The PS3 has no value to anyone who doesn't want to play it's games.... value has nothing to do with how much it costs to produce.

The Wii was reported to be making $48 per unit in America, $70ish in Europe and was it $17 (I think?) at launch in Japan.
That was an estimate on parts alone, not taking into account things like shipping, packaging and marketing... and also I think ignoring European taxes.

The Wii was already using chipsets that were not exactly new and revolutionary (Nintendo basically wanted a much smaller, cooler running version of the GameCube with a small (X2) increase in relative power..... so the chips will not have been possible to reduce the cost on as much as the CELL could.... reducing the cost on a totally new thing like the CELL happens quite quickly and with quite a lot of money taken off, so while the CELL may have gone from being $150 per chip at launch to maybe $20 now, the Wii chips were already less than that to begin with so there is not much scope to save money. ESPECIALLY when the Wii chips are still using 90nm process, while the PS3 and X360 have moved on to I think 45nm by now... which is much cheaper to manufacture, as well as being cooler to run so less need for expensive cooling (don't the new PS3s only have 2 fans compared to 4 in early models?)

All that means the Wii could not have had significant cost reduction put in pace from the launch models.... in fact with the exchange rate so poor I believe they are making less per console now than they did at launch.... you can see this with the profits being made, because the are making about double the profits per quarter now than they did nearer launch, yet they are selling double the number of Wiis, and many times the units of software.... so even if the profit per unit had remained the same they should have been making over double the profits they were back then.... surely if the costs had  reduced so much like you seem to believe they should be making as much as the whole of Microsoft does by now.

Perhaps you just haven't done any maths?

at $50 pure profit per Wii, with 25 million Wiis sold in 1 year.... that comes to $1.25 billion.

The end of this Fiscal year looks like it will have pulled in about $3.5 billion..... Now take away DS profits, as well as Wii Software profits, all of which are almost certainly higher than Wii Hardware profit..... It sure doesn't make any sense for Wii hardware alone to be pulling in even $50 per system.

That's your personal opinion and I don't mean that in a negative way. I'd just like to remind you that many people think differently. They might see no value in the features you listed, thus they don't care that the Wii doesn't have them.

What most people see when purchasing a console are the games available for it. The Wii currently has the most desireable exclusive software and that's why people are willing to pay for it

I think of "slowing" as a derivative of growth of the industry.  Does that make my viewpoint clearer?  Last Year the Wii had momentum, in terms of marketshare, that looked as though it would eventually reach near %60.  Now it looks like it will never hit 50%, because its competition has increased at a larger pace, with regards to week-to-week marketshare.

@TWRoO: The "PS3 has no value if you don't want to play its games" comment above makes no sense... Did you mean the Wii, which doesn't function as a DVD player, CD player, etc, let alone a BD player?

Here's the problem in your worldview. Perhaps you're just substituting your own preferences (that's fine), or you're only looking at this from a tech-sheet perspective (that seems to be the case), but "value" includes much more than just a list of features/price. For starters, recall that most of us buy game consoles to play games, and the Wii has tons of games that its competitors don't. This changes its value radically, especially for the "broad audience" that you spoke of (who demonstrably have little interest in the HD consoles' offering).

To put it in perspective (and use a HIGHLY incomplete car analogy), the finest sports car in the world ain't worth jack if you need a really reliable pickup truck. Put alternatively, most people see a console's primary value in its games, rather than its bells and whistles, and the Wii's games apparently appeal to them more.

Yeh, its my personnal opinion. Thx for understanding :). But I know that most people have different ways of purchasing/picking their consoles. i just wanted to point out different options and what I think is a better choice for them.