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Intrinsic said:
nemo37 said:

Just because the tablet you described costing so little (though I have never seen a tablet with 4GB of RAM costing $50; in fact, the only ones with 2GB that I saw were refurbished models at a liquidation centre) does not indicate much for the cost of the Switch. Not all components are built equally or priced equally. For example, a 720P AMOLED (used in some early-2010s Samsung products) costs way more than an IPS 720P display (used in Switch) which in turn costs way more than a 720P TN panel (and there are even variations by manufacturers between each type). Another example is the SOC, the SOCs in those cheaper are typically provided by Chinese companies like MediaTek; these SOCs are nowhere near as powerful as a Tegra, not to mention MediaTek operates on far lower margins than Nvidia (ie Nvidia is likely to charge more for its products). The 3DS, which contained far more older components (many of the 3DS's components including its SOC came from the mid-2000s whereas many of the things in the Switch come from 2015, like its SOC and WiFi chip) and yet it was selling at a loss when Nintendo slashed the price to $170 (btw companies do not factor in R&D cost, marketing cost, shipping cost when saying if a device is selling at a loss or profit; it is typically done by adding price - cost of materials - cost of manufacturing - Licensing costs/royalty costs); there is no way Switch in 2017 cost less than 3DS in 2011 to make. With that being said though, the cost of electronics depreciates as you sell in high volumes, so the cost of the Switch might have dropped at this point (again nowhere near $50 and most likely not even in the $100s). The 3DS, for example, was no longer selling at a loss by the summer of 2012 (most likely due to the being able to sell in high volumes previously).

Ok, Let me just make this simple for you..... Take the ONePlus 5T. Snapdragon 835 SOC, 6GB of Ram, 4g LTE and Wifi Radios, BT 5.0, USB type C, 64GB of storage, 1080p AMOLED Screen costs around $299 to make. Is sold for $500. The same components (better with regards to the screen rez, same SOC, worse with regards to amount of Ram) used in making the samsulg galaxy S8 plus, but somehow that phone costs $800 at retail. Meanwhile, most of the parts in that Oneplus 5T are even made by samsung.

So you really believe that it costs samsung $300 more to make their own phone that is basically using the same parts? Or that samsung somehow makes more reliable phones than ONEplus  that justifies their mark up.

NO. Thats not why these things cost what they do.


I understand what the concept of a profit margin for a product is. However, are you seriously suggesting that Nintendo is taking a $50 system (or even say $100 system) and marking it up to $300 and then telling their investors that they are only making a very slim profit on each unit (not to mention their earnings reports do not in any way have profits that would match up with selling a high volume product at a $200-250 profit margin; even a $50 profit margin for Switch would have resulted in much bigger earnings than what they presented) ? Also, one thing that I do not understand, is that you are using a component breakdown analysis for the cost of production of the OnePlus 5T yet when Rol gave you a similar analysis for the cost of the Switch you refused to believe it.