Post by Ztrl on Jun 17, 2006 22:15:40 GMT -5
June 7, 2006 - A typical notion for the videogame industry is that of fairly substantial financial losses during the introductory phase of a new console with the expectation that costs will decline as component prices drop and production efficiency increases. However, in a press conference in Tokyo yesterday, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata stated that the Wii would buck this trend and have fairly minimal losses.
Iwata called the notion that the introduction of a new gaming console necessarily leading to significant losses in its initial stages "strange." Iwata went on to state that Nintendo "can't promise we [the company] won't even have a one yen loss, but we are not expecting an enormous loss."
By way of comparison, Sony told investors and analysts to expect that the introduction of the PlayStation 3 would lead to an estimated $884 million loss for the games division in the upcoming fiscal year while Microsoft has admitted that the amount spent on the Xbox 360 was higher than anticipated.
With the Wii's North American launch price to be less than $250, the company expects consoles sales of around 6 million units and software sales of about 17 million units by March 2007
Iwata called the notion that the introduction of a new gaming console necessarily leading to significant losses in its initial stages "strange." Iwata went on to state that Nintendo "can't promise we [the company] won't even have a one yen loss, but we are not expecting an enormous loss."
By way of comparison, Sony told investors and analysts to expect that the introduction of the PlayStation 3 would lead to an estimated $884 million loss for the games division in the upcoming fiscal year while Microsoft has admitted that the amount spent on the Xbox 360 was higher than anticipated.
With the Wii's North American launch price to be less than $250, the company expects consoles sales of around 6 million units and software sales of about 17 million units by March 2007
