The Wii U will be sold at a loss

[DanneSandin]

pezus said:

DanneSandin said:

teigaga said:

DanneSandin said:
Damn! That's a first for Nintendo!!! Just another evidence that PS4 won't be much stronger than WiiU

I wonder if they're making a loss on the $349 model as well?

As far we know sony's system doesn't come with a 50$ control. Assuming Nintendo are only making a small loss and Sony are aiming for a $399 system and they're willing to make a loss of up to $100 (as opposed to $300 loss from ps3). That gives them an additional $99 to spend on CPU/GPU compared to Nintendo and maybe $30-40 on a large harddrive. Then the question is; what kind of leap would A $100 difference make? But one must remember the ps4 isn't launching for at least another 12months, so GPU/CPU graphical efficiency and prices would presembaly be a fair bit better by late 2013.  

 

i don't think sony can and will take a huge loss on ps4. they cant afford a 100 dollar hit on every system imo. one year and a $399 price tag ain't gonna be enough for the ps4 to be a significantly jump over wiiu...

$399 is $100 more than $299, subtract the difference in production price between WiiU's controller and a Dualshock 4 and the difference grows more. Add in hardware cost to the PS4 and the controller business is almost balanced out. Nintendo are probably making a very small loss on this, so we'll assume $50 per $299 machine. Sony will likely be losing more from the start. That makes 1 year at least in hardware advancements plus $110 plus the difference in losses. Even if they sold the PS4 at no loss, the difference would still be over $100 and a year at least in development. 

Why would that not be enough for a significant jump? Consider that they are selling the PS3 at $250 or so and profiting while they're at it. Next year they'll be selling it at $199. A $200 jump from PS3 in pure power will (and it should) be very noticeable, even from the start. Wii U has shown very small jumps over PS3 games (some look equal, some look worse, some look slightly better, exclusives are not graphical beasts either). So, assuming a $200 jump from PS3 to PS4, why wouldn't the jump be significant?

First and foremost, you can't make any argument using US dollars. Sony, and Nintendo, are Japanese companies, and therefore we have to talk in Yen. $399 is roughly 31 800 Yen, which is roughly the price tag of the premium Wii U bundle (31,500). The basic Wii U is 26,250 Yen - which is roughly $329.

Selling the PS4 at $399 would be $70 more than basic Wii U in Japan, using your argument. And subtracting the cost of producing the controller which - using this thread as a basis - could be $50, the basic WiiU costs around $279 to make. I'm not sure that a $399 console would be a major leap over a $279 console.

I'm not arguing that there won't be differences. I fully believe that WiiU will be the weakest of the bunch next gen,  but not as much that it'll receive gimped 3rd party titles like the Wii suffered from.

Sony is in a bad financial situation. They've got more debts than they've got money in the bank. They've had their credit rate cut several times. The Yen is much stronger relatively towards the dollar and euro than 6 years ago. They cannot afford making a console more expansive than 32k Yen. And they can't afford selling a console at a $100 loss.