Nintendo revealed how much money it was losing on each Wii U console sold with the release Wednesday of its 2012 third quarter financial report.

A note about the Wii U in the financial statement for the third quarter ending Dec. 31, 2012 reads, "Owing to the fact that the “Wii U” hardware sales have a negative impact on Nintendo’s profits, the operating loss was 5.8 billion yen."

Through the magic of math, 5.8 billion yen converts to $63.6 million. Nintendo also reported that it sold 3.06 million Wii U consoles worldwide through the end of 2012. That means that the average loss per console sold comes out to be $20.79.

Console makers selling their consoles at a loss is nothing new for Sony and Microsoft who have taken the razor and razor blade approach to their gaming divisions. That's typically not the case for Nintendo though as it has always tried to make a profit on the consoles that it launches.

The only other recent example was the Nintendo 3DS which initially sold at a profitable $249.99 when it released March 2011. When sales weren't meeting expectations, Nintendo dropped the price to $169.99 in August of that year which made the handheld unprofitable. The 3DS returned to profitability by June 2012.

http://www.examiner.com/article/nintendo-loses-almost-21-for-every-wii-u-sold

That's not much at all. I think they lost $20 per GameCube when it launched too. It basically also lines up with Reggie's comment that the Wii U breaks even for them or makes a profit with the sale of a game.

Factor in a dropping yen, there will be a price drop. Probably in the summer IMO.

Yes the dropping yen is good news indeed. The low sales however are not, because If they lower the price by something like 33% a la 3DS, then that could delay the profitability of the system by another year or two. Still it's better than the staggering 300 dollars Sony was losing with the PS3 at release! Phew glad that's over :D

Just when I thought that gaming journalism couldn't get worse.

What they are doing is Nintendo's operating loss = (Wii U manufacturing costs - Wii U price)x units shipped.

So they are assuming that excluding the Wii U everything else (anything 3DS, DS and Wii related, marketing, R&D costs, etc) magically cancel each other.

Hmm I kinda feel bad about it, but I'm waiting for a price drop too. It's Nintendo's own fault that people don't see the "value proposition", as they put it. Replicating the surprise mass market success of Wii Sports was always unlikely (and they must have known that Nintendo Land is no Wii Sports). But failing to get the hardcore Nintendo fans on board early... that's their fault. One of the upcoming "big guns" would have sufficed - 3D Mario, Metroid, Zelda.

I'm even wondering if it wouldn't make sense to launch a system with Mario Kart. In a way it's their biggest franchise today. The Wii SportsFitPartyPlay series may have sold more in the last gen, but it's not going to be around for much longer. 2D Mario? Works, but the "New" series has been too samey to give people a "must have" feeling.

Mario Kart always works, and basically everybody loves it. It's THE local multiplayer game, it's addictive. Strategically they obviously wanted to save MK for the second wave of games... I get the point. But that may have been a mistake, given that there was no real first wave.

This. The calculation is just wrong : WiiU has a negative impact (as well as payroll among other things), but 3DS, DS, Wii have a positive impact on op. result, so no whatsoever conclusion can be made from this.

As others have said, this means nothing really because its dramatically simplifying everything.

It paints a picture though, right? We love to speculate and this is as good as it gets without any official numbers.

Yes, but it tells us pretty much what we knew anyway so its not really any clearer. 

If they only lose $20 on each WiiU I'd call that a win.

that's actually pretty good as I thought it would be more than that.