During its semi-annual financial results briefing, Nintendo revealed that its upcoming Wii U console will be sold at a loss.
"Rather than determining a price based on its manufacturing cost, we selected one that consumers would consider to be reasonable," Nintendo president Satoru Iwata explained. "In this first half of the term before the launch of the Wii U, we were not able to make a profit on software for the system while we had to book a loss on the hardware, which is currently in production and will be sold below cost."
Nintendo’s most recent handheld, the 3DS, suffered from underwhelming market performance until Nintendo decided to sell it at a loss. A few months ago, the company finally managed to reduce 3DS production costs enough to make a tiny profit on each unit sold.
