Reggie is always lying! It's probably profitable after 1 first party title, more than 1 second party.

I see. You could always take the middle ground and say that he "mistakenly" stated, etc :)

wishful thinking.

Two things are possible: 

1) Controllers are usually sold at high profits. IIRC the 360 cost like $20-$30 to make, but it's sold at $60. So there's a possibility the Wii U is using a similar strategy.

2) The GamePad does cost aprox. $100 to manufacture and Nintendo is selling it at the same price (or losing money on it).

As a side note, the console would have cost more than $250/$200, since in the final price of the console it always includes packing, shipment and those stuff. 

My understanding was that the retailers paid for the games first anyway, which is why i never quite understood why publishers cared about sold vs shipped from a short-term financial standpoint. Longterm, i know it's important, as more sold means the retailers will buy more present and future games for their stock, but short-term per-unit Wii U profitability should depend on what retailers have bought, no?

My thoughts are that they're probably making a tiny per-unit profit if we factor software sales in.

Oh, sorry I missed that. Italics is practically invisible to me and it looks like a title or citation. That takes me back to a place I don't want to go.

well if point 2 is the case which i believe is, that means that sony/ms can release a console that provides a significant leap in terms of power at a 400$ price point

ok i know this is off topic but could someone explain to me how software makes money for nintendo? i know how first party software makes money, but how do 3rd party games money for nintendo (or any console manufacturer) do they like take a percentage of every piece of software sold?

Makes sense. That other statement would've been too good to be true.

Yes, essentially they get their own cut for a sale on their hardware. Not as much as from 1st party published stuff of course.