Rumor: Wii U parts total $180, minimum $300 price tag expected
Forget The Box published a new speculatory report about the Wii U’s pricing today. The site’s “sources closely involved with manufacturing and distributing Nintendo products” claim that the console’s various parts total roughly $180. The Wii U’s controller, meanwhile, apparently won’t cost more than $50 to produce.
The same source believes a minimum $300 price tag should be expected, adding:
“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. ”
One of the Wii U’s touted features, fear field communication (NFC), is essentially “a drop in the bucket”. The source says that this functionality should cost $5 at most:
“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 source said the following regarding the controller’s other manufacturing costs:
“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.”
And on the hardware overall:
“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.”
Concerning the Wii U tablet, Forget The Box believes the “cost of materials would be slightly less than what Kinect cost when it was first released for the Xbox 360.” A breakdown of Microsoft’s accessory added up to approximately $56 following launch.
As is the case with each rumor we post on the site, take this report with a few grains of salt.
