on me as being worth the expense of the console.
To me it's all about the titles. Will there be any that I look forward to? Will there be enough that I'm interested in to warrant the expense of the console? Almost all of my friends buy consoles with the same mentality. They buy based on the titles that they want, and if they don't have a sickening amount of disposable income, then they only buy the console(s) with the most titles that they know they'll enjoy. Almost no one that I talk to buys a console and hopes for some unknown interesting title to eventually come out.
Of course, YMMV.
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یί∫υєг ρђœŋίχ
<i>The devil is in the details.</i></font color=red>
@ 192K -> 200,000 miles or bust!
but heres the thread on anand's forum(no I dont have any reged acount there ;-) )
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