I'm displeased with Nintendo's pricing of MotionPlus

[famousringo]

NJ5 said:

famousringo said:

woopah said:
http://www.invensense.com/store/index.html

these guys are making motion+ and are thier cheapest gyroscope is $30

however the $40 model sounds closer to what motion+ appears to be. obviously nintendo gets them cheaper because of the economies of scale but factor in packaging, distribution and retailer'c cut and the price seems resoanable to me

 

Interesting link. WM+ publicity talked about bringing the cost down to "$1 per axis." I believe the WM+ contains three dual-axis gyros, so we're looking at $6 for the gyros themselves, assuming Invensense actually met their cost target. Add in the shell, connector ports, and quite likely a processor to interpret WM+ input, and $10 isn't going to be a profitable price for this device.

They're selling for $5.52 when buying in quantities of 1000:

http://www.analog.com/en/mems-and-sensors/imems-accelerometers/adxl330/products/product.html#pricing

(according to ars technica this is the model Nintendo uses)

This is of course before adding in any support hardware or the retailer margin, so $10 would be unrealistic indeed (besides what Zucas pointed out which is also true).

 

I think you have the wrong device. That's the accelerometer in the Wii Remote. The gyroscope chip in in the WM+ is called the IDG-600, and I don't see it advertised on their web site. It might be available in some of these MEMS gyros starting at $20, though.

http://www.analog.com/en/mems-and-sensors/imems-gyroscopes/products/index.html