26th May 2005, 3:57 PM
You understand why don't you? I'm not saying it's any better for US, no, we're screwed.
But, you see, EVERY company that makes a DVD player, by international copyright law, is forced to pay royalties to the DVD... erm... High Council or whatever it is they call themselves these days. If Nintendo had the machine play DVDs normally without alterations, they would have to pay out that fee for every single system sold, meaning they would need to get that money from somewhere, and that somewhere would be us.
So, instead of making those pay who only wanted a game system, they did what Microsoft did. They put that cost into a seperate dongle that unlocks the feature. Those who want DVD playback can pay Nintendo's royalties, and those who don't, don't have to.
Fortunatly, CDs are fine. Every company can include CD playback if they had a drive that can read them, thanks to no royalties being involved.
Now, as a consumer, I don't care. I'm not their accountant and in the end what I see is Sony giving us DVD playback, and the other two NOT giving it to me except via a fee. But, in terms of business, it was really the only choice.
But, you see, EVERY company that makes a DVD player, by international copyright law, is forced to pay royalties to the DVD... erm... High Council or whatever it is they call themselves these days. If Nintendo had the machine play DVDs normally without alterations, they would have to pay out that fee for every single system sold, meaning they would need to get that money from somewhere, and that somewhere would be us.
So, instead of making those pay who only wanted a game system, they did what Microsoft did. They put that cost into a seperate dongle that unlocks the feature. Those who want DVD playback can pay Nintendo's royalties, and those who don't, don't have to.
Fortunatly, CDs are fine. Every company can include CD playback if they had a drive that can read them, thanks to no royalties being involved.
Now, as a consumer, I don't care. I'm not their accountant and in the end what I see is Sony giving us DVD playback, and the other two NOT giving it to me except via a fee. But, in terms of business, it was really the only choice.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)