| homerman100 said: We are talking about a relatively simple die-shrink, something which would not require a new chipset, Q&A, differing support for new and old designs, or a redesign of packaging. Simply put, the CPU is smaller, so the yield per wafer is greater. IBM, who manufactures their CPU, is already moving their production facilities to 45nm fabrication, so it wouldn't be a expensive transition. Which still requires everything I just mentioned from the analysis to the alteration of box specifications. You would definitely have to Q&A to ensure that nothing breaks in the manufacturing process, the chip batches, and possibly even system API (I'll admit this one is highly unlikely). The cost savings would not have to be "very significant" whatsoever. Given that most people see the Wii selling 100 million consoles, give or take, that is 75 million consoles on which a small price savings would amount to a serious profit or competitive advantage. Most people were predicting a clean sweep for the PS3 2 years ago. Going by what "most people" believe is staggeringly bad business practice. The Wii isn't going to stop selling tomorrow, but let's leave the risk analysis and market speculation to Nintendo's people. And yeah, that's another cost of conversion. As I said before, this would allow Nintendo to better compete against the other consoles as they have price reductions. Either Nintendo can sell the Wii at $250 and make more profit per console, or sell the Wii at, say, $199 and maintain their profit margins. Again, they have to beat the overhead of switching. |
I'm not saying it's out of the question. I'm saying it's not as simple as "change parts, make more money."
