Wii U Apparently Still Being Sold At A Loss

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Soundwave said:

SubiyaCryolite said:
Just how much does the gamepad cost anyway? Is this why it still isn't sold separately?

I would probably guess about $80 or so. They sell replacements for north of $100. 

Nintendo likely cannot get a break on the price of the controller because they're not selling enough systems to get suppliers to budge. That and the screen being a resistive touch panel that virtually no one else uses makes it probably more expensive than a multitouch screen even though resistive is (I believe) older tech. They can't just go to any supplier and get that screen, but if they were using multitouch LCD they probably could pick and choose from tons of vendors because so many have to make them for tablets. 

Well they can always do a redesign. I can't imagine there is any essential functionality that requires the screen to be resistive. At the time of the design it was probably merely a cost thing, because back then resistive probably was cheaper. Making a move to capacitive could bascially be done without even having to announce it. Though they probably would announce it if it made the gamepad 10% cheaper to manufacture. Also introducing multi-touch functionality for future games would "encourage" current Wii U owners (who of course are almost all hard core Nintendo fans) to upgrade to the 2nd generation game pad. A bit like Wiimotion plus Nintendo could release a game that uses multitouch and sell it as a bundle.

It's not like Nintendo is averse to hardware revisions. Take N3DS for example, a much more fundamental revision than just changing the touchscreen type on the game pad.