" It's a big deal b/c Nintendo NEVER does this. "

With the exception if the 3DS of course, but you are right, they never sold a console with a loss at launch.

According to Nintendo, they didn't sold the 3DS at a loss, when they launched it.

We're not actually sure that's true. I had my suspicions about the Gamecube: It was sold incredibly cheaply. They remained eminently profitable throughout that period on the back of the GBA and GC software but I have my suspicions that in the early days at least, Nintendo may have accepted a modest loss per unit. Nothing extravagant like > $100. I suspect something similar may be true for Wii U. I'd been doing crappy back of the envelope out-of-my-butt calculations for the cost of the Wii U and came out with a total of $366, not including licensing fees, import duty, retail tax, R&D and marketing costs, but then I also had the CPU pegged at a totally made up $60 and the GPU at $55. More likely the other way around with the CPU a bit cheaper and the GPU a bit more expensive. Assuming I'm a only a bit wrong (laughable, yes), I think it tally's with a very modest loss on the premium unit, and a more daring but affordable venture on the 'cheapo' machine, hence their keeness on the higher one, without breaking the low one ala the ill fated Xbox 'tard' pack. We'll know how much they're hurtin' by the shipment ratios of the two propositions.

The controller is crazy expensive, yes.

Where did you read that it can't do 1080 at 60 fps? I hadn't heard that before.

Perhaps if you take into account shipment, game pad and a 1st/3rd party game, they'll sell the pack at a loss. This without taking into account Marketing.

Perhaps this news is just intentional PR, it's not very important that they sell at a loss or not as long as everyone talks about it.

Most of money is in the controller, but it's not like everything else in the system is low end. The system has proven it can do 1080p at 60 fps... no idea where you are pulling that nonsense from.

"can't push 1080 at 60fps" is not true...Activision as well as others have said that it can do this.

You are right, the WiiU can do 1080p at 60fps, but there's grounds to believe that it might struggle at providing a rocksolid 60fps at 1080p for this gen games

Source: http://timothylottes.blogspot.ca/2012/09/e6760.html

"Source: http://timothylottes.blogspot.ca/2012/09/e6760.html "

Funny how unproven internet rumours based on emails from AMD PR people, that say nothing but that the graphics chip of the Wii U is based on an AMDs GPU generation from 2011 are blown up to " there's grounds to believe". But even the people who make calculations based on this internet rumours expect the Wii U GPU to be about 3 times as fast as the 360 GPU, which seems to be fast enough for 60 FPS in 1080p, when it comes to current gen games.
In the end, who cares about possible 60 FPS games, if developers can squeeze more details in the game, when running it at 30 FPS, they will always do.

Dammit, Nintendo Defense Force arrived. Run away!!!

I like how people focus on the comment that mattered the least. Yes the Wii U is underpowered enough that it will struggle at 60 fps. The source? The hardware itself. This will become a big deal for PS4/720 ports as they will push much higher textures and poly counts. Is 1080p 60fps possible? Anything is possible. Is it practical? Nope. You will see games dumped down to 720p or 30fps to compensate.

If you think the Wii U hardware is a shinning example of next gen tech, please wait 1 more year.

" Dammit, Nintendo Defense Force arrived. Run away!!! "

So, you say the device, that is still not on the market will have problems running games at 60 FPS in 1080p and your source is a blog entry, commenting on an internet rumour, a blog entry in which the author states. the he believes the Wii U GPU to be at least 3x as powerful as the 360's GPU, which would mean pretty much capable of running current games in 1080p 60 FPS?

It doesn't take the Nintendo Defence Force, it's a case for the Common Sense Defence Force.

@ Jonathan
No PS4/720 even announced. You are comparing the specs of a console not even released with the specs of consoles not even announced. You must have access to the most powerful crystal ball I have ever seen.

"It is common sense that the next consoles from Sony/Microsoft will be much more powerful than the Wii U."

It is common sense, that it's highly speculative to discuss the tech specs of unannounced consoles, even more in a situation, when the industry is crashing like in 2012. I don't see a PS4 and honestly, I don't see a 720, as powerful as people are imagining right now. IF MS will make a new console, it will be a 360 Advance, moderate faster hardware, integrated Kinect 2 and full backwards compability. Sony is broke, they won't release any new console soon.

"but it isn't like the 80s. There won't be a "crash" like there was before."

You are right it's worse then the 80s, because in the 80s video games weren't the multi billion dollar business they are today.
I am pretty sure in 2012, more people in the gaming business were laid off, then ever worked in the video games industry before the 1983 crash and what you call a "downturn" is a 29% YoY decline so far.
This is an an industry used to double digit rise in sales rates and with development and marketing costs rising in high double digit rates between the hardware generations. A 29% YoY decline is a crash in every business, in the games industry it's close to Armageddon.

"The difference in size of the industry between the 80s and now is not even comparable."

????? That was what I already said, you were the one who bought up the crash in the 1980s, not me?

