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Elon Musk Explains Why He Won't Make Video Game Console to Compete With PlayStation and Xbox

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

Musk was participating in a recent episode of the Full Send Podcast when he was asked whether he'd be interested in creating a video game console. Musk is clearly a fan of video games, has an incredible amount of wealth, and has strong enough opinions to know how to differentiate his own console next to a PlayStation or Xbox. However, Musk says he is not interested in doing such a thing. He responds rather explicitly to the question with a direct, "no."

Elaborating, Musk says that he's "not sure" if there's any value to be created by adding another video game console to the current marketplace. Further, he explains that video game consoles are "basically PCs," perhaps implying that he sees consoles as increasingly indistinct next to PC gaming. This is unsurprising, as Musk has previously talked about not playing games on console. The one console franchise he says that he plays is Halo.

 
Ok. We were all wondering.

So maybe Donald Trump?
You're going to love our new console. It's an amazing console, really incredible. We've got wonderful people working on it, the best people. It's a thing of beauty our new console with the biggest games coming to it, the best games. Incredible games, you're going to see the most breathtaking games on our console. I think you're going to like it.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
Those three guys were retarded and just scored an Elon interview over meeting him at a Mayweather fight while knowing way too little to be interviewing him all throughout. One of the few of his interviews it pained me too much to watch.

Guy thought the N64 was what he meant by the primitive age of video games...That's into the 3D era.
 
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N1tr0sOx1d3

Given another chance
Elon Musk isn’t…..
ReUC46Q.jpg
 

azertydu91

Hard to Kill
You're going to love our new console. It's an amazing console, really incredible. We've got wonderful people working on it, the best people. It's a thing of beauty our new console with the biggest games coming to it, the best games. Incredible games, you're going to see the most breathtaking games on our console. I think you're going to like it.
Wouldn't that be aaron greenberg then?
 

Fredrik

Member
You're going to love our new console. It's an amazing console, really incredible. We've got wonderful people working on it, the best people. It's a thing of beauty our new console with the biggest games coming to it, the best games. Incredible games, you're going to see the most breathtaking games on our console. I think you're going to like it.
Haha I totally heard Trump’s voice while reading that 😂
 

Fredrik

Member
Thank god, they would probably spontaneously explode and kill/hurt people, just like his cars do.
I hadn’t payed attention to this, did some googling and
Still a small number ww but that spontaneously catching fire thing is scary. Going forward I’ll make sure to not park my trusty Skoda beside a fancy Tesla for other reasons than that it makes my car look old 😶
 

Kazza

Member
You're going to love our new console. It's an amazing console, really incredible. We've got wonderful people working on it, the best people. It's a thing of beauty our new console with the biggest games coming to it, the best games. Incredible games, you're going to see the most breathtaking games on our console. I think you're going to like it.

Come on Trump, Make Sega Great Again!


DLFDn6sXcAA0wk1.jpg:large



 
Tesla is actually performing poorly.
Tesla is untouchable atm. They might even take it from him like they threatened last time, but US government won't allow it to go down.

And it's performing poorly because economy is unstable.
Elon is in trouble with the Twitter deal big time, with all the ways he needs to stretch himself to buy it if he’s forced to do so.
He won't (be forced) to do a bad deal.

At most he'll have to pay/loose the deposit equivalent and they'll haggle about how much is that amount.

Also, if twitter value rises, which I doubt but might happen, the argument of "damages" falls through. It's lose-lose for Twitter to prolong this, tbh.
 

Skifi28

Member
Why make a console when you can just buy all 3? The Twitter deal went well, he'll buy Facebook next in 3-6 months and then console gaming is going to change forever.

OuwHAio.jpg
 

Pelta88

Member
I really don't care about Elon's Views outside of Tesla and the Electronic Vehicles market. We need to stop elevating CEOs to the point where we hang onto their every word.
 

Sp3eD

0G M3mbeR
You're going to love our new console. It's an amazing console, really incredible. We've got wonderful people working on it, the best people. It's a thing of beauty our new console with the biggest games coming to it, the best games. Incredible games, you're going to see the most breathtaking games on our console. I think you're going to like it.
Sounds like an early Tommy Tallarico Amico quote right there.
 

phil_t98

#SonyToo
the guy is like a Bond villain that people seem to like. he purposely devalued the stock of Twitter just for laughs
 

Kenpachii

Member

Musk was participating in a recent episode of the Full Send Podcast when he was asked whether he'd be interested in creating a video game console. Musk is clearly a fan of video games, has an incredible amount of wealth, and has strong enough opinions to know how to differentiate his own console next to a PlayStation or Xbox. However, Musk says he is not interested in doing such a thing. He responds rather explicitly to the question with a direct, "no."

