With stories of flying Wiimotes due to faulty wrist straps and lawsuits over the design of the Wiimote, what better way to add fuel to the fire than questioning the price of the Wiimote?
CNN broke down all the pieces of the Wiimote and found that a majority of the parts were cheap to produce. The most expensive parts of the Wiimote only accumulated to $2.50. So what makes the Wiimote cost $39.99 (U.S.) at retail?
A rather lengthy forum post on Nintendo’s official Wii forum offers a slew of possible answers. One of the most common reactions is that it was simply a mechanism of profit, as JDW82 stated:
"People seem to forget what the main priority of Nintendo is…..making a profit. If they think they can get away with charging a certain price for a controller, some hardware or anything else they decide to make….then they will."
Another user, DOT1L, compared this situation to working in the pharmaceutical industry:
"…If it only costs $2 to make a pill, why does it cost $100?…you are paying for more than the parts and manufacturing. You are also paying for the millions that was spent researching and testing the product, the millions that was spent in developing failed products that never made it to market, the lisencing [sic] fees spent to use components that others have pattented [sic], the lawyer fees to patent and protect your own intelectual [sic] property, and so on and so forth."
In the end, the CNN article doesn’t break down the prices of everything in the Wiimote; they forget the PCB board, speaker, the strap itself and other various pieces that I can’t name. Also Nintendo is a business like any other company; they need to make money to stay afloat…and man, they sure are floating large.
