Rumour: Wii U Cost Details
Is the cat finally out of the bag? It certainly sounds about right…
- The total cost of materials to manufacture the Wii U console (includes controller) is estimated to be around $180.
- The controller’s total bill of materials and components costs no more than $50.
- Wii U will be no less than $300 when it launches.
“Cutting production costs to maximize profits is Nintendo’s main concern with the Wii U. They are cutting costs in the Wii U’s hardware to build back confidence in investors. Nintendo wants investors to view Wii U as a less risky proposition.”
- NFC capabilities for each new Wii U controller costs no more than $5 to implement.
- The price of NFC implementation in mobile devices is expected to fall below $1 in the near future.
“NFC capabilities are a drop in the bucket for Nintendo. As NFC becomes more mainstream in mobile devices, the price for NFC implementation will rapidly decline. Nintendo is jumping on NFC because of a projected cost decline in the technology.
The cameras in the Wii U controller are an estimated manufacturing cost of $6. They are slightly better quality than the 3DS and DSi cameras. The touch screen has a manufacturing cost estimated at $14.”
- Microsoft’s Kinect cost $56 after tearing it apart.
- Wii U controller’s cost of materials would be slightly less than what Kinect cost.
“Nintendo chose an economical GPU and CPU that could keep up with the performance of today’s current consoles, but keep hardware costs down to maximize profits. Nintendo got a bargain price on the custom GPU and CPU that the Wii U uses. There is a bigger focus on downloadable content, applications, video content, digital distribution, and services to create a stream of revenue. Investors will be ecstatic with the news.”
Daniel Flatt
April 8, 2012 @ 4:38 pm
I don’t think that this would be surprising news to anyone. I really couldn’t see the Wii U ever coming in at below that price point, especially given the expensive looking controller.
However, I do think that if Nintendo wants to stay competitive they won’t mark it up much higher then that. I don’t think they will, Nintendo knows what it’s doing, but with 360 and PS3 games being ported to the system it would take a lot more convincing for someone to buy one if it’s much higher then the current systems.
Also I think that we’ve seen, especially with the original PS3, that the sweet spot for game consoles seems to be in the 300-350 range. Anything above that and it’s difficult to get consumers to sign on, especially in a fiercely competitive market where many people aren’t ready for the next generation of systems.