Elaborating, Musk says that he's "not sure" if there's any value to be created by adding another video game console to the current marketplace. Further, he explains that video game consoles are "basically PCs," perhaps implying that he sees consoles as increasingly indistinct next to PC gaming. This is unsurprising, as Musk has previously talked about not playing games on console. The one console franchise he says that he plays is Halo.



I like how he laughs about 100m rocket blows up lamo. This guy has endless money.
 
You're going to love our new console. It's an amazing console, really incredible. We've got wonderful people working on it, the best people. It's a thing of beauty our new console with the biggest games coming to it, the best games. Incredible games, you're going to see the most breathtaking games on our console. I think you're going to like it.
2560px-OUYA-Console-set-h.jpg
 

hemo memo

Gold Member
It is fierce competition. No wonder no one entered the home video game console space in a long time. Not because they don’t want a slice of the pie but because they can’t compete.
 

peronmls

Member
We get it. With money you can do anything without talent. Besides cure world hunger. You are not allowed to do that.
 

TheInfamousKira

Reseterror Resettler
We get it. With money you can do anything without talent. Besides cure world hunger. You are not allowed to do that.

I mean, agreed, but by the same token, curing world hunger is more of a task than people seem to give it credit for. It's not an issue you just throw X amount of dollars at and BOOM, Crisis solved. I think more financial support should go into improving sustainability. I mean, feeding all of the malnourished people on the planet would be a pretty penny, but unless the issues that got them there in the first place were resolved, it would just continue being a hydra.
 

AndrewRyan

Member
I really don't care about Elon's Views outside of Tesla and the Electronic Vehicles market. We need to stop elevating CEOs to the point where we hang onto their every word.
You might consider adding AI, material science, rocketry, energy markets, satellite communication, payment systems, and underground tunneling to your list of topics to care about from this particular CEO.
 
The real reasons is that making a real legit competitor from Scratch would cost at minimum $10 billion in investment and that's only for a ahndful of countries, modest marketing, and the rest R&D, production, distribution, and partnerships for the parts of the console as well as companies that can help put the machines in retailers and ship them around.

To be international like Microsoft and Sony, you'd need between $15-$20 billion. which may be better invested somewhere else.

Keep in mind this is before you actually launch the consoles, and doesn't include software development outside a couple games, so you will need more money to expand studios or buy studios, and more money for third-party exclusives.

You also need a few billion on hand incase it takes some time before your product catches on, if it does. If you have slow burning software and hardware sales for a year, while you're making games or working with 3ps to boost your software portfolio, and maintaining all the features of the console including updates and online, you could lose 4-6-8 billion in that period.

If you spend two years giving it your all, and you only just start to catch on and know you won't make money that gen and have to rely on the next console to be profitable, you could be in the whole 8-12 billion.

If PS3 only needed 3 years to lose $5 billion ONLY on the hardware and not including anything else which may have bumped that up to as high as near double the damage, than in 2022 there's a much greater risk of losses. Even if you end up the winner and go all out it could still be a $20-30 billion loss. For what? bragging rights? Sure, now that you're established the next hardware may be more profitable but that's still a loss that's hard to accept.

Then you have to pay your employees and developers, deal with contracts, Xbox was the last entrance in the traditional console industry, they with just a small issue with Nvidia, combined with their at the time beginners software investment lost $4 billion in cash. Sega when they discontinued the Dreamcast lost about estimated $1-2 billion.

The only reason you'd want to enter this industry is because you have a great idea that you believe will be attractive to a massive amount of buyers, or you want to try and strike one of the other guys out. This hasn't been a party someone can drop in at since 1992, when the 3DO was being designed and needed to partner with a manufacture for the console to even exist and ship to stores, which was also done with Apple and Bandai, and also done with others.

That's why when people talk about a new competitor I say keep dreaming. It'll be some weird hardware connected to a streaming service, a games on demand service, or another Android consoles.

Remember that kickstarter Android consoles that was supposed to wreck Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony because you could play the more higher end android games on a TV with a touch-screen style controller? Even shipped to retailers like Target, and I bet most people don't remember what it is, as I type this I've even forgotten the name of it at the top of my head.

Those are your only competitors.
 

Mr1999

Member
I think he's correct when he says there's no need for new hardware as far as consoles go, we have the hardware we just dont have anything new or exciting in the gaming world, for me at least. I guess i'm spoiled, I just play World of Warcraft now and neXt RC Simulator. The last games I had installed were Warhammer III, Jurassic World Evolution 2 and Elden Ring, what I still have installed are BeamNG, Besiege and MSF2020 with a little bit of Vampire Survivors.

My dreams are World of Warcraft with a more advanced graphics engine, and more voice acting or some very deep scifi mmo (sorry eve). Also Halo was always boring for me, just hated that generic dime a dozen scifi look.
 
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