[friendlybus]

Content sells the tech. The tech makes the most money though.

Microsoft is 1 tril bigger in market cap than Disney. Strange to use a Bill gates quote and then discuss Disney films.

Nintendo as a company makes more money on selling consoles, than on Zelda.

The article touches on this and could expand on it. No new tech launch is going to work without content, so in that sense it is king, but the money is in the tech.

[_2d30]

> Nintendo as a company makes more money on selling consoles, than on Zelda.

In revenue or profit? It’s kind of definitional that there’s more revenue from the console than the game given that for any console you need to purchase on average ~1 game at most and a game is worth far less than a console. However, it’s my understanding consoles are generally loss leaders, priced at or below cost in anticipation of profit driven by sales of content.

[friendlybus]

68mil Nintendo Switches sold.

19mil Breath of the Wild (Zelda)

21mil Smash bros

28mil Animal Crossing

The gamecube and the wii were reasonably cheap hardware with a markup. I haven't researched the switch, it looks no different to me.

*updated to sep2020 figs

[onebot]

What are the margins. I can almost certainly say that the margins on the games are far greater than the hardware.

[friendlybus]

In 2017 Nintendo sold roughly $257 of Switch hardware for $300. 40 dollar profit. They might have increased the margin since then.

A $60 game is sold to a retailer for $38-45. The publisher takes 20 of that (nintendo in this case) and the advertising & developer take the remaining 20. So nintendo probably takes 40 dollars profit from first party games like Zelda.

Margins on consoles used to be lower, $10-20 and they'd make $40 on the controller sales. The joycons on the switch cost 45 to make and sold for 50. The margin is back into the console as a whole again.

Digital sales on ingame items are likely close to pure profit.

[puranjay]

It's a little strange relationship. Tech without content can't survive. Whereas good content can spread far and wide without tech.

[arthurcolle]

It can't though. Books, printing presses, etc. are all forms of technology. Good content can't as easily propagate and proliferate without the infrastructure created by the tooling that supports the activity. You might be inclined to state that this belabors the point of being specific about modern Web technologies, but still - the medium is the message. They are still linked even if the underlying technologies change.

[puranjay]

Good content can't propagate as fast without technology, but it can spread far and wide.

The "tech" used in spreading the Iliad and the Ramayana was the spoken word. And yet they spread across countries and cultures.

[dredmorbius]

The Iliad and Ramayana were using the most cutting-edge information technology of their time, and spreading with the backing of the extant political regimes.

They were not competing with TikTok, CATV, and Disney.

[coldtea]

Well, good tech can propagate even further and wider.

Nobody cared/cares (where nobody=very few) for the Iliad or Ramayama on the other sides of the world that created them.

But technologies created on each side quickly reached the other side or spread all over the globe. This includes primitive technologies which we tend to forget they are technologies like agriculture, the wheel, iron forging, etc.

[coldtea]

>It's a little strange relationship. Tech without content can't survive.

I'm pretty sure it can. Just not entertainment tech (game consoles, etc).

[puranjay]

"Content" has a pretty broad definition. In a social network, "content" is people (and what they post). In a search engine, it's documents (and what's in them). In an app store, it's apps.

If there was nothing worth reading online, no one would use Google. If no one was posting anything interesting on Facebook, it would have no users. If there were no apps worth using on the iOS store, iPhone wouldn't have nearly as big a market share.

You're looking at content in a very narrow definition. A database is content, as is a casual conversation with your friends.

[coldtea]

>"Content" has a pretty broad definition. In a social network, "content" is people (and what they post). In a search engine, it's documents (and what's in them). In an app store, it's apps.

If we stretch the definition beyond any meaning, or to mean "input" or "data" in general, then sure.

Usually by content we mean news, music, videos, movies, writing, comedy, commentary, etc. though.

Not apps, office documents, or people's social messages...

>You're looking at content in a very narrow definition.

Me and most people using the term. Perhaps you're looking at it in an extremely wide definition?

[lazyjones]

Is Zelda content or software?