Again, the development and marketing costs nearly doubled between each generation since the Super NES days, it only worked, because revenues at the end of the cycle of each generation were high above the revenues the generation started with.
2005 marked the highest revenues, the industry had seen at this time (http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/13/technology/personaltech/gamesales/), this means revenues were much higher, then ever in the previous generations higher then during the Playstation 1 era, the Super NES/Genesis, the NES era and the VCS era.
2012 is right now vaguely on par with 2005 (maybe even lower), but since 2005, the budget for video games exploded, AAA games cost more in development and the marketing efforts made to make the game a success are higher then ever before.
This means less profits and for many companies, it means losses. This means, these companies simply can't afford to develop for another platform with much higher tech specs, because it doesn't make sense to spend a higher budget on a device, with a small install base.
In the past, these fears were overcome by the hope, that the old consoles would be gone in no time and in fact, the SNES and the PS1 vanished quickly, after the generation change.
But during this generation consumers showed a never before seen love for their old consoles, the PS2 was relevant much longer, then any other console before and much longer, then any console, with a successor on the market.
A hypothetical new generation, much more powerful in hardware would end up, were the Vita ended, in total insignificance.
I remember many people demanding a new Sony portable, but as far as I see, all these vocal people aren't buying a Vita, even if the device offers them the games, they were waiting for (Uncharted, Fifa, LBP, Persona 4).

"People will still buy games. It is a mainstream form of entertainment now, like movies, sports, etc..."
Yeah, this was what Marvel, Image and DC told everybody too, during the 90s and look, were the US comic market ended.

"I like how people focus on the comment that mattered the least."

I brought it up because it was the only one that I wasn't aware of. I knew about the others, and have no major disagreements with them. (Sure, there are many Wii U buyers who won't use up the hard drive space, but compared to other current gen consoles, it is not a decent HDD.)

"And comics were never as lucrative as video games. You offer a niche form of entertainment for comparision, instead of movies and sports, which video games is more akin to. "

Niche form of entertainment? During the 1960s the weekly print run of The Adventures of Superman was 1 million (from which 500000-800000 were usually sold), even the lesser selling titles never went below 150000 and the market was expanding till the 1980s, with more and more titles published every year, during the 1980s, both DC and Marvel had several dozen titles on the newsstands every week. This means, when it comes to the number of readers, comics were most likely much more mainstream and widespread, then video games.
Leaves the money made with comics, what you call lucrative.
Every single issue of these comics was filled with paid ads for toys and movies (and later video games), that raised the total revenues, the comics were generating every single week.

Just as an example, the revenues generated at newstands by selling "Adventures of Superman" during 1965 were 5 million, adjusted for inflation, 5 million in 1965 equal 35 million in 2011, keep in mind, that magazines always make more money with ads, then with the cover price, keep in mind, that "Adventures of Superman" was a single title (not even the best selling) to get an idea what revenues comics generated in the past.

"Call of Duty makes 1 billion with a single game"

What's this comparing worldwide revenues to US revenues? Besides CoD is by far the best selling game of the western industry, hardly the norm.

"So pardon me if I don't have the numbers handy because it is my feeling they are a poor comparision. "

Then I can give you the numbers, in 1991 X-Men #1 sold 8.1 million copies in the US alone. That's only a single issue in a monthly series. If selling 8.1 million units of a comic book in the US alone in a single month is "a niche form of entertainment", then video games surely are no mainstream at all.
And when it comes to revenues, it may skipped your attention, but I pointed it out before, comics come with tons of paid ads and you can be sure, if you are able to sell 8 million units of a single comic book, the prices for these ads are extremely high. It surely isn't a billion, but CoD makes a billion dollar over the course of 12 months and it costs something like 100+ million dollar to make a CoD and to market it. So, the profit of a CoD game is nowhere near 1 billion US$ in a single year.

One of the problems of this industry is, that it's overestimating itself. Video games are still a young medium, still an infant. Video games aren't Hollywood, movies and sports (the things, you compared games too) are something for everybody, video games are not, people are interested in movies and the people making them, that's why there is an enormous gossip industry, athletes are paid hundreds of millions, just to print their faces on soft drink bottles, impossible to imagine something even remote close for video games. Comics are much more the cultural league games are playing in.
Will video games be around in 10 years? Most probably. In 50 years? I don't know, right now, it doesn't look good, games aren't evolving, millions of paying customers are turning their back on the medium. If this trend continues, video games will be "a niche form of entertainment" before to long, but unlike comics, they don't have the benefit of being collectors items.
Collectors kept the comics industry alive in it's worst years during the late 1990s and early 2000s, I wonder what the emergency plan for video games could be, when most of the paying customers loose interest in what the industry has to offer to them?
And maybe it's exactly that what we see happening right now, 30% lesser software revenues means most likely more then 30% lesser customers, because the hardcore gamer still buying the hardcore gamer titles is always willing to buy more gamers, then the average gamer, which bought the tons of middle market titles, the market segment that collapsed completely.

Muwhahaha. This must be a record for most replies ever! Look if I'm right we'll find out in a few months. If I'm wrong, boo hoo, hoo hoo hoo, boo on me.

If I feel like it I'll be back in a couple days to see how much more this thread can grow. I looked at the hardware, looked at Nintendo's track record of underpowered over hyped consoles cough N64, cough GC, cough Wii and theorized this was a logical outcome.

"I looked at the hardware, looked at Nintendo's track record of underpowered over hyped consoles cough N64, cough GC, cough Wii and theorized this was a logical outcome. "

I looked at the hardware and look at track record of Nintendo's competitors over not recognising hardware key features cough black and white display without light on Gameboy results in long battery time cough touch screen on an handheld cough gimmicky motion controls and theorized this was the logical outcome.

Not just that, I think the comment got posted on the wrong article.

I quote, from Foxconn:

"Our investigation has shown that the interns in question, who ranged in age from 14 to 16, had worked in that campus for approximately three weeks."

Yep. That totally explains the decreased production costs.