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What Makes Nintendo 3DS Cost So Much?

Draanor | Mar 31, 2011 |

1 Comments | Rating: 0

If you think the Nintendo 3DS is expensive and that Nintendo is trying to make more money by selling it at a high price, you might think again after this.

More than 1/3 of Nintendo 3DS cost comes from its two high-end display, according to certain market and product analysts, who focuses on gadget appraisal and valuation. Based on their evaluation, the current Nintendo 3DS is packed with a lot of new technologies in a very small space.

For instance, a stereoscopic 3D display, which can be quite common among the latest mobile devices, is embedded in the handheld. The screen consists of a TFT liquid crystal display that creates a “parallax barrier”, allowing the screen to show the 3D images without the need for 3D effect glasses. This shows that Nintendo have made an effort to keep cost at an affordable range for consumers and how more technology is jammed into a device compared to their previous handheld consoles.

The breakdown of the Nintendo 3DS cost attributes can be summarized like so: the touchscreen costs about $34 and the processing chip costs at $10. Apart from that, the memory system costs up to $8.50 which is a 2 Gigabyte Samsung NAND flash memory. The user interface system, uses a gyroscope from Invesense brand, that costs about $6.80, which includes an accelerometer by STMicroelectronic. The camera function cost about $4.70 and the wireless chip from Atheros costs about $5. The batteries for the 3DS cost about $3.50 each, which quite costly, since it only provides the 3DS five hours of usage life.

The cost of components or materials and manufacturing for a single 3DS console is valued at about $104, which can be considered quite pricy for some. Moreover, it is not the ne3t cost yet, as it hasn’t take into account other additional spending like 3DS internal software, licensing fees, engineering costs, marketing costs and distribution cost. At the end of the day, Nintendo could be cutting a 5% profit margin the 3DS, which of course will return on investment many years to come through games and apps sales.

For an average gamer, this console may seem bit tad expensive, but then again, the Nintendo 3DS have some amazing hardware and most current console game manufacturers are making 3DS games to have an competitive advantage as well as meet the demand of consumers.

Of course, if you can't afford this new handheld right away, you can be certain that it will drop in price in the coming months and years. This will be especially true when the new Sony handheld comes out which will almost guarantee a cut in the Nintendo 3DS's price.