Consoles don't actually make money (unless you're Nintendo).
The games make money. The online service subscription makes money. Samsung probably can make good hardware, but I don't see them getting into the software / online platform business.
Switch is nothing as a console though. It's Nintendo and Nintendo software that makes it sell like Hot cakes. So anyone can do a Switch (and I would say the Razr ones that attach to phones are pretty good already) but Nintendo Games are what sell the Switch too.
Well, the Switch is also the only real choice for portable console that gets full-fledged games.
A smartphone hardly competes with it with its spammy mobile game stores, lack of dedicated controller, and lack of single hardware target that has developers actually making games for it.
Smartphone + controller is so uncompelling that I've literally never seen someone playing that way in the flesh, and I bought a Switch with zero interest in Nintendo games. And since developers can't assume you have a controller, mobile games are stuck in this very superficial built-for-touch limbo that limits what they can be.
You're missing a lot if you think a Pixel + Razr controller competes with Switch even after removing all Nintendo games. That's to suggest that mobile tap-interface gaming competes with Switch/PS/Xbox games.
Just consider the difference between Skyrim on Switch and Blades on iOS/Android. That's the chasm I'm talking about.
I don't think they meant that Switch was a technical marvel, but probably that the cost is fairly high for the hardware you get, so they probably make money on the console itself.
That they can charge what they do hinges on the quality of their games, as you say.
can anyone do iphone? what kind of logic is this? Samsung is good at what they do and Nintendo is very good at what they do. Sega failed with their console and they are in the gaming industry for a long time. Sony almost fail with their cell cpu console.
Samsung at its peak, circa 2013, made $9.6B operating profit on $55B revenue. Samsung's gross sales revenue, profit (and margin) in mobile has been steadily declining since.
The Mobile division's 2Q 2012 profit was less than 10% ($1.95B OP on $20B revenue). Then Trump's sanction of Huawei happened, after which Samsung's sales grew by 50% QoQ (3Q), but we don't expect Samsung's luck to last forever and their margin would start declining to a mid-single digit again.
Yeah, Samsung doesn't restrict itself to lucrative industries. So many of its ventures are in markets where marginal cost ≈ marginal revenue, and they're big enough and competent enough to get rich doing so.
The smartphone business is maybe not the best example though, since the brand reputation that having the second biggest name in smartphones confers surely pays dividends across their consumer product lines.
While app store is more or less required for a phone to sell, those devices still do that quite nice margins. There’s no third party game store you coukd use on a console (apart from steam big picture).
The games make money. The online service subscription makes money. Samsung probably can make good hardware, but I don't see them getting into the software / online platform business.