Fun Fact: Nintendo's interest on their Cash Reserve is enough to fund Breath of the Wild

[Bofferbrauer2]

vivster said:
Which makes the fact that they refuse to lower their margin on their hardware and software even worse. They really are the Apple of console gaming.

A failure like the Wii U can burn trough that money at frightening speed - just look up how much money the PS3 was burning for Sony, if they hadn't other fields of income Sony would have gone under within it's first years of the PS3. The Wii U did cost Nintendo quite a big part of their reserves in fact, so it's clear they need some sort of lifeline. Since they don't have any other big sources of income the only choice they have is limiting expenses, which means they can't really afford to subventionise their consoles nearly as much as Microsoft or Sony do.

As for the software, afaik they are asking about the same as their competitors in terms of royalties, so I don't see any problem here.