That is just pure win.

For $80 they can probably sell 50 million Wii's per year if they up the production. Just think about the untapped Asian market (China, India etc., around 3 billon people) that cant afford a $100+ console.

I played Sunshine and Galaxy when they both came out. Galaxy is actually one of my most favorite games. Also someone said I was calling the Wii two Gamecubes. I dont know why someone else said that to me because I never said that. I just said its overclocked twice as fast, which it is. That doesn't mean anythings wrong with it.

The point of the matter is Nintendo can easily lower the price and still make a profit.

They probably could if all they had to do was manufacture the Wii console alone and sell it directly to customers themselves.... Controllers, packing, shipping, store/distributor cut and more importantly marketing however will not let them do that.

Looking at their fiscal reports can tell you easily that they would probably be making a loss if they dropped it below $150 (though it is hard to tell with the DS being tangled in there too)

Come to think of it, why doesn't anyone (other than the odd forum poster) ever say things like this about the DS? The Wii has been on the market 2 years less than the DS, but has had more money cut off it's RRP in percentage terms than the DS has (if you factor in the DSi then the DS has gone up in price.... DS/DSlite alone though I think have only been cut by $10? (it's only £10 less here in the UK anyway)

People say this over and over but making a profit is only an end-point if, no disrespect intended, you are in the position that Sony's games division currently occupies, the position MS entertainment division occupied since the beginning of the Xbox's life or the position that dragged Sega under.

For Nintendo to profit means nothing special, they have always profited bar one financial quarter in the company's history.  They have loftier ambitions and their goal is to profit as much as possible and that doesn't involved cutting the price of a system that just had the biggest week for a home console ever.

Look, they could not profit if they dropped the price $80.

Lets look at the last completed fiscal year Nintendo had..... in rough terms they made $5billion... and sold 25 million Wii consoles.

If we assume (probably wrongly so) that the Wii and DS each make half of that profit for Nintendo (I suspect the DS will be making more than half, but I can be biased against the Wii and still prove my point)

So $2.5 billion, for 25 million units (and the games and accessories)

divide 25 million into $2.5 billion and you get $100. the price of the Wii during that time was $250, so taking $100 off would be making it an RRP of $150.

So if the Wii was $150 Nintendo would be making zero money from it at all, it would be breaking even.... of course they are surely making lots and lots of profit from the software and perepherals, even if overall they are break even (that is how it goes, software and additionals always make the most profit) which means that they would actually be making a loss per hardware unit they sold from the store (but on average making that loss back when people bought more games and perepherals)

That is simple Maths... we can debate error margins all we want, there is no way Nintendo would be making a profit on the Wii as a business if they dropped it to anywhere near $80.... hell they would probably be making an overall loss (ie eating into DS profit too)

Some people were trying to say that Nintendo couldn't drop the price any lower and still make a profit. Nintendo is a business and of course they'll try to get every cent out of you as much as they possibly can.

I know what you've been saying for years. I'm just trying to remind people that too. The only reason the Wii dropped its price recently was because the PS3 and 360 were too close in price. Sony and Microsoft can't continue to lower the price like Nintendo can. And I did see that Nintendo had their biggest week ever, and they're smart for not dropping the price.

even if they could, why would they need to. They can win this gen, and become the best selling home console of all time at its current price.

I think if Nintendo just give away free Wii's they're still profiting in software sales....

wow!!! what a hateful thing to say about a nintendo and the wii. He must be mad that nintendo is still making system and kicking butt and that his company sega is no longer a system developer in the consel biz, or he still has a massive grudge at nintendo and the snes for beating the master system and the genesis. we all know that nintendo won that war easily.

Someone at sega should tell him to shut up and be glad that nintendo is letting them use mario in thier olymipic casual games.