Why is this thing so cheap

[JDUK]

Why is somthing with all these cababilities so cheap?
Is it to break into the Hand held market, much like MS made a los on Xbox to move units & establish its self in the console market ?
Is it actualy resonably priced and a bright neon sign to how nintendo are overcharging for the relivley featurless GBA?
because @ ~£150 for the Backlit unit inc. Vat and Delivery on import is pretty damn impressive i bet a GBA-SP would cost close to that on import.

My moneys on the Nintedo are screwing us, then again... the Cube's reletivley cheap to so its probably a bit of both. Any sugestions or facts?#


Thank you.

 

[jlebrech]

The gameboy advance has a collection of (native or gb) game that exceeds 700, and also a good homebrew community altho its not acknowledged by nintendo. where as Gamepark has 20+ games with a homebrew community that is openly supported by gamepark.

Also note that gba is plug and play but gamepark you have to tinker about with it a little bit to get things working.

 

[JDUK]

Nintendo get paid by companies to get a licence to make Gameboy games shouldn't this mean Nintendo can offer their product cheaper?
Having to tinker never dropped the price of any thing, PC's cost a thousand and upwards an Xbox costs £140 with 4 games and PCs need WAY more tinkering. Just like a Ferrari u have to service and look after that but my VW golf just keeps on trucking and I treat it like crap.

Im talking about how can they afford to sell it so cheap when you consider the development costs as well as all the additional hardware inside like wireless link, much better CPU, more ram, MP3 & DivX decoder,usb controller, larger higher res screen, etc. And if they can afford and make a profit on each unit then why do Nintendo charge so much.

On the other hand maybe nintendo are being resonable and GP are just trying to make a name forthem selves by getting units into hands then getting word of mouth to do the rest?

 

[ldaneels]

I am not so sure thatalmost twice as expensive can be considered cheap. I can afford to buy several of these units, but I also don't have the same resources & priorities as most people. If you ask a family with kids, most parents will already dislike the idea of shelling $100 for a game system. Imagine $200... I used to manage a video game store, so I am quite familiar with these behaviors.
I am also quite sure Gamepark makes money on their systems as they are almost certainly not making it on the games or if they are, that is probably not much.
I think both companies are making money on their machines, although I would bet that Nintendo makes less money on their system than Gamepark does (the common pattern in console world is to sell systems at cost or loss & make money on accessories & licensing / games - Nintendo can most definitely afford to do that while Gamepark cannot).
As for companies screwing us, that is called business. Companies have to make money to continue existing. That is true for both Nintendo & Gamepark. Admittedly, some industries do screw us (the music industry being probably the best example of that). Heck, I will most definitely agree that video games are way too expensive (I remember a time when I only had to pay 2-10GPB for a game, some of them being quite good - although it could be argued that production costs have risen considerably, but is this really an improvement & a reason for higher prices ?).
I think it is good to support a system, but not to the point of being blind to the realities of the world.

Loic

 

[JDUK]

Twice as expensive ? not quite your comparing £90 official release with £150 including importing costs. And if u look at what some places charge on top of a systems RRP in country of origin for their importing costs then I doubt its the equivalent of £150 in Korea. And im no idiot I understand how capitalism works :rolleyes: but when u see one product that does: XYZ for a pretty similar price as a product that does: x then you have to start asking some questions.

 

[Bonks]

Well i dont know gameparks reasons for selling so cheap, but what i do know is had it been much more expensive, i wouldnt have taken the gamble i did on the unknown machine

personally i think GBA/SP is far too expensive considering the GC can now be bought for only £20 more or so.

Cash in? yup

 

[Goatboy]

I work in the games industry, so I know a little about this:

1 of the reasons that the Xbox and the GCube are relatively "cheap" is that they are allegedly discounted to make headway against their main rival, the PS2. Once you have the box in someones house, you can make the money on the games.

However, the reason games cost so much are the costs involved in producing: typically a PC game will have at least a 2 year dev schedule and will use upwards of 20 people to finish (code/art) to say nothing of other overheads and costs, producers etc. A budget of 2-3M pounds is average. 1 game in development I know of has a dev budget of 10M!!! Then you have the publisher mark-up, royalties, wholesale markup, sellers mark up etc. Goddam, before you know the games costs £40!

However, the GP32 comes from a land of cheap labour and proximity to the place where the parts are made, so costs are low there. Then they are also using off the shelf processors and stuff - the commercial consoles use a lot of proprietary chips and parts. Then the commercial companies offer devkits - a PS2 devkit costs us about 10k euros.

