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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Wii U Apparently Still Being Sold At A Loss

Frogger on 30 January 2015
Johnw1104 said:
I suppose there's no way of being certain until they share the production cost. While the gamepad does add to the total a good deal I'd be surprised if the hardware costs are much more than what they sell it for.

Makes me wonder how much money Microsoft initially loses each time they sell an Xbox 1 at those crazy low prices, could be almost as bad as the original PS3 was


Nothing will ever be close. The PS3 was a $900 system being sold for $600 in a market that wouldn't spend more than $400. Sony was, figuratively speaking, giving those things away.



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ghost_of_fazz on 30 January 2015
SjOne said:
And this is just tech that's slightly more powerful than last gen. Imagine how much Nintendo would be bleeding if they had tech on par with PS4 and X1. They chose the lesser of two evils


It doesn't work like that.

It's about how much of that tech is being produced and bought. Right now, the AMD APU on the XBone/PS4 is produced for those two consoles, and for the mobile computer market. In the case of the Wii U's chip, it's being produced only, and ONLY for Nintendo. When you're mass producing anything, the cost goes down the more units are manufactured. I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii U chip costed more to produce than the one on the XBone/PS4.



theprof00 on 30 January 2015
PixelPerfect said:
If this is true then Nintendo may be in more trouble then we thought.

If we lived in a vacuum.

Clearly amiibos are extremely popular....then there are better software figures this year, and after that, we don't know 1. how profitable the new 3ds is, or 2. whether the ds successor is designed to function as a wiiU pad.

I think if the new ds whatever could work with the system, they could have a good money making opportunity.



theprof00 on 30 January 2015

Something ironic I just noticed.
Nintendo's bane with both the 3ds and the wiiU has had to do with screens
Sony's bane for the past ten years has had to do with screens



Juma009 on 30 January 2015

What about this?
http://gimmegimmegames.com/2014/05/nintendo-wii-u-longer-sold-loss/



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baloofarsan on 30 January 2015
Vena said:
baloofarsan said:Lately Nintendo has put in features, both in consoles and handhelds, that are not used at all or very poorly (second screen, 3D, NFC, TWiii). It is as every new idea they have at brainstorms should be realized in the hardware, but then they do not have the tenacity to fulfill the features possibilities.

The fuck? Sure TWii is useless and 3D is arguable, but second screen is hardly "not used at all" and NFC is in part for the multibillion dollar franchises of Skylanders/DI/Amiibo that are soem of the few things that sell well on the WiiU that aren't Nintendo limited.

Iwata - (Corporate Management Policy Briefing Jan. 30, 2014) : "In addition, we have considered, for example, what is made possible by having two screens or a mechanism in which there is a screen only one person can see, and combined these propositions to develop Wii U. However, I feel it is our fault that we failed to ensure that these features were explicit to our consumers. What Mr. Miyamoto and I are trying to achieve is a product whose concept people can easily understand, which is linked to what I said earlier today about developing titles that are only made possible by the Wii U GamePad."

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/140130qa/02.html

What came out of this forced decision? Project Giant Robot and Project Guard, Kirby, Mario Maker and maybe Starfox. The big Nintendo games of 2013 (MK7, SSB and DKC) barley used the second screen for more than off-TV play (which is great BTW). And a game that uses the second screen is not localized (Fatal Frame V).

NFC: it took almost two years to use that feature! Where are the card games/RPGs using NFC cards or the Nintendo equivalent to to Skylanders? Where are the MacDonalds toys with NFC functionality? Even with the Amiibos they seem to be unsure how to use it.



Frogger on 30 January 2015
Soundwave said:

Well I guess the whole point of switching to a unified platform structure (similar to iPhone-iPad as Iwata has cited) is that Nintendo could basically just focus all their resources on effectively one platform instead of being split into 2. In said scenario, third party support isn't as important as there would be more Nintendo software to cover gaps. 

They probably still will get some third party support though, specifically from Japanese devs that currently support the 3DS and the good news is those types of games you could now enjoy at home too (ala Monster Hunter 5, Yokai Watch 3, Final Fantasy Explorers, Bravely Default, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest XI?, etc.), so if you're a home-only Nintendo player, that's a win for you. 


On top of that, most of those games will be built for the stronger home console and simply be scaled down for the weaker handheld as opposed to being build specifically for weaker hardware, which is a win for handheld-only Nintendo players.



Juma009 on 30 January 2015
Soundwave said:

Thought this warranted it's own thread since there's a lot of confusion/misinformation about this, I see the "well at least Wii U is profitable" being thrown, but it sounds like it actually isn't, though I hope Iwata will clarify 100%

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-28/nintendo-s-outlook-disappoints-and-mario-can-t-save-wii-u

Wii U consoles will probably return to losing money and 3DS earnings will fall next fiscal year, Haruka Mori, a Tokyo-based analyst at JPMorgan & Chase Co., wrote in a Jan. 21 report.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/27/nintendo-earnings-what-to-watch-7/

Analysts also say that costs may rise from resuming Wii U production. The manufacturing cost for much of the Wii Us sold so far this business year was already booked, making this year’s sales of Wii U exceptionally profitable on its books.

Basically Nintendo didn't incur losses from the Wii U because they were selling unsold inventory from last fiscal year, meaning the manufacturing costs for the Wii Us they were selling were all on the previous fiscal year's books. 

Now that they've presumably sold through that inventory, they are going to have to go back to manufacturing new Wii U units ... which apparently still are hitting Nintendo at a loss. My guess is the highly customized nature of the hardware (ancient IBM PowerPC CPU that no one uses) is preventing Nintendo from being able to die-shrink the chipset and the controller can only be brought down in price so much. With such low sales, their supply vendors are probably also unwilling to give them a reduction on component prices. 

The other thing that strong hints at this is Nintendo's own forecast numbers. They expect their full year net profit to drop from where it was at the end of December to where it will be at the end of March 2015. This doesn't make any sense, unless there is some new element from after Dec 2014 that is causing them to lose money -- my guess is that's a clear indicator of Wii U hardware production starting up again and eating away some of their YTD net profit. 



???? http://gimmegimmegames.com/2014/05/nintendo-wii-u-longer-sold-loss/



VitroBahllee on 30 January 2015

People posting that "no longer sold at a loss" article don't understand that the blogger who wrote or was just echoing all the misinformation that has been making the rounds. Anyone who thought the Wii U was generating a straight profit per unit ever was wrong. There's sensible business reasons that ate easily grasped, that explain why this is so. They are explained here.



slab_of_bacon on 30 January 2015
generic-user-1 said:
you just cant trust jpm---


The great relativity... know your source.

 



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