Wii U 'profitable after one game purchase'

Nintendo has said its loss-making Wii U swings to profit with just a single game purchase along with the console.

[TheLyonKing]

Very strange margin but if true then it can't be much but a profit is still a profit I guess no matter how small.

[victoryscreeeeeech]

because a profit's a profit, no matter how small.

[shutUpAndTakeMyMoney]

I hope ps4 takes a year to be profitable. I want more power and a good price.

Ninty just used cheap hardware obviously. But still good business strategy.

[Deku-Johnny]

As Tesco would say "Every little helps".

[MsmackyM]

good job Nintendo.

[AWBrawler]

And we all know a new 2D Mario is gauranteed to sell big. They pretty much made their money back already lol

[eagle21]

Exactly, NSMBW sold 26 million copies...multiply that by around $40 to $49 and you can see that this game alone makes Nintendo so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!

[FinalomegaS]

does that include nintendoland bundled?

if so then that would be smart.

[nikola987]

no...

[TruthbeTold]

Why not? The Basic is $300, the Deluxe is $350, and comes with a game, a larger SD card, a bunch of extra plastic, the color most people want, and a deal on downloadable games. If you were to buy the basic and Nintendo Land, you're already at Deluxe cost. It's probably the Basic that they lose money on.

[Hicken]

Why wouldn't they have said this earlier? I mean, we've known for quite a while that they were taking a loss on each system; wouldn't that have been a good time to add in, "Oh, but we make that loss back if they buy just ONE game?"

I'm confused as to why they would wait so long to announce this.

[beerkeg]

Why do they NEED to announce this? Does it really matter to you?

EDIT:'I want to know how much of a profit do they make off a game and is it any game of just their first party titles? '

Why, are you going to make some pie charts?

[SilentNegotiator]

They're called investors. Ever heard of them?

Nintendo is publicly traded. Investors would have liked to have known that there's a profit after ONE game.

[beerkeg]

I didn't know Hicken was an investor.

EDIT:@Godchild1020

Fair enough.

[SilentNegotiator]

You wouldn't need to.

Nintendo should be keeping their investors informed regardless of whether Hicken is an investor or not.

[rainslacker]

Not sure of the exact numbers for how much they make off a game, but logic would dictate that they would make more off a 1st party title since they do not have to pay licensing cost and since they are also the publisher they get the entire profit from the game. If the game were published by 3rd party all they would receive is the licensing cost. Those costs vary depending on the game and publisher and what kinds of deals they may have with them, among many other factors.

It's good for them though, since it's likely that everyone will buy at least one game with their new system. This console isn't really an alternative for media uses IMO, so people wouldn't be buying it just to use as a blu-ray player the way some were for the PS3 at launch.

[Godchild1020]

I want to know how much of a profit do they make off a game and is it any game of just their first party titles?

How much was the lost on the Wii U, not much I guess? Anyway congratulations Nintendo.

@above, no pie chart. Just a general question. The question is not only towards Nintendo, but to Sony and Microsoft. Also Nintendo profit loss on each Wii U sold couldn't be that big unless their selling their games at a higher profit margin. That's why I ask, because all I have is speculations.

I'm a business/Psychology major, so I ask these questions often.

[badz149]

they announced this quite awhile back but I'm not so sure it was officially from Nintendo or some other websites were reporting it but this is not really "new"! but I can't find the source though

[Syntax-Error]

Any under-powered system can be sold for a profit at $300. Current gen is more powerful than this next gen product, so why shouldn't they make a profit. You're the fool if you feel you need this backward technological mistake. Either that or you're just as bad as Apple whores

[lilbroRx]

Unlike fanboys of the HD twins, Nintendo fans don't care who has the biggest numbers. Mario Galaxy 2 had great graphics and it didn't need HD to achieve them. Same with The Last Story and Xenoblade.

Nintendo makes its system to meet its requirements. The only way the system would be "underpowered" is if it couldn't do the things Nintendo wanted it to.

Nintendo is actually taking its customers finacial situations into account. That is why they try to make it consume little power and cost less. Also, I don't need 3 of the same damn system.

If all I wanted was power I would stick to the PC. Nintendo is the only company offering me something I can't get anywhere else.

[ThePsychoGamer]

"Unlike fanboys of the HD twins, Nintendo fans don't care who has the biggest numbers."

Oh, that must be why Nintendo fans on this site where constsitly talking about how powerful the system would be over the last year, cause they didn't care. /s

Nintendo fanboys play the number game just as much as any other fanboy, be it with specs or sales.

