WereKitten said:
NJ5 said:
WereKitten said:
@NJ5
I remember reading that the Wii was having a margin of about $40 per console _at launch_.
Considering that its GPU did cost less than 30$ - again at the time - I don't see how having a 720p capable GPU could eat up that margin.
At the time I bought an Nvidia series 5 card for my PC for $68 _in a shop_, and that could run HL2 Lost Coast and Ep1 with all of their HDR effects at resolutions higher than 720p and framerates higher than 60fps.
Can we suppose that Nintendo could buy equivalent GPUs from ATI for about $40 each? That cuts $10 from a margin that was $40 at launch, but is probably even greater today.
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That would erase almost all of Nintendo's profit margin on the consoles, besides making it harder to make the console so small. All of this to cater to around 20% of the market (HDTV market share in USA if I remember correctly).
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Maybe the numbers are not correct, but I would hardly call a $30 instead of $40 margin "almost erased".
And the market share of HDTV might be 20% among TV owners, but I bet that it is actually much higher among console owners - and rising.
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The real question is, how much more would the console sell if they did that. And by the way I'm not really sure that your numbers are right. You mentioned a mere 25% increase in price, for a GPU with more than double the power (perhaps more than 4 times the power for the AA).
