| Soundwave said: We need to understand too the Wii U has a lot of the same costs of a handheld system and many of the costs of a home console too. I suspect Sony is barely breaking even on the Vita at $250, maybe losing a few bucks/unit. The Wii U at $250 has a larger LCD screen, probably a larger battery, more RAM (including a larger pool of expensive eDRAM), better CPU, better GPU, requires a seperate external power supply, on board flash memory, probably higher packaging/shipping/plastic costs (these may seem trivial, but they're not free either). My guess is $249.99 SKU - small loss (with smaller allotment of units, which fixes the amount of losses). Becomes profitable within 4-6 months. $299.99 SKU - small profit $349.99 SKU - decent profit, but requires extra throw in to the package. You can also see why Nintendo would favor a multi-SKU setup for launch as well. |
The Vita uses an expensive 5 inch OLED display and two multitouch panels, and it's tech specs are nothing to sneeze at for a portable system ether. It uses a pretty heavy duty battery as well.
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