Kayhan said:
Iwata has said that they intend to make money on every 3DS sold. And they sure have with the DS.
Now, I don't know what the 3DS costs Nintendo to manufacture, but it can't be cheap. Additionally,
Hardware companies never talk about the manufacturing prices but lets take the Wii it uses almost the same GC chipset clocked higher + wifi + 512mb local storage.
They sold the GC at a time before launching the Wii at $99 and still made profit, by the time the Wii came the manufacturing price for the console itself only shouldnt be more than $100 and got sold for $249.
Think about the DS it wasnt hi tech it was more like an n64 portable not like the psp, by the time the DS lite came out you saw it selling $149 and sometimes at $99 .
My DS lite broke and guarantee didnt cover it how much do you think did i pay for the replacement ? $20 thats it .
The 3DS hardware is nice but isnt Hi tech too it has almost the same features as the DSi with a new board which isnt exactly using the newest GPU tech its somewhere between the year 2006 and 2010.
The 3DS touch screen costs $10 and 3d display costs between $20-$30 the GPU should be near that price range.
Maybe now you will have and idea about Hardware manufacturing costs.
they can sell the 3DS at $149 and make profit, but not enough, thats why it will cost $199.
Kayhan said:
I think demand for the 3DS will be HUGE right out of the gate. Why not charge as much as you can get away with at launch?
I agree with Pachter that the Wii got priced to cheap. I think Nintendo agrees too, and this time they won't make that mistake. Don't leave money on the table.
It will be huge at launch but the only bottleneck for the 3DS now could be the price $249 is simply insane and would be shitty business decision for the mass market.
Why not charge as much as they can ? cause they arent Activision and $199 is the most they can charge at launch.
Pachter is best friends with Kotick now thank god nintendo isnt, the Wii had the right price at $249, just $50 bucks more and it could have killed the Wii even if it was going for $500 at ebay,those were the die hard nintendo fans who bought it for this price.
If nintendo would have agreed to it they would have sold the Wii themselfs for $500 but who would buy it for that price from nintendo?.
$199 is the right pricepoint.