| chakkra said: Yes I still believe they still have a chance of a turnaround (and pull up at least decent numbers) with this year's line up PLUS A PRICE CUT. Notice the emphasis on price cut here, as I believe that will be the key factor. If they have to release an alternative SKU without the Gamepad, then so be it. I still don't understand why, out all companies, Nintendo is the more adamant about not selling hardware at a loss. I mean they have the software. The more units they put on the streets, the more people are gonna buy their games. So yes, I believe they can afford to lose a few bucks on every console to build an install base. |
On the topic of Ninty selling consoles at a loss, that is inherently a bad strategy for them. Sony and Microsoft do it because they want to appeal to third parties, and at this point they know they're going to have a massive amount of support for their consoles. So to ensure that support, they cater to what the industry is asking for; a pretty powerful box that is priced low enough that consumers will buy a lot of them. This, of course, incurs losses for the parent company up front.
With Ninty, they can't rely on this kind of support from the vast majority of the industry's games. With the Gamecube, they catered much more to this idea, but the Gamecube was also only sold at around a $9 loss per unit at launch (from what I've heard, anyway). When you consider how well many of their games sell that's not too bad, but since the GC was selling so poorly the price was continually slashed prematurely, which of course incurred bigger losses.
WiiU's problem is astronomically worse because it incurred a much bigger loss than the Gamecube at launch all while selling for a much higher price - and not because of power (which at least might have helped with support) but because of the Gamepad. WiiU is the complete antithesis of the Wii, which, even without support from 3rd parties, was profitting nicely right out of the gate and was priced to sell. Now add to that the selling/profiting power of Ninty's IPs (not to mention the killing they were making off of Wiimotes/nunchucks) and Nintendo was just rolling in dough last gen.
However, having said that, I agree with you that they need to make the pricing/bundling attractive at this point because selling as little consoles as they are now is doing nothing for them. Unless they do offer a SKU sans Gamepad, it's gonna cost them to drop to $250, but the idea of being able to sell more games because they're selling more consoles (and just gaining some damn interest in the console) should be their focus at this point.
