You seem upset. I'm just saying my naive opinion. If I'm wrong, and all the space reserved for the disk drive could not be used for more HW power, then great. Having said that, at the same time they mention they want the console to be small and affordable, so I don't see why they would include a disk drive when it doesn't even play back DVD/Blu-Ray, and could get a near-equivalent on mini-cards.

I guess the clincher is Back Compatibility, and I was assuming it would mostly be used by core Nintendo gamers who would invest in a 40$ external drive, but that's where I'm probs wrong, as a lot of current broad gamer Wii owners would enjoy the perk and wouldn't enjoy the need to set up an external DD.

Nintendo would never do that.

They did it with the EHD, so I don't see why not. Also these EDD can be quite small, they could have even made a 1st party one and made it something you could easily cling onto the main mini-console.

These aren't the Sega CD days no more, these kind of components can be very small.

Not upset at all.  Perhaps the "first off and secondly" sounded as such.  Ignore those and read it again and it may not come across the same.

Blank Blu-ray media and the mass manufacturing systems are cheaper than equivelent SDHC cards would be.   A double layer disc would have little increase in costs but an SDHC card at 50 GB would tear into the profit margin way too much.

32 GB SDHC cards probably have a market price of $15 each.   That same price will get you 10 blank Blu-ray discs at market price.

If you were to distribute 100 million games that year, the DS cards would cost you $1.5 billion. 
If you were to distribute 100 million games that year, the Blu-ray discs would cost you $150 million.

As a business decision, which wone would you take?

The second without a shadow of a doubt.

Having said that, there are more items to consider in the calc.

How much more margin is made on WiiU's sold. Assuming 10Mill a year, at 50$ margin extra a year, that's 500Mil. How does that fit in your calc of SW on a yearly basis?

External hard drives aren't manufactured by Nintendo, though.  In order for your plan to work, Nintendo would have to manufacture (or license another company) to manufacture a proprietary disc drive, because Wii and Wii U games are not standard DVD's, they are are proprietary optical discs.  That would be asking consumers to purchase a completely seperate accessory in order to access the console's most basic function: Games. 

Bear in mind there is still a large portion of game consoles not connected to the internet, so the only way for those people to play games under your plan would be to buy the Wii U, plus a disc drive, and those game discs.

If your two media costs are $1.50 and $15, you have a margin difference of $13.50 per game.

Sell 100 million and you're looking at a $1.35 billion difference.

Hehe, you missed the part where I talked about games on mini (SD-ish) cards. :) That'll clear it up.

@Viper. Wow, that is a lot more money. Games always offer better margin. Nintendo had a reason for it after all :) The last thing is that the HW margin could be sacrificed for cheaper price, leading to higher sales, but that is a silly thought and is not a certainty, as at times lower price =/= higher sales, or at least =/= higher sales legs.

What a blessing if Wii U turns out to be an efficient mini beast like GCN. The big question is, how powerful is that GPU and what kind of visuals can we expect from ground up built titles that actually push the hardware.

Seriously? How is that game in any way high-end? Textures are simple, shaders are simple, geometry is simple, nothing about it seems like anything the 360 couldn't handle with ease.