Hardware Switch costs roughly $257 to manufacture

[Kioku]

No need to enter a super detailed discussion on why I do not believe the number posted on Twitter. I can make several arguments as to why it probably does not cost that much, the same way you can make a number of arguments as to confirming the $257 price.

It all comes down to what each considers common sense to be, and what each is willing to believe in.

At the end of the day, all I want is for the Switch to be successful and not become a Wii U 2. At this point, the offers from Microsoft and Sony are home based computers that they call "consoles", so really we can only hope that Nintendo sets itself apart from this.

I've got some high hopes for this console.. Can't say I ever did for the Wii U.. Even the name was awful.. lol

 

[Gadd]

I've got some high hopes for this console.. Can't say I ever did for the Wii U.. Even the name was awful.. lol

name sucked, but I put it up there with the dreamcast as "greatest consoles that were a commercial failure"

 

[WhiteMaze]

I've got some high hopes for this console.. Can't say I ever did for the Wii U.. Even the name was awful.. lol

name sucked, but I put it up there with the dreamcast as "greatest consoles that were a commercial failure"

The Wii U was a fantastic system. We all know the problem was not the console itself, but the approach Nintendo had with it. Same problem with the fantastic SEGA Dreamcast.

I'll freaking buy the Switch. I'll god damn waste $300 again in hopes that we won't be f**** in the ass again. But this is a last chance for Nintendo to finally give the consumer what it wants, and stop assuming we want what the company wants. I'm tired of their bullshit.

Finally ditching Region-Lock and initial Third party Support list, give a little piece of mind. But the Switch is a baby in its cradle. It can very easily fuck up instantly from here on out.

I'm watching Nintendo. I'm fucking watching.

 

[Kioku]

The Wii U was a fantastic system. We all know the problem was not the console itself, but the approach Nintendo had with it. Same problem with the fantastic SEGA Dreamcast.

I'll freaking buy the Switch. I'll god damn waste $300 again in hopes that we won't be f**** in the ass again. But this is a last chance for Nintendo to finally give the consumer what it wants, and stop assuming we want what the company wants. I'm tired of their bullshit.

Finally ditching Region-Lock and initial Third party Support list, give a little piece of mind. But the Switch is a baby in its cradle. It can very easily fuck up instantly from here on out.

I'm watching Nintendo. I'm fucking watching.

I know exactly how you feel. Ha! I think they're afraid of going the route of Sega. Their quality significantly dropped after they went strictly software. At least, in my opinion.

 

[FAST6191]

The Wii U was a fantastic system. We all know the problem was not the console itself, but the approach Nintendo had with it. Same problem with the fantastic SEGA Dreamcast.

That is quite the claim. Previously when people tried to tell me the name was the main problem we get to trot out the awful support from library makers, awful online, extremely suspect hardware design and more besides and that would speak in part to things other than Nintendo's approach.
The Dreamcast got some great stuff before its demise but I am not sure what I can really compare between them. They would seem to be rather different worlds and rather different causes from where I sit.

 

[Enteking]

The numbers do not seem right. Probably they overestimated the costs for display and TX1 chip and underestimated Nintendo's price negotiation skills. They system would be a complete design failure if it was so expensive in production, given the extremely weak hardware.

 

[Gadd]

it's like someone said...this is off the shelf hardware, nvidia had a lot of these and nintendo got a sweetheart deal on them. the alternative was for them to join E.T. in the landfill!

 

[Mr. Wizard]

it's like someone said...this is off the shelf hardware, nvidia had a lot of these and nintendo got a sweetheart deal on them. the alternative was for them to join E.T. in the landfill!

I doubt they would be worth as much as those games 35 years from now though...

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/video-games/those-old-e-t-atari-games-dug-desert-sold-108-n418971

 

[ov3rkill]

Technological advancement is fast, anyway. Electronics gets cheaper as time goes. Unless if there will be some weird shortages of components and high demand, that's where the prices skyrocket. Otherwise, it will get cheaper.

 

[laudern]

That is quite the claim. Previously when people tried to tell me the name was the main problem we get to trot out the awful support from library makers, awful online, extremely suspect hardware design and more besides and that would speak in part to things other than Nintendo's approach.
The Dreamcast got some great stuff before its demise but I am not sure what I can really compare between them. They would seem to be rather different worlds and rather different causes from where I sit.

I agree. The dreamcast was miles ahead of the competition. I was actually playing my DC last night with the keyboard and mouse (quake 3 & UT) connected to my TV via vga. The visuals are still impressive. God damn it still amazes me that a console this great was released in 1999.

The wii u also amazes me, but for entirely different reasons which are not positive.

 

[WhiteMaze]

I b

That is quite the claim. Previously when people tried to tell me the name was the main problem we get to trot out the awful support from library makers, awful online, extremely suspect hardware design and more besides and that would speak in part to things other than Nintendo's approach.
The Dreamcast got some great stuff before its demise but I am not sure what I can really compare between them. They would seem to be rather different worlds and rather different causes from where I sit.

