Topic: Is the Wii U slow start really a bad thing financially?

Then ignore the topic?

Problem solved!

Whattt?

The slow start is bad. Guarantee they would had loved it to be a Wii-peat. But Nintendo will survive.

I think you may have misread what I meant. I'm not trying to be negative, in a bizarre way I'm actually putting a positive slant on things.

Let's say a console is released. During it's first 6 months of life it costs $500 to produce. The ideal price for the consumer is $300. The retailer needs there cut; say that's $50 (which is very low in retail), so the console is sold to the shop at a $250 loss. If in the first 3 months you sell 2 million consoles, which is a 500 million dollar loss. That's a lot of games to sell- and brand new games, not 2nd hand.. In fact, you would be better off selling less, and starting to sell bigger numbers when production costs go down, even to when you make a small profit on each unit.

When the Wii came out, it was immediately sold at a profit, so it made sense to sell as many as possible. The Wii U isn't as financially sensible, so it may be in Nintendo's best interest to hold off on promoting the product. We know Nintendo have said they make their money back if people buy 2 games with the console, so you can imagine the loss isn't that great ($50?), but it's still a loss. Obviously there needs to be a breaking point at some time where the big games star to sell the Wii U, but it won't hurt Nintendo if the masses come along later, plus when all the teething problems go away.

Now imagine how much a PS4 will cost to produce and how much people will be willing to pay. Being successful early could actually do harm to Sony. And the same could be said with Xbox/Microsoft as well.

Basically what I'm saying is selling the most number of consoles doesn't necessarily make you the most successful business.

Well my understanding is that the cost to produce a system goes down over time due to volumes being sold. So actually you're sort of right, but if the system never takes off then it will never achieve the volumes that will translate into lower per-unit costs. So if the Wii U isn't moving by year-end I expect a drop in price just to try to jump start sales. I never bought a system in the GameCube era, but I was almost tempted when Nintendo discounted it towards the end. It would be an act of desperation to be sure so Nintendo is right to try to avoid doing that.

I chuckled triple.

@scollurio

why? because someone i rarely interface with decided to do his usual trolling one liners? whatever is replied to him just gets the same old, same old. which is why i rarely interface with him.

of course, now he will just come back at me with his predictable 'cleverness' as my saying anything makes me appear 'butt hurt'.

whatever floats your boats, guys.

Whatever rattles your saber

Nintendo is fine. Just play the dang games that you bought

That's odd, I'm not laughing at all. Knock it off, please.

edit: the OP probably has a decent idea about their question from those who took it seriously, so I'll go ahead and lock this since it's already fairly well derailed.