Should Nintendo produce a digital-only Wii U?

[Dusk]

fleischr said:

RolStoppable said:
I say no.

You believe that the exclusion of a disc drive and the inclusion of an HDD will shave off $100 in the manufacturing cost. You believe that retailers would be happy to sell more consoles at a slim profit margin with little to no hope that software is purchased from them (software has higher retailer cuts and is purchased at higher rates than hardware). You are wrong on both accounts.

Moore's law dictates that storage becomes cheaper as time progresses.

You missed my primary point: Digital sales bring in more revenue because there are significantly lower distribution costs. Because of that, you can price the console itself more aggressively, even at loss. You bear a loss on the hardware, but make far greater gains in software sales.

Retailer have to sell the experience. The current WiiU offering doesn't do that well. Digital only allows them to do that more effectively with less space -- if the priority is placed on putting a playable WiiU in the store rather than a shelf of games that no one is buying right now.

Re-read the QA portion of the OP and think about it.

I think you missed the point. A retailer isn't going to carry something that they can't make money off of. They make more money off games than the system. They aren't going to promote the system because it won't be worth their time.