Finally, each and every game for Cube, Xbox and PS2 has to undergo submission and QA - that is why although some games STINK they rarely are of a low quality - Nintendo are fastidious about what gets released, for example.. It's another form of Brand management.

So, as anyone can bung out anything for the GP32 with no QA from Gamepark with an open source SDK, again costs are low.

Not so much a case of Rip off from the big 3, but they will charge what the market will stand.

Hope that all makes sense :rolleyes:

 

[ldaneels]

Well, then I am glad I am not living in Europe anymore.
The GBA SP costs $100 in the US & the GP32 FLU is ~$200.
I would assume that the resellers in the UK are taking more than required.
As for the GCN at 20GBP, it is rather clear that the retailers are trying to get rid of the system. I don't think that even represents a third of the production costs. Also, while it may seem tempting to compare prices between handheld & full fledged consoles, components do not cost the same price (check the price difference for desktop & laptop computers). I am fairly sure Nintendo isn't making that much money on their system (sure they are making money, just not a crazy profit as seems to be indicated).
That being said, I really don't care how much money they make. I am only interested in their lasting presence so I can enjoy the games I like

 

[dan miracle]

Im talking about how can they afford to sell it so cheap when you consider the development costs as well as all the additional hardware inside like wireless link, much better CPU, more ram, MP3 & DivX decoder,usb controller, larger higher res screen, etc. And if they can afford and make a profit on each unit then why do Nintendo charge so much.

the GP32 probably doesn't cost THAT much to make each unit....they're definitely making good profits from each unit sold

Nintendo spends billions of pounds of advertising each year. The machine is available worldwide and Nintendo KNOWS they can charge whatever they want and it will still sell alot - remember the SNES days? certain games reached £59.99

Even now GBA games are still in the £30 region each - there's no real reason why they should be so expensive, especially when compared to costs of PS games etc. Nintendo's goal is to make as much profit as possible therefore they don't need to encourage amateur coders/developers to develop for their system if they won't be making any profit from it.

Gamepark on the other hand are an alot smaller company. Their machine is only officially available in their own country and they clearly can't afford to spend half as much money on advertising, worldwide launch and most importantly, good commercial software for it

And because of that, they made it Open Source so that people like "us on this board" can learn the system inside out and push it to it's limits (and then some!) - and then the machine builds a great reputation like it has been doing recently and becomes and underground classic (and Gamepark still don't even have to advertise or anything)

The processor for the GP32 is pretty cheap (apparently) and the other componments won't cost much when bought in bulk either...Nintendo could've easily have built the GBA with all these capabilities but they "don't NEED to" - they could've released a Colour Gameboy years ago when the Lynx, Game Gear and PC Engine GT was out - but they didn't need to....they were able to survive on their brand reputation and a handful of classic titles alone, even though their technology was inferior (like GBA is to GP32).

Also Nintendo have always stated that GAMING is their priority - hence them making the Gamecube with a non-standard media format instead of DVDs....the Gamecube can't play audio CDs, DVDs, movies/mp3s like XBox/PS2 can etc....they were determined to keep the costs of their machine cheaper than the others. The GC it doesn't really offer any fancy features except PLAY GAMES - and GREAT Nintendo games at that. That's probably why they didn't bother include any mp3/movie player features on the GBA.....because they don't "need to"

Another thing, the GP32 uses a rewriteable storage medium - Nintendo has always done their best to create a machine wear it's software can't be pirated; hence them sticking to cartridge format for so long (and avoided using a CD drive in the 32bt/64bit era) and now even avoiding using DVDs too (as they can also lead to piracy).
There's no way Nintendo would allow a rewriteable storage medium as the choice format for GBA software - they wouldn't be able to spend millions of pounds and years of time developing classics if EVERYONE was able to easily download it for free (which is possible anyway, but like someone said earlier most people don't wanna fork out for a Flashkit Advance)....and without rewritable storage, there's no way the machine could offer capabilities of "watch your own movies and play your own music on your handheld"

blah blah blah

I've been typing for way too long now anyway, so i'll wrap it up here

When the PSP comes out that's when Nintendo may have to step things up a level and bring out a successor to the GBA with comparable power and features.....or maybe they won't have to - maybe they can survive on Mario, Zelda and Pokemon again for another 5 years

I don't know why things are the way they are...and not be honest i don't really mind either because i love the GP32 (and the scene itself) and I'm definitely not complaining that it's so cheap!

end of rant

 

[Axeman]

It's cheap...

It's cool...

It's better than a GBA...

Get one now

 

[Goatboy]

Hear Hear.

I agree. So cool, that most of my game creating friends at work are getting them. This means that several of my codey friends will be helpin me to get some quality games out there Watch this space

Ade