News

Nintendo: Wii U sold at a loss

You are here: blasteroids.com / news / nintendo: wii u sold at a loss /

Latest news | News archive | Search news

Not registered yet? Register here.

Dela @ Oct 26, 2012 18:43 | 3 comments

Iwata admits every game system will be sold at a loss.

Other Nintendo hardware, such as the Wii when it was launched, made a profit on every sale. The launch of the Wii U marks a departure from that comforting statistic.

"We had to book a loss on the hardware, which is currently in production and will be sold below cost," said Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo.

When the Wii was launched - whole six years ago now - Nintendo bragged about making a profit on every unit of the console sold, and on the sale of software, right from the launch day. It highlighted that as another area where its philosophy differs from the competition, with both the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles selling at considerable losses at launch. In Sony's case, every PS3 represented a loss of $300 in 2007, but in 2010 the PS3 system became profitable.

Nintendo will have to focus on making money from the sale of software for the Wii U, and cutting its manufacturing costs in the long run.

Previous Next

Comments

Comment by: Notcow (Oct 26, 2012 19:20)

Saw that coming. If they expect the Wii to sell, they pretty much don't have a huge amount of choices other than this since it'll still be priced at around $300...which is still out of my range. I believe Microsoft used that strategy as well. Don't know about PS3.

If they decided to sell for a profit, I'd hang my head as a Nintendo fan.

Comment by: embo22000 (Oct 26, 2012 19:32)

most likely is not the wii u itself but the tablet style controller

Comment by: wolfniggr (Oct 27, 2012 00:08)

This is why the decision to withhold the price for so long was made. I heard the original pricing started at $400usd. I still feel the initial response from E3 had a lot to do with the push for a lower price point. It's not like Nintendo to sell a console at a loss right out of the gate. I wonder if the upcoming shortage will be due to finding less expensive components as opposed to an artificial shortage Nintendo created with the original wii. Maybe they can squeeze Foxconn into lowering costs due to their latest public fiasco. At any rate, I think Nintendo gained a little more respect with this move.