It's not just the $1 it costs to make. There's the R&D, the manufacturing and tooling, the shipping, marketing, support staff, retail costs, etc.

 Good point, I forgot about that, thanks. Still, I believe that only strengthens my post.

BTW, what does R&D mean?

@superchunk: what does "close to cost" mean? A margin of 10% would still be close to cost?

Example: Cost @ 18$, 2$ margin means 20$ price

a margin of 10-15% is usually seen as quite healthy.

R&D = Research and Development.

Pretty much the engineering and prototyping of the device.

Been practicing your proof reading?

I LOVE your anal character traits

@Million: I'd guess Nintendo puts this to the market the way Sony put Dualshock a decade ago. It comes bundled with every Wii Remote (including boxed with Wii).

@ TWRoO
My apologies. As you know I try usually to do a better job but it was almost 3:00 in the morning and I had just gotten home from a 16 hour day. A day spent in large part listening to people whine who haven’t a clue what is involved in satisfying their unreasonable demands and expect it for free. I should have gone to bed and not responded at all but the thread just set me off.

All that Nintendo has to do is take the Mems gyroscope and integrate it seamlessly with the already existing three axis accelerometer (which is itself fairly impressive technology) so that it will work with the already existing sensor and electronics, so that it adds real time rotational sensing to the current X, Y, and Z sensing. Of course you have to do this through a connection that was never designed for it … oh and by the way, we still need to use that same connection for its original purpose as well … and did I mention that this unit will sometimes be used by children who might drop it, so we better give that … oh say 10,000 G shock resistance. Why not, if I drop my cell phone onto solid concrete from three feet up, it’ll still work won’t it?

The fact that earlier version of Mems technology, which would not have been able to do this, cost between $30 -50 each in high bulk quantities as of six months ago. And that’s for just the raw Mems unit, and does not include the research and development, the additional components to integrate it, the packaging it in a way that adds just a little stub on the Wiimote, and creating a game developer’s kit to get it working in an actual game. Seems perfectly reasonable that Nintendo should sell it for $1.98, or free, and enclose a personal letter of apology for not doing this a couple of years ago when the Wiimote was being developed and a suitable Mems unit, which didn’t really exist, but the units that did exist would have added a $100 or more to the cost of the Wiimote, if you could have gotten them at all.

Seems reasonable to me.
And all you get in return is completely realistic sword fighting, the ability to drive a motorcycle or a jet ski just by turning your wrist on the virtual handle bar, open a door by turning the knob with your hand, grab an assailant by his wrist and throw him in a true to life Kung Fu move, little things like that. Can’t imagine why anyone might think that’s better than wiggling a little analog stick to sword fight and heck, you could do the same Kung Fu move by pressing the X,Y and Z buttons simultaneously while pulling left on the stick and wiggling your left ear.
What’s the big deal? I’m not even sure any game developers would want to go to all that trouble to create revolutionary hits for the best selling console with an installed base of over 30,000,000 craving more hardcore fighting games. Yea right! Like the first one to market a quality game with a 100% true to life light saber duel isn’t going to sell a few million guaranteed.
Think about this for more than a microsecond and then bitch to me that you’re not going to pay more than a couple bucks for it.

@Grampy, it's just the normal cheap gamer complaint.

If they don't want to pay for the latest and greatest don't be an early adopter.

It happens in every new technological device.

There's nothing wrong with being a value gamer. For $100 bucks you can buy a Gamecube and 20 games. For $15 you can goto the flea market and buy one of the controller systems that plug right into the TV w/ 100 games.

To have the newest thing costs money.

They need to get over themselves.