"Nintendo is the only company offering me something I can't get anywhere else."

If you honestly believe that Nintendo is the only company that offer unique experiences, then you yourself are a blind fanboy. Yakuza, LittleBigPlanet, Neptunia, Region Free gaming, and Uncharted, Journy, Heavy Rain all deliver great experiences unlike anything else offered by the PS3, And at the same time, Gears of War, Halo, Deadly Premintion, Infinite Undiscovery, and Blue Dragon are all experiences that unique to the 360

[pennywhyz]

Do i buy this system or not?So many mixed up articles.

[ronin4life]

If you are seriously considering getting one, get off n4g.
No person/article here is going to help you make that decision, as they are all extremes. Scan the well known sites (ign, kotaku, destructoid, gamespot, gamesradar etc.) and their comment sections instead.

[Godchild1020]

But you are helping him. There are people on here that can help. He/she just has to weed out the good from the bad.

I do agree, ask someone at your local retail store that has one or a Nintendo only site( just to get an idea). Do some research online; make sure the current games appeal to you, the price is okay for you and there are games coming out that appeal to you. Among other things of course.

[ronin4life]

Godchild@
Yeah lol. ^,^ That's true.
Just have to make sure you don't get caught in those who are overzealously loving or hateful towards it. Don't let hylerbole consume you, so to speak. The majority here are less than helpful to base an opinion on...@.@

[rainslacker]

As with most things on N4G, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Even the extremes can have useful information, it's just up to the person to separate the hyperbole from the truth.

[admiralvic]

I would look into whats coming out and play one to see for yourself. If you stay with a place like N4G for this information, then you can pretty much assume everything sucks and thats it.

You see, too many of the articles are based off "hard" data, which isn't entirely accurate. Many of these articles expected the 3DS to out sell the Nintendo DS at launch and just as many expected the Vita to be on par with the 3DS from day 1. While sales, hardware and other such data supports their claims, they often lack real logic. Like the 3DS was doomed before Monster Hunter (+ other JP games) / the drop in MSRP happened. Now articles act like the 3DS was a sure thing and the Vita is failing left and right. Where as the Vita lacks a quality FPS game, goes HUGE periods without a release and doesn't have that "system seller" in Japan. When system sells you'll see everyone acting like they always saw it coming and will mock something else. So while you might see a lot of negative articles towards the Wii U, remember that it's not exactly the specs that matter, but how the developers use them. Some games like Rayman Legends looks and plays extremely well. Sure it might be "under powered", yet it looks to be a lot more (at least graphic wise) than we saw with Origin, but people will ignore this to talk about cheap parts.

[MasterCornholio]

I was expecting a massive profit margin on each Wii U but I guess that Nintendo learnt their lesson from the 3DS.

Motorola RAZR i

[XboxInnovation]

Not bad for a system 3x as powerful as ps3

[KMCROC]

Sounds like Nintendo hired the GOP theoretical arithmetic professor to help them out & install a 5 point plan to be profitable. lol

[jmc8888]

Actually both sides are clueless with math, reality, identifying problems, figuring out solutions, and implementing them. Even if either side had 100 percent in congress and didn't have any excuses about the other party, we'd go nowhere but down.

Alot of it IS the fact we have political parties. Because then we get 'lesser of two evils' and 'I want my team to win', rather than what is the best idea and holding them to it. Oh I can't hold Obama to reality, because otherwise the republicans will win, or vice versa. So we get morons doing stupid crap and devoid of anything meaningful.

[KMCROC]

Dude it was a rip at the expense of the Romney campaign. Nothing more

[Deku-Johnny]

Well I'm getting two or three games with mine next Friday so Nintendo, you're welcome.

[jmc8888]

Well that means they're losing less than $10 per console. Though we still don't know if that means they're losing less than $10 on the basic or the premium?

Since if you buy one game Nintendo gets the standard fee like Sony/MS charge ($10).

Though, they could be talking about one of THEIR games, which if true, means it's a little higher than $10.

It's all about how they're setting things up. There's a lot of tricks in the world where they can say 'we're turning a profit, or housing prices are going up', when in reality, it's anything but the truth.

FWIW for housing it's keeping the short sales off the market, thus the AVERAGE goes up..even if the regular price for regular homes not involved in a short sale is still going down. Statistical trickery, it's more prevalent than you know. Is Nintendo?