retroking1981 said:
You may be right, but Nintendo are selling the Wii U at a loss, the costs must be coming from somewhere and if the console itself is cheap in design like you say then it must be coming from the Gamepad. Anyway my main point is that I don't think Nintendo can afford to drop the price as they can't lose more money than they already are. I think MS are in a better position to play a price war, they recently made about £6billion (not sure if thats last quarter or FY so far) and could afford to lose £8billion on the OG Xbox back in the day just to get a foot hold in the market, I think they'll do the same with XOne instead of losing the market to Sony so badly. They just have more financial muscle than not only Nintendo but Sony to. I agree with you that the wii u's chance at success would come from being a low cost secondary console but I just don't think Nintendo are in a position to drop the price. The Wii U is between a rock and a hard place, PS3/360 are much better options as a cheap console for kids and the PS4/XOne are for the hardcore - I hate that term but you get the point. |
When Nintendo said they were making a small profit with the original wii later financial figures showed they were actually making a huge profit. Nintendo will never release full manufacturing costs of their consoles so we have no way of validating their claims. Yes I'm saying they are lieing.
However there is also the issue of R&D. If Nintendo spent 250 million on developing the wii u you might say it wants to recoup $10 in R&D costs per console for the first 25 million consoles or you might say you wanted $50 from each console so those costs were paid off with the first 5 million consoles sold. It really depends on how you factor R&D costs per console.
The wii u isn't in that difficult a place. NIntendo consoles always offer something unique. The wii u isn't a competitive console in performance but still offers unique gaming experiences. I feel there will be a market for it at a lower price point. This time Nintendo has failed to produce a winner like wii but they made a profit out of the N64 and Gamecube despite their low sales and I see no reason that Nintendo can't do the same with wii u. Frankly NIntendo deserved this failure, the wii u should not have been released as it is and certainly not at the price point Nintendo tried to sell it at.