log:
Oct 2003 - Nintendo production had been stopped due to low demand so a $99 is put into place. SUPRISE - sales jump higher than expcected.
Jan 2004 - Rev C Gamecubes are manufactured to meet demand.
May 2004 - Shipments hit the US market
Jun 2004 - 650,000 units shipped last quater and profits double for Nintendo
remember if they are on a store shelf, the manufacturer has already been PAID.
I can always get a life, can trolls EVER stop being trolls?
I got my gamecube from radioshack for 99.00. Now if nintendo got that whole 99 bucks, they might have made a profit. But they didnt, RadioShack took a cut. After all, they have advertising, stores and land to pay for, sales staff to pay, management overhead, etc. So radio shack makes say 25 bucks. Now theres almost always a middle man, ie the distributor that doles the machines out to the retail outlets. They have buildings/land/staff etc. So say they make 10 bucks off that device. Of course the device had to get to the distributor, probably via some sort of shipping company, who charges a fee, say 5 bucks. Of course, every time money shifts hands, the government takes a cut, sales tax, import/export taxes. Lets say uncle sam gets 2 bucks. So with our most likely generous figure here, Nintendo makes 57 dollars on that gamecube.
Nintendo probably cant make a gamecube for 57 bucks. Lets say they can though, for arguments sake. Now take into account HQ sales staff, management, programmers, hardware engineers, QA staff, the guys in the mail room, the janitor, building and land to pay for, etc. Add in the advertising budget so kids can see the game cube commercials on tv, the magazine ads, trade shows, traveling promoters, etc.
Looks like a net loss on the device. But it doesnt even matter really, because the sale of the device is just a small part of the over all business model.
Now when you zoom out you see that they make their money selling games, licensing agreements with third party developers, accessories, nintendo power magazine, roayalties from patents, selling technology to other companies, service, and a dozen other things.
And they are cash flow positive, and pretty much always have been, which is a good thing, because ive gotten a lot of enjoyment over the years using their stuff.
Focusing on one small part of the picture ( the sale of the console ) is just missing the point, and arguing for arguings sake.
Now if everybody who submitted a comment to this thread just boned up on their c/c++ we could port mono over to AROS and expand the software library for the platform to some insaine level.
