Er. Big surprise. gameindustry.biz is reporting that Nintendo is making money on every Wii they sell. Nintendo of Canada exec Pierre-Paul Trépanier said,

"We make a profit on the system itself. Unlike our competitors, we don’t have ulterior motives; we’re not in it to sell HD TVs, or to become the operating system in the living room or anything like that.

"We’re in the gaming business, and we have to make money from everything we sell - and we are making money from day one on the Wii."

Evidence from the Wii launch day is that almost anyone one who wanted the Nintendo console could get their hands on it. The Toys-R-Us at Times Square in New York was rumored to have 5,000 Wii's on day one. Good news for Nintendo, which plans to sell 4 million units by Christmas.

In somewhat related news iSuppli has broken down the component cost of Sony's Playstation 3. They estimate Sony loses around $240 - $305 per unit. I am always skeptical on this type of bottom up analysis. Consumer electronics have huge fixed costs and very little variable costs. Meaning if you an I were to create a new graphics chip and only produced one, that chip would cost about one billion dollars. Of course once the fab is set up, each additional chip costs like no money. So the whole question is volume. Doing a component analysis without including volume in the equation is pretty ... well ... retarded. Given that Sony will only crank out 400,000, on the high end, this holiday season my guess is they are going to take a bath. This could also explain why Nintendo is claiming to make money on each unit. Not that the components are not expensive taken individually. Just that once you crank out 4 million of the little white buggers, the per unit costs drops well below the $250 retail price.

Yeah, consoles usually do not make a real profit from day 1 because of the costs to set everything up. Once the company has sold enough units, then they have their profit.

Or the fact that the Wii is just a beefed up Gamecube with an exotic controller. Personally, I think they definitely overprized the Wii for what you get in hardware return.

The GameCube lacks the speaker, wireless network connectivity, wireless receivers for controllers, internal flash memory, backwards compatibility, and plethora of other extra features included in the hardware of the Wii. That, and it comes with only one control device, and often no games.

When you consider those factors, it's not quite as bad in the comparison. Plus you have to consider that it was only recently developed, and they have to make up for development costs.

Yea, no big surprise. Nintendo promised to both make a profit from the Wii, and make it a games only console. So far they've done both.

Mattias, instead of just criticizing it, actually try the games, now that the system is actually out. Like we've said here a million times, hardware and graphics do not make the games. There's a good chance you'll be surprised by how fun the games can be.

I dunno. I have been playing Gears. I really like it in insipte of it being only a so so shooter. Man that game looks good. Like really good.

It's not out yet in Sweden, but I have a Wii on pre-order. But still, even if the games are fun (which I very much expect them to be.. Tennis!) I think they're overcharging for the hardware. Granted, they added a few things (like you mentioned) but they also more than TRIPLED the price (here in Sweden) compared to the Gamecube. It just feels like Nintendo are unnecessarily greedy with the Wii.

Ah.. Well Sweden. That makes a difference. Have Sony or Microsoft jacked up the price as well? (Adding more, even after currency conversion from other locales.)

An Xbox 360 costs appr. $480 (Premium version) in Sweden. The Wii is appr. $380. A Gamecube costs less than $100. The Xbox 360 sure seems like more value for your money when you compare what's inside the consoles.

I don't even dare to think about what the Playstation 3 will cost.. when it reaches Sweden sometime in March 2007. Yes, it sucks living in the world's backside.

Hah, living in the world's backside is surely better than living in Brazil. The Xbox 360 costs about $1000 (USD) here!

I'm very pleased with how the Wii turned out. It is a gamer's system, and at least it had one real purchase worthy title at launch, in addition to Wii Sports, which is a lot of fun for a tech demo.

Couple that with the Virtual Console titles available in just the last three days, at least there is something guaranteed FUN to play on the system.

I'm just glad to have gotten the Wii. I wasn't even going to attempt the angry mob scene for a PS3. I think that situation was embarrassing, not to mention people suck for exploiting gamers and kids on eBay with 400x price mark-ups.

Gamer's system? Say what?? Didn't the whole TV remote control tip you off already?

Wow. $380 man. Ok, that is too much money. Talk about overcharging. Here in the states you get it for $250.

Nintendo Europe just took the dollar price and pretended the dollars were euros. Then Bergsala (Nintendo agent) took the euro price, added an extra zero and pretended it was Swedish crowns.

Argh all this Wii & PS3 talk is way too tempting...

I vowed that I wouldn't even TOUCH either system for another year...but it's kind of hard to keep that promise with parents asking me if i'm sure I don't want a Wii for xmas....

Anyhoo I'll for sure wait it out for the ps3...I bought ps2 on pre-release..and got screwed with all the beta crap that was released later...and since it costs so much I mite as well wait til it's as great as it's gonna be...

Oh shut up i'm just trying to make myself feel better...School's a bitch and I can't afford the spend time on new systems...

OK that's my rant for today =)

Heya. How are things? Haven't seen/read/whatever ya around ;lately. Get a wii. I really like the lil bugger and if the rents are gonna pay ....

Funny thing is there is a shortage of games and accesories for the wii. I am still waiting on a second nunchuck and zelda to arive.

shortage of games? I can get pretty much anything that was released first still... no nunchuk or classic controllers... those are all sold out

Might depend where you go; Best Buy and Circuit City have been sold out of a lot of games when I checked a few days ago; I also still haven't been able to locate an extra controller or component video cable. But Best Buy not having something in stock isn't exactly a stretch though, and I haven't been to my local EB or anywhere else yet to see what they have...

perhaps... but even Best Buy I could get most any game. Component cables haven't been released yet

I'm good...just have lotsa work to do =)

Umm What's a nunchuck?

Haven't heard from you in a while, little girl. Busy at school?

walla walla chuk

Ditch the RL stuff. No good for man or beast.

Hey hey, cool pics for Input Devices. Where's that on the ChangeLog?

Haha...Man took me a while to figure out what RL meant

Anyhoo hey all...missed u guys too!

I'll prolly do more approving tomorrow...My tuesday morning class consist of sitting in front of the comp listenin to a douche BS for 3 hours...

So to those of u w/the Wii...is it hard to get used to? control-wise?

I haven't had the chance to try it myself, but have watched four others play it for a couple hours. They all managed to get the hang of it almost immediately, and when I talked to the system owner three days later, he said that he felt so comfortable with it that he now prefers it to standard controllers.

My grandmother could play the Wii, I'm sure.

That is the demographic they were aiming for after all.

Jeez I'm not saying it may be difficult because it actual require some physical movement...but it does differ from the current controlls we've all gotten used to and I was just wonderng about the learnin curve on it

I mean I remember when I first played with the N64 joystick dilly...and ran Mario into the wall and hedges a few billion times before walking properly...

I like it. The pointing works really well. I think RTS on a Wii will be awesome. Very mouse like. Trauma Center is fun. Back and forward motion is a lil wonky. Other than that pretty cool