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Nintendo in profit on each Wii sold

Its rivals aren't

Every Wii nets Nintendo $6, but the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 don’t produce any profit for Sony and Microsoft, a market analyst has claimed.

David Gibson from Macquarie Securities said in a Forbes magazine report that – unlike its competitors – Nintendo has “figured out how to make money from its console sales”.

That's console hardware sales - console makers generally do very nicely, thank you, out of the software.

The Japanese games giant is quids on the hardware, Gibson claimed, because it buys in inexpensive components instead of making them in-house.

If Gibson’s estimate is correct, then Nintendo has made a massive $210m (£141m/€166m) from Wii sales so far, given that the firm recently announced global sales in the region of 35m units.

Microsoft has only broken even on its 25m or so Xbox 360 shipments, while Sony’s actually lost money despite selling about 17m PS3s, the report added.

Latest Comments

The reason Nintendo wins:

Software. Plain and simple. Nintendo is as strict with its licensing as Apple (but gets no flack??). When Nintendo had gotten so strict that they were throttling developers, in swooped Sony with the PS1 and insanely lax game vetting, and had a MAJOR success. Now Ninty's putting as much effort into its releases as it did in the late eighties/early-nineties, it's back on top. Sony/MS are now fumbling with emerging technologies (HD, WebContent, MotionControl), while Nintendo have stuck to their guns (pretty much) and just sells fun.

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Oh yeah?

Xboxes breaking even? Not at £129 they're not, although that still seems a lot for a door-stop.

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@Ashley Pomeroy

It's zigurat.

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@Ian Michael Grumby

You can boot up Linux on a Wii, that's no great feat mate. I think engineering a device that enterprising hackers *aren't* able to get Linux running on would be more of an achievement.

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@Ashley Pomeroy

I remember Sonic 2 being harder on the GG than the MS because the first boss had bouncing cannonballs you had to jump over or duck under and you couldn't see them as well on the GG screen (they bounced out of the screen, but not on the MS). GG was good with some really good titles..

After that there was the Mega System and the Mega CD (32-bit!!!). One of my mates had a NeoGeo (his dad was rich), which was amazing. Oh and then there's the Saturn.

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