"See, I Told You So..."

You may remember, some time back, my saying that the Nintendo Wii was better, and a better value, than the Sony Playstation 3. (The XBOX360, also, although I didn't specifically mention it there.)

It appears everyone else agreed with me.

So, let's sum things up, shall we?

The Microsoft XBOX360 first hit stores in the 4th quarter of 2005; the Wii hit a year later; the Playstation 3 hit at the same time - almost exactly - as the Wii.

So, how are they doing?

XBOX360: 5,400,000 sold to date.

Playstation 3: 3,600,000 sold to date.

Wii: 7,370,000 sold to date.

I would note that that's just short of as many as the competition COMBINED.

Noooooo, Nintendo had a BAD idea, making the system affordable, and all. Microsoft's XBOX division has so far lost - LOST - over 4 BILLION dollars, and they expect to begin making a profit on the hardware - by unit, not total - sometime in 2008.

Sony is still losing literally hundreds of dollars a unit on the PS3 hardware, with no end in sight for that particular cost.

Nintendo, however, seems to be doing quite well. Considering the actual hardware costs them around $160 to make, and the console sells for $249, Nintendo has been making a profit from day 1.

Let's play with that a bit, shall we?

Assume that the stores selling the system give it a 10% markup to get to the $249 price point, and that it's been marked up before - in fact, so much, that Nintendo itself only makes $40 on each system.

That's likely fairly close to accurate, by the way; 10% markup is in fact a bit high for a big-box store. On hardware, anyway; where they gaffle you is on accessories. Those printer cartridges? They do NOT cost Best Buy $20 anything. More like $5.

But at any rate: let's look at this.

$40 per console, times 7.37 million, means Nintendo has made a tidy sum of $294, 800,000 thus far, just on the hardware alone.

That may not sound like a lot, true. But bear in mind that Microsoft has lost $4 BILLION from their gaming department, and while Sony's losses are as yet undisclosed, they were big enough for Ken Kutaragi, former head of their entire gaming division, to resign from his job two months ago.

And only Nintendo is making a profit. Because their game system costs less.

And I told you so.

So neener.