| Soundwave said: My guess is Nintendo has some kind of contractual obligation to sell 10 million Switch systems to Nvidia/TSMC (the manufacturer). Would make a lot of sense. Nvidia had a chip that they couldn't find vendors for on the 20nm node no one else is really using, so they gave Nintendo the chip for cheap on the condition that they have to minimum order a certain amount. 10-12 million sounds about right as that would be a minimal risk for Nintendo. In the time after fiscal year 2017 is over (ending March 2018) I think you will see a new Switch model(s) using the 16nm Tegra X2. |
This is the biggest advantage they have now in terms of hardware cost deflation compared to the Wii U; they decided to go with a custom chip die design that was being phased out, or even was almost entirely phased out already, this drove cost up and hardware cost deflation severely down, leading to tiny leverage for price adjustments relative to actual value. Going with a mobile-like design is really smart if you're not jumping on the x86 arms race, as far as cost goes anyway.
