Rol its sad to see you turn so illogically anti-Nintendo as of late. The negativity is truly shocking especially from someone who always claims to know exactly whats going on.

It does not show any red flag in fact it is a relief. The PlayStation 2 launched at a loss and made a shit load of profit sure not as much as GameCube did but it ended up being the most successful home console ever made. The Xbox 360 was also sold at a loss and has managed to make a shit load since it broke even.

I am pretty damn sure that Nintendo will sell WiiU at 300$ and it will be sold at a loss. I would estimate that loss after currency exchange will be between 50-100$. This loss is necessary to make the WiiU a capable competitor and still sell hardware.

I disagree with some statements that the WiiU won't be noticeably more powerful then 360/PS3. From what EA has said BattleField's PC version could be played on WiiU. (Can't find the source). Other rumors suggest WiiU will be a minimum of 50% more powerful then PS3 but rumours have suggested it could be multiple times the power. EA has stated that the FrostBite2 engine they used in the PC version of BattleField 3 is in line with PS4/Nex-Box, saying the engine is future proof. This strongly suggests that WiiU will be similar powered to PS4/Nex-Box.

I think Nintendo needs to ensure they future proof WiiU as well. That means more powerful hardware then what has currently been announced. We do know that if WiiU is only 50% more powerful then PS3 that it will definitely lag behind Nex-Box and PS4. So is Nintendo beefing it up last minute? EA has stated they don't know how powerful WiiU will turn out in the end. Reports have come in that the console is evolving with every dev kit so the graphical power and such is probably still being ironed out.

Also the controllers are expensive. Lets face it Nintendo needs to bundle them with the console at an affordable price.

Then lastly look at 3DS, it was a drastic improvement over DS. The 3D effects were amazing and Nintendo even launched what Rol has stated is one of Nintendo's major and most important franchises (Nintendogs) at launch. Yet the console despite having this "Major" title failed to generate many sales at all.

Fact is Nintendo needs to launch at a 300$ price point without compromising the quality of the hardware. If the console launches 400-500$ then Nintendo is screwed. The hardware won't sell at that price and I doubt Nintendo will turn a profit at anything less then 399$ if they don't cut quality corners.

In the end it is understandable that Nintendo take a small loss on each WiiU. I am betting Nintendo is working on cutting costs as we speak to make the loss minimal. I'd expect no higher then a 100$ loss which will put it in line with 360's launch and far lower then PS3's. Also at 300$ Nintendo will force the competition to also launch at a loss which in turn will help them remain competitive!

I see the launch at a loss of 100$ or less as a very good thing for the market. Nintendo has always turned a huge profit on software that compensates easily for up to a 100$ loss. Also remember that third parties will be watching the launch closely and Nintendo needs to impress them. If Nintendo fails to garner third party support we will have a GameCube all over again. Nintendo's first party capabilities just aren't good enough to support a platform entirely on their own!

If they just drop the tablet controller concept, they'd be fine. I'd rather them throw another couple gigs of memory and a solid GPU into the system than use a tablet controller, which I probably wouldn't. Give gamers an updated traditiona/gamecube concept controller again plus an updated Wii remote style controller. We have no use for tablets.

If they sell their console at a loss I could never buy it since I would be taking money from Nintendo, the company that I love. I still would tell everyone how great the Wii U was and for some reason buy both of the new Microsoft and Sony consoles instead. Rol would write an epic thread about it, and all would be right with the world.

amp316 are you kidding? don't worry about nintendo worry about your own family and self. JEsus Christ.

Seriously...i hope they do sell it at a loss...because there is NO WAY in hell people will buy this if it's $350-$400. The console has rthe same pwoer as a 360. I would be shocked if they sold it at a loss though, Nintendo will make up crap abotu how it costs $400 for we have to charge $350 etc..

This should be $250 at launch. Wii was $250 at launch despite having the same tech as Xbox1. This is similar. PS3 is $250 now, 360 is well under $200. Wii U has to launch at $250($300 with extra stuff) and it will do fine.

Anything hgiher and they can just piss off.

Could it be a sign that it will be expensive?

I completely agree, NightDragon.

While I have no solid info to cite, I would guess that buying the 3DS and a first-party Nintendo game likely puts them in the black again.  If they can achieve this method for Wii U at a $299 price point, they'll be just fine selling for a minimal loss for the first year or so.

You are missunderstanding what these comments mean. The frostbyte 2 engine may be capable of next gen graphics but it also has no problem running on the PS3 and 360 (well some problems but tht's beside the point). The Wii U is goibg to be arround twice as powerful as the 360 but that is really a tiny leap in the scheme of things. Keep in mind that uncomfirmed specs peg the Wii at arround twice as powerful as the gamecube but you would be hard pressed to find more than 5 games that look much better than gamecube titles. Then you add the strain of having the added strain of having to power two+ displays and you are unlikely to see much difference mostly just a smoothed out framerate ant more 720p/possibly even 1080p native games. Considering what devs like Epic have been saying (they almost certainly have early dev kitts) and other devs like Carmack etc the PS4 and next box are likely to be at least 8x more powerful, the Wii U barring the E3 hardware being under 1/4 the power of final hardware will not be future proof at all.

Also a $100 loss is huge and could leave Nintendo in a really bad place, lets say that it moves 10 million units in it's first year at a $100 loss that is a loss of $1 billion! And that is without the cost of the huge marketing blitz which will be another $100 million. That could well wipe their entire cash reserves (assuming they haven't already lost them off the back of the 3DS by then)  and unlike Sony or Microsoft they don't have huge profitable businesses to fall back on in the tough times. $50 is probably the most they can afford to lose in this economy.

This would be a first for Nintendo and in a context of a first year of losses it might have a bad effect on Nintendo.

I think that this at least points out that producing the console (with controller) will be a really expensive thing. We probably have a better idea now of how expensive it is.
I still think that Wii U will come out at 300$/€ with a profit but if Nintendo is scared of that price point it might want to go for the 250 price point that Wii had. And there it could make a bit of a loss but still remain appealing enough to recoup losses on software and mass production of parts, not to mention to grow itself a market much faster at that price instead of 300$/€.
I don´t imagine Nintendo setting Wii U for a 350 or higher price point. Nintendo always strived for a mass market aproach and higher than 300 would probably be to much.
My idea is that if Nintendo puts out anything less than a 300$/€ console, it will only lose a couple of tens of dollars.

Assuming this is accurate and Wii U games are priced at $60

They would need to sell 2.5 1st party games per console or 11 3rd party games just to break even on a $75 loss. That kind of attach rate won't be achieved for several years (it took the Wii a year including Wii Sports to get a 3.0 attach rate so really a 2.0 attach rate). And that is ignoring the cost of developing the games (1-20 million per first party game), advertising for both the console and the games (in the hundreds of millions a year) etc.

Nintendo can't really afford to be in the red for 3+ years, they are just not set up that way.

SDKs are not a good source of profit they sell in the low thousands of units, a few million $ isn't going to be a major factor...

There are many unknows to judge that statement.

Is the exchange rate that makes them be doubtful about it?
Does it mean that they still don't have the final specs from both the controller and the console so they don't know much will it cost them?

The only thing that I get from that news is that at least they have a clear idea of the price they want to launch it.