Um. because you need to pay for the systems to be manufactured.  So figure 4-5 million ready to go by launch, figure their costs are around $200 a system, and that is around a billion dollars right there.  And that is being generous since they probably had to fork over money to re-tool factories, etc. If the console is to truly debut this holiday season they should already be through most of the initial run of production soon.  Figure that by mid-summer, the allocation for launch will already be finished and the second wave will be in production.  Marketing, game developement, and all sorts of other costs atributed to a game console release drive that figure higher.    

I read somewhere that they hit the break even point in March with 3DS.  I don't have any concrete fact to go off of here, so I won't argue this point, you are very possibly right on that.   However, selling 5 million+ of Mario Kart 7 and Mario 3D Land worldwide has definitely helped things, nothing like first party software sales to drive profits.   I think this is the true reason that they didn't see profits, where were the first party games in the past year?  

As far as their management, if this launch doesn't do well, I would not want to be Iwata.  Yamaguchi-san will hand him the short blade and expect 3 horizontal slices if this thing is a debacle. 

September is their projected break even point on 3DS hardware.    All else is is pretty accurate.

I guess being a home run for Nintendo means Nintendo never cared for 3rd party support and thus why they are focusing on core gamers with Wii U :/  kind of what you're saying no?

I'll never understand why 3rd parties treat the big N this way :/

Actually, no.  The statement simply stated that the Wii was a home run for Nintendo and it was. By home run, they mean a financial and market success for Nintendo. Nothing more.  It's not addressing whether it was good for 3rd parties or not at all.  That's a seperate matter. 

Wait, I can by a 3DS for $1. I'll take 169 of those babies. LOL

Oh and as I've said many times Sony and Microsoft lose money on every console they release sometimes for several years. Nintendo will start turning a profit on the 3DS in August, about a year after they took the price cut.

Sony and Microsoft's way of doing things is unsustainable. I believe Sony is only just back to being net positive ever since they entered the console industry, and MS is still in net negative? They'd both have made more money not entering consoles and just diversely investing the money since 1995/2000.

They both justify it because Playstation and Xbox brands are great advertising and launching points for their other businesses. MS invests in anything at all that would attract people to Windows and Office, it's almost happy to lose billions forever if it keeps people tied to one of those things. Same with Sony and TVs or Blu-ray.

Nintendo has no other business, games are it, it's not financially acceptable for them to be in the red every time a new console launches.

If they can turn it around in a year or less and make the money on software in the meantime I think that will work just fine. If they had gone that way with the 3DS from launch they'd already be out of the red on it.  In the end it's no biggie really. Nintendo remains the only game in town as far as the handheld market is concerned. It can only get better from here.

That's all I was looking for. His orignial statement did not specify so I took it a different way.In fact saying home run can mean many different things. But okay I got you now.

If I understand that right, Nintendo announced that the 3DS will be sold on loss until August.