HappySqurriel said:
Hypothetically speaking, Nintendo could have easily paired up a PowerPC 970MP @ 2.0 GHz with a Radeon X600/X800 and sold it for $300 without taking a large loss; and the system would have potentially been very small and energy efficient as well. Why they didn't do this is something only Nintendo knows, but I suspect it was because they were uncertain of the success of the Wii and didn't want to expend the hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D and licencing fees to make it happen. |
$300 wouldn't have been as market friendly as they were looking for, and they probably couldn't have done it while having a pack in game at the $300 price point.
The unknown success of the Wii was a potential possibility for their decisions, but that still involves releasing the system at a market friendly price to make its chance of success greater