Both systems lacked features that the other competitors had, but that by no means made them bad consoles. What they lacked in, they made up for in innovation to set themselves apart.

Of course, the Wii U will likely never achieve the "Legend" status of the Dreamcast and it's huge fan base ( me included ), but the Wii U was a great system that could have done much better, had Nintendo marketed it better, and given the consumers what they asked for along with what Nintendo wanted to do. Instead, Nintendo tried to force on us what they would like us to buy, not what we actually demanded. In the end, Nintendo ended up paying for it, dearly.

Essentially, the biggest difference from the Dreamcast to the Wii U, is that while SEGA gave its costumers what they wanted: a fantastic console, superior to the competition and full of their favorite franchises and games, Nintendo didn't give the software part of the deal.

Unfortunately, the Dreamcast failed due to a combination of bad marketing, piracy and lack of support from retailers.

On the other hand Nintendo: I don't want to play motion controlled bowling. I don't want Mario bowling either. I want the standard Mario games I know and love, but I also want to play Battlefield 3 or GTA.

Nintendo gave its costumers an awesome console, but didn't give consumers the software that they wanted. Nintendo thought the "gimmicky" and other cheap to produce motion control games, was going to give itself a second Wii Golden Age.

That wasn't the case. The hype and novelty had died down. Kind of like 3D movies. Or Pokemon Go.

Nintendo got greedy and went as far as to headbutt with it's own costumers, and ultimately paid the price.

 

[FAST6191]

In the sense that the wii u was a computing platform that was reasonably able to push enough to pixels and compute enough data to have games play on it then sure. For all practical purposes, no it was not a good design. Time was you could get away with releasing some somewhat quirky hardware if it in turn could do something special. The wii u was not that and the world has moved somewhat towards software. Multiple screens and, despite the damage to the term the wii u might have done, the asymmetric gaming stuff could have gone somewhere but it was hardly a trait unique to the console (see also you can connect your phone to it that MS and Sony launched at the same time).

While I am unlikely to sing the praises of Nintendo's Wii U marketing I can not attribute but a small fraction of it all to marketing alone. Any number of far smaller games and devices gain real grass roots traction should it actually work and be fun. Had Nintendo really invested in things I could sort of see it, however this was not a "build it and they will come" situation and Nintendo seemed to have gone one worse and imagined it was the SNES again and developers should be lining up to thank them for allowing the opportunity to put games out on their device.

As such there is not a smidge of a "what might have been" floating around in my head for the wii u.

Comparing it then to the dreamcast really does not do much for me, the failure modes and worlds in which it all went down are just that different to me.

 

[kumikochan]

No it doesn't cost that much ! People are forgetting buying in bulks makes for major discounts plus less taxes.

 

[FAST6191]

Nobody is saying otherwise, and I doubt anybody would. However the article is behind a paywall and nobody has bothered to pay for it so as to get the bill of materials or any other analysis that might have been done for the article and we are all left with the title and the do nothing free first page.
To that end nobody can really offer an opinion on what the article got wrong or got right, I suppose I could do my own using something like https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nintendo+Switch+Teardown/78263 or get one to pull apart myself but I am way too lazy for that right now.

That said going by bill of materials, manufacture costs, R&D, advertising and such for similar products (it is an ARM tablet, plenty of those out there in the world*) and extrapolating a bit I can see that being somewhat in line with what Nintendo have paid for this, I would be completely stunned it was $100 less. If Nintendo does not wrap up this whole mess and actually continues to go on with it then R&D will be paid for, advertising will be lesser or attributed to other things (new games or something), suppliers will decrease prices as their own R&D costs get taken care of and so on and so on but right now you get to count it all.

*though actually looking at https://www.statista.com/statistics/299144/samsung-smartphone-shipments-worldwide/ Samsung alone often ship more phones per quarter than the lifetime totals of all but the top 5 consoles, http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/ and even in their lesser quarters it is only down to top 10 console lifetime sales. Nobody sensible would believe Nintendo would ship more than 30 million switches in the first year and thus they would also lose out on some of the sweet bulk deals you speak of.

 

[pikatsu]

These portable devices from phones to consoles have manufacturing costs like from $50 to $100. The rest of the price are profit, salaries, storing and some other costs

 

[Kioku]

These portable devices from phones to consoles have manufacturing costs like from $50 to $100. The rest of the price are profit, salaries, storing and some other costs

Nice generalization of the industry. That's actually wrong. Granted, the costs to profit margin isn't nearly this small when it comes down to it.

The iPhone 7 for instance: http://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-much-the-iphone-7-costs-to-make/

So, we'll have to wait and see if some other company can come out and show us. Searching up this particular link gives us ~170 for the console and dock itself.. And 90 for the joycons... Seems a bit high.. But it's something, other than speculation and guesses.

 

[Yil]

Now we know Nvidia is the evil one. Hope the revision get the proper spec when AMD destory Nvidia with Vega.