Nintendo Is Making US$ 40 with Every Wii, Autopsy Reveals (Kinda)

I know you don't understand a word of what that picture says (unless you are from Japan). This picture is from the Toyokeizai Online website, that cut open a Wii and examined it piece by piece. They did this in order to find out exactly how much does a Wii really cost.

This is what they found out: the graphics chip costs US$ 29.60, while the CPU only US$ 13, 00. DRAM is also very cheap, retailing for US$ 7.80. The Optical disk drive is probably the most expensive component of the Wii, costing US$ 31.00. The power supply, US$ 11.30 and manufacturing costs have been evaluated at US$ 19.50.

After doing some simple math, we find out that the total cost of the Wii is US 158.30. Given the fact that the Wii's wholesale price is US$ 195.99, we could say that Nintendo makes US$ 40 with every Wii.


As always, Nintendo is the only console manufacturer that is making money from next-gen consoles sales. But this Wii autopsy does not count the cost of manufacturing a Wiimote. I guess that if they took it into consideration, they would realize that Nintendo is not actually making money. Or at least, not that much money.

Also, the price of the onboard flash memory and SD card drive is also not taken into consideration. Those are really true journalists who care about revealing the truth to their audience...