"Nintendo sold 251,794 of its newest game machines in May, outselling Sony's PlayStation 3 consoles five to one"You might say "Oh, it's because the Wii is cheaper." Even so, let's look at the dollars. Warning: Math Ahead!
The Japanese Wii is 25,000 yen (around $204). The Japanese PS3 low-end model is 49,980 yen (around $409). So in May, Nintendo grossed 6,294,850,000 yen ($51.6 million), and selling 1/5 of the units Nintendo did (around 50,000 units), Sony grossed 2,516,932,824 yen ($20.64 million). By the way -- I realize they didn't really gross this as the prices I used are retail prices, not wholesale.
Taking those yen figures, let's say Nintendo's console cost the same as the PS3. Take their profits (6.2 billion yen) divided by the price of the PS3 (49,980 yen) and you get 125,947. That's still 2.5 times as many units as the PS3 sold in May.
On a quick side note, the Wii is outselling the Xbox360 by almost 22 to 1.
), but it is a small issue with the general public, especially given the price to incorporate! I truly think the VG market is fragmenting, and Nintendo is sitting on the biggest chunk by not trying to force high tech before people are ready for it. There well may be a market for non-HD games for years to come, especially if smaller studies just abandon the 'Next Gen' market to big budget studios. I still say game budgets now play a bigger factor in games than hardware.