None of the companies manufacture/assemble their own hardware - including Sony. It makes more financial sense to outsource stuff like this. You would only do these things in-house if outsourcing couldn't meet the demands for special components (such as the CELL cpu, etc). ... Interesting post. Remember that by the time these things hit the media (and are published), the actual "business" level conversations finished a couple of months ago. I'm sure Nintendo has signed a contract with one (or more) of the companies by now - maybe starting with a short-term contract to sort out quality and other issues before settling on final partners. Price (cost) is also always an issue. Fingers crossed we'll see the rewards from all this in the coming months... EDIT: now it comes down to tooling time (i.e. how long it takes to prep the assembly line to create/assemble the parts as needed).
Gesta Non Verba
Nocturnal is helping companies get cheaper game ratings in Australia:
Wii code: 2263 4706 2910 1099