Nintendo 3DS contains £60 in bits
Cheap as chips
Nintendo's 3DS may set customers back £200 in many places, but it only contains 60 quid's worth of parts, apparently.
UBM TechInsights has been taking apart hardware again, this time estimating the cost of the components used to make the 3DS is $101 (£62), roughly £10 more than the cost of the bits in the DSi, which launched in 2009 for £149.
iHS iSuppli backs up this figure. It conducted a breakdown of the 3DS and reached similar values.
It's no surprise that the 3D display, coupled with the touchscreen are the most expensive components, clocking in at $34 (£21).
Obviously other costs aren't factored into this total price, such as labour, marketing, packaging and R&D, but surly there's a lot of profit being made down the line. What are the retailers making from this venture?
According to Eurogamer, Nintendo is charging retailers £170 per unit, which means that there is very little money to be made, especially when you consider some are selling it for £180.
However, such retailers are gambling on making much more from games and accessories, from which they can fetch up to 60 per cent profit.
Nintendo certainly appears to be making money from the console itself, but it has plenty of room to bring down the price in the future. ®
COMMENTS
Age old saying
"Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it." - Publius Syrius
It could cost £5 in parts and be assembled for pennies by children in a chinese sweatshop (In fact that second bit is probably closer to the truth than they'll admit), but you could still sell the things for £100+ because the general public are always willing to pay the money for stuff like this.
R&D
How much R&D is involved in slapping a 3D screen on something already on the market? Given the price difference between the DS and 3DS, it appears to come to >£50 per unit.
Of course..
..they could be keeping the price artificially high so that they can *ahem* lower it when Sony release the NGP this winter. This probably also explains why the release games aren't the big guns we'd hoped for: "Hey look! The 3DS is now £30 cheaper and Mario Kart, Lylat Wars and Super-Super Mario 3D Extreme Makeover are also released!!"
Hmm...
