What makes you think that nintendo pays more for those IPS screens? or they even care about that even remotely?
Nintendo uses different suppliers and that changes all the time. for example switch had only 2 different screens that got produced in 2016, in 2017 it had 4 suppliers and therefore 4 different screens. Why? because company's could not sustain the crowd and the majority of the screens for this year will be produced by a complete different company which result in clear visible changes.
What if that company has a IPS line that is currently not doing much? but there TN line is completely decked out? will they say to nintendo, Na we can't. Nintendo will just search for another company to create them 10's of millions of screen's and there is a big chance this company could even lose its TN line as result. they will ram there IPS line open and push tons of screens even if they would not make them any profit as result just to keep there client happy and on board.
Most of these company's just absorb the costs themselves in order to get contracts.
This happens in every single sector i experienced. From productions towards even government contractors.
Nintendo can demand whatever they want as they are the client with massive amounts of orders and money behind it. Or do you think nintendo would have paid a fortune for those tegra switch chips also? they probably got them for peanuts as nvidia rails in a massive market they can brag with, gets cash to innovate and gets market share. It's a win no matter what.
All nintendo cares about is the hardware is done and the products are pressed. Those 99 boxes will just be filled with the same lineup of 3DS as the 150 buck boxes. The only thing that changes are the boxes.
This even gets confirmed more by the fact they do not sell IPS or TN for higher or lower prices or give you any option. They just throw them in.
Why would you even see 3DS handhelds with a IPS screen and a TN screen combined? Exactly because of those reasons. The lines just throw whatever screen they got.
This is also why Nintendo isn't going to replace your screens with IPS, because most likely they don't have a idea which screen is and which aren't without testing it themselves.
Even on PC market this gets done with CPU's / Video cards / Motherboards etc. Company's would ship to consumers on discount a GPU that normally costed 200 bucks for 120 bucks on black friday, however the hardware they actually got was a 500 buck gpu. How's that possible? how could they even sell that? Because the company produced 10x 500 buck cards, and 90x 200 buck cards, but they only got 2 buyers for that 500 buck card and 98 people that wanted 200 buck card. ( well the company that puts that producer to work )
So what do they do? open the production line again and press those 8 cards again? lol nope. They will just deliver those 500 buck cards and software flesh it to limit it.
It's called better yields and binning etc.
How the contracts exactly work with nintendo is something only nintendo and those company's know through obvious reasons.
However even if nintendo paid more for those IPS screen's. Why would they care to exclude it from the 99 buck bundle? can they get more money out of it by pushing it in the 150 buck bundle? nope. The end result is still going to cost them the same amount of cash. Because why push IPS even remotely then into the 3DS? they could also just ship TN in that 150 buck and make even more money?
So that's why i said, that reasoning isn't making much sense to me. It's clear IPS gets pushed forwards because of supply constrains on the TN solution. It could even be that company's are no longer producting TN lineups for 3D but only IPS. But nintendo still has large stocks of screens from XL and Normal 3DS and mix those with eachother as result to clear stock. That's nothing abnormal for those company's.
Hell even TV manufacturers ship TV's with different screens tech's for the same model all the time.
New 3DS IPS screens exist, and they are out there.
Last edited by jaap123,
