I don’t think determine whether it’s costing Nintendo something just by looking at the per-unit margin.
Obviously, Nintendo has large fixed costs in hardware and software development that have to be covered. If the WiiU isn’t selling well enough that the company is not making any profit, then it’s certainly costing them.
I don’t know enough about the particulars to say if it’s true, but it would surprise me greatly if their margins are high enough that only selling 1/3 as many units as you previously expected wouldn’t be a major financial hit.
Of course it’s a major financial hit. But until they released their holiday season numbers (which was after I made the post you quoted), we had no idea that things were as bad as they were.
However, as I said earlier, they’ve got a lot of big games planned for 2014 and a turnaround to profitability is certainly possible. The Wii U might pull a GameCube, but that just means Nintendo can roar back with something new in a few years and the company will only be dinged, not doomed.
The Wii U is basically an unmitigated disaster, and I say that as a guy who has, up until this moment in time, loved Nintendo and bought every one of their consoles once I was old enough to start buying such things on my own. I waited in line for over 14 hours to get a Wii on launch day, and couldn’t have been happier that a I did.
The Wii U is a snooze fest. The Wii was so good, and the Wii U adds basically nothing.
The fact that they have a couple decent games, and the new Smash Bros will probably be awesome, is great and all.
I’ll probably end up getting one. But I doubt I’m going to end up buying 20 or 30 games for it like I did with the Wii.
That being said, the Xbone and the PS4 are pretty big snoozefests too, for me personally.
I got my dad an Xbox One for his christmas present, and it was cool what it could do with TV and such. Other than that, it seemed rather annoying having to do massive downloads to play games. And glitchy voice/motion controls.
I’ve seen a PS4 in action and I honestly couldn’t see a difference between the last gen stuff. Same goes for the Xbox One. They might be huge improvements on paper, but graphics have just gotten so good, that to my uncaring eye, I don’t see a huge difference.
I’m a little sad for Nintendo, but I still have a 3DS and love it.
I liked the concept of the controller, but I worry they won’t make the most out of it with games. I had a DS for many years, and was disappointed most of the games were licensed pieces of crap, and it felt like only a handful of games really took advantage of 2 screens and a microphone.
I’ve found that for the games that take the time to make use of the touch screen it works great. The whole idea of having a gps like map in your hands while all the immediate action takes place on the TV is perfect. This works great on something like Zelda Windwaker or Lego City.
Also being able to hide things on the touch screen like stats, scores, inventory items just makes the TV picture that less cluttered and clean.
Crossing over something like Tomb Raider, GTA, or Red Dead Redemption that has gorgeous graphics but has to use the same screen for maps and items would make me choose to buy it for the WiiU over the Xbox.
I also like that the touchscreen doubles as a universal remote for the TV. I can grab the touchscreen off the charge base, take a seat, and turn on the WiiU, turn on the TV, and switch the TV input to game.
Well, he did say 20 to 30. I’m a super casual gamer–the only game consoles I’ve ever owned was the original NES and the Wii. (Oh, wait, I did also have an Intellivision somewhere in there.) I still ended up buying about 15 games, so 20 to 30 doesn’t seem all that much.
And I would sure as hell hope a system would have at least that many games that would appeal to me.
