| Hedra42 said: Don't think they'll announce a new console just 2 years after launch, given the amount of time it takes to develop one. At the moment it is looking very much like it will be trailing the X1. As far as profitability is concerned, Nintendo announced last May that the Wii U was no longer selling at a loss. |
[Disclaimer]After reading the forums for quite some time I've finally taken the plunge and made an account. This is my first post 
[/Disclaimer]
I don't expect Nintendo to do a "stop, drop and roll" in the homeconsole business either. While still possible they'll either go with the earlier than anticipated release of a new console rather than bringing the current one to the slaughterhouse and be done with it. It would be pulling a Sega and alienate much support from long time fans. Bringing something to the table now with comparable HW powers to the PS4 and XBOne would also not garanty ports for 4rd parties. It would cost a lot of money to develop and build in a hurry and still be considerably behind the rest sales wise.
They are much more likely to speed up the release cycle of the next generation. In the mean while they'll try to reduce cost and maximize sales numbers by hovering around break even to sale as many consoles as they can to "stay relevant"and not bomb financially.
Considering this last part: It's a general misconception among the public that the Wii U itself is turning a profit. I had a source hangy for this but I lost it somewhere. It is a bit confusing but because of low demand they made more Wii U's than they sold and a lot of them. The costs of production were already spend and made it into the financials. However with the prediction of selling an X amount of Wii U's the production costs were already in the books and selling each and any of theses already "made" units would be money in the bank. So they were not yet profitable by themselves, it was just that they already had the cost to make these units in the books but not yet sold them. They ended up with thousands of units costing X to make but not yet sold, so no return on investment yet. This was incorrectly interpreted as the Wii U being profitable from then on. They just meant selling those machines would not cost anything to make and would be a pure + in the books.
