Acer Considering 'Open' Game System

This is a crazy/stupid/insane idea, that wouldn’t work.

On the other hand - the eepc is a dumb/stupid idea. I had no doubt that it wouldn’t work - but it seems like they didn’t take my advice, built the sucker, and made a few quid.

So, why isn’t this idea entirely laughable:

  • when you look at games being written for PSN/xbl they’re typically already cross-platform, fairly simple games and there’s no obvious reason that they couldn’t/wouldn’t be ported to a new machine. There’s also a ton of DS/PSP games that I guess could be ported, if there was a market?

  • the Wii has roughly the same processing power as a coffee-maker, but it’s innovative/fun - and it seems that there is a vast market for ‘fun’ rather than ‘cutting edge, 92-bit graphics on a 1028 inch screen’.

  • if the system had low/no licensing fees for developers, then if acer shift a few boxes, people (at least with xbl/psn/psp/ds games) would at least look at the system?

  • with the current generation of consoles/PCs being so completely different in storage/display/accessories/processors/gpu design/memory, I’d imagine a lot of games are ‘generic enough’ to run on almost anything. Porting to ‘yet another system’ wouldn’t be as much work as it could have been - especially if it was well designed/documented? (obviously more work for AAA titles - but it’s unclear whether acer need/wants them?)

  • if acer can sell the boxes for a profit, there’s no obvious reason to not try this?

  • with PC gaming reportedly ‘dead’, I’d assume that NVIDIA/ATi would both be interested in any proposal like this.

  • there are ‘some’ people would buy such a console for the ‘open’ nature, the possibility that it would attract ‘mod groups’, and the strange fact that so many games today allow user-created content that this has a strange amount of merit. (if they could get a form of DRM that was acceptable to everyone involved - e.g. allow modding, but keep proper copy-controls in place).

I don’t think acer will do this, and I don’t think it would entirely work - but that’s not to say it wouldn’t make someone a few bucks.

Not by much it’s not. Not when you factor in shipping, marketing, the cost of controllers and shelf stocking fees and all that other stuff the iSupply guys don’t take into account.

It’s certainly not sold far enough “above cost” to satisfy Nintendo. They’re not making a good 30% or something. And neither are retailers - their margins are so thin on systems they’re not worth stocking except that they make way better margin selling the games.

If there were no royalty structure for the Wii, if it were an open system anyone could developer for and publish on for free, the MSRP would have to be around $350 or so. Wholesale price would need to be something like $40-50 higher, and retail markup about 25% higher than that. I’m not sure they’d be flying off the shelves at the same rate were that the case.

Anyway, the idea of an open console system probably wouldn’t be competitive in a lot of ways. You have to lose too much money up front in R&D and manufacturing and marketing.

I don’t know about retailers’ margins, but…

With this article listed as the source.

I can’t imagine them spending 40 dollars per person to get people to buy it. But yeah, I guess all the other related costs for retailers might eat into those margins by quite a bit. However, given how much of a multiplayer system the Wii is, they may make up for much of it just on accessories alone.

Edit: But granted, I’m not sure how the shitty dollar affects this. It probably cuts into Nintendo’s profits. But given all the hurdles for yet another new console, it’s unlikely a new console would be a success. IMO, the Wii rode the success of the DS as much as it was its own success.

You either need to get out more or a dictionary.

Reading the original post, the 3D0 was the very first thing I thought of as well. From my understanding, their business model was to make the hardware relatively open to both hardware and software developers and charge extremely low royalty rates ($3 per game).

Of course, that means a much higher initial cost for the system, $700 upon release, in order to pay for the hardware production, development, support and marketing.

These days, if a small developer of unique games is looking for a platform, wouldn’t the iPhone be much better place to look than this proposal?

But would you buy a console/gaming PC that was as powerful as the Wii and didn’t have the wiimote or Nintendo’s game library?

I was right:

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/51869

Clarifying comments made earlier this week, PC manufacturer Acer has stated that it will not be releasing a dedicated gaming console.

“Acer is not going to release any game console but the idea is to develop a high-end PC (so not a console) targeted at the serious gamer,” a company representative explained to videogaming247.

“That was a major misunderstanding as [Acer senior VP James T Wong] was wrongly interpreted,” the